UPDATE January 24, 2015: THIRD OF FIVE LEGAL BILLS PAID
[We now have a NEW POST taking us up to May 1, 2015. This post will be retired from service.]
On August 11, 2014, Constitutional Litigator Joseph Arvay filed a FATCA IGA lawsuit in Canada Federal Court on behalf of Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (en français), and all peoples worldwide. Read Alliance’s Claims and comment on our Alliance blog.
Chers amis et donateurs,
Ensemble, nous avons atteint notre but : ramasser les fonds nécessaires pour payer la troisième des cinq factures légales de notre poursuite judiciaire.
Ramasser 300 000 $ provenant de petits dons est un exploit tout à fait extraordinaire et nous invitons notre gouvernement canadien, ainsi que tous les autres gouvernements qui ont piétiné les droits de leurs citoyens, à en prendre bonne note.
Chaque jour, nous nous rapprochons de notre but. Déjà, nous avons ramassé plus de la moitié des fonds nécessaires pour payer les frais légaux de notre poursuite contre le gouvernement canadien et l’entente FATCA.
Si nous avons parcouru un si grand bout de chemin, c’est grâce à nos deux courageuses plaignantes, Ginny et Gwen, à nos donateurs provenant du Canada et de partout dans le monde, ainsi qu’aux administrateurs des sites Internet Isaac Brock Society et Maple Sandbox. Ils permettent tous à nos voix d’être entendues.
Merci !
L’équipe de l’ADSC
———————————————————————————————–
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Together we have reached our goal of paying off the third of five retainer fees for our Canadian FATCA IGA lawsuit.
Raising $300,000 from small donations is a pretty amazing achievement and we ask the Government of Canada, and those other governments who have also tossed away rights of their citizens, to take notice.
It’s still a marathon, but we are more than half way to pay off the Federal Court legal costs.
We have come so far because of our brave Plaintiffs, Ginny and Gwen, our Canadian and International donor-supporters, and the administrators of the Isaac Brock and Maple Sandbox websites who make it possible for our voices to be heard.
Thank you all,
—The ADCS-ADSC team
Okay maybe not today for that response … but SOON!
Stephen Kish wrote:
My understanding is that the Government of Canada is supposed to respond to our Claims 30 days from the date the Amended Claims were filed, which was on October 9 (see the link).
There will be a record on this link when the Statement of Defense is received, and we will post the response:
http://cas-ncr-nter03.cas-satj.gc.ca/IndexingQueries/infp_RE_info_e.php?court_no=T-1736-14
@EmBee,
In my June Kijiji ads, I put up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-EVF7CZt_w) It was VERY BLACK humor and probably part of why those ads were taken down. My current ads have just been edited to include the video used by another Brocker when advertising the John Richardson presentations (youtube.com/watch?v=slqAkW_eeUA) , a really good introduction to what actually was presented and discussed when FATCA was being approved in the Canadian Parliament.
If you know of other videos, let us know.
I have other static visuals but, again, they are too “shocking” for the Kijiji public. To me, it’s more important to get the word out than to rant (though I greatly appreciate those who are good at ranting in response to ignorant news articles and editorials on these topics).
BTW, I took my fliers to another “Third Age Learning” meeting today and several people picked these up – – don’t know if they have US-ness or maybe a friend or an adult-child’s partner…… Also, my friendly bank teller has been willing to take one of these fliers; she cant share it in the public section of the bank but says she has put it up in the lunchroom and it has raised a lot of good conversation. One OMG at a time 🙂
LOVE IT, EmBee!!!!
Has anyone heard that the Govt has replied to ADCS’s legal charges?
LM,
See EmBee’s comment above re Stephen’s comment re the government response — SOON: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/10/30/our-tricia-moon-on-canada-am/comment-page-3/#comment-3819202.
LM,
Like your determination and the courage of your friendly bank teller!!!
This is of course just the latest proof of US hypocrisy and hubris:
“…. Paradoxically, the United States, which set the ball rolling with FATCA, does not want to sign up to the new OECD standard, which would require full reciprocity between countries, preferring to stick to its own law instead. “…
Yes, because FATCA is arrogant and unethical extortion and the US is the extortionist. The US wants to protect its domestic tax havens; Delaware – VP Biden’s state, Florida, Texas, Nevada, etc., while stealing the legal local savings of the rest of the world.
Donate to ADCS – help stop US extortion with the collusion of the Harper government – who passed laws to make it possible to break and disable our highest laws – the Constitution, the Charter, etc.
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-tax-summit-in-berlin-aims-to-say-goodbye-to-banking-secrecy-2014-10
@Calgary 411 (RE “Like your determination and the courage of your friendly bank teller!!!”)
I actually feel sad for the local tellers that I have dealt with recently. None of them know ANYTHING about thi. But they are the ones who have an ongoing relationship with these customers, sometimes very long-standing. They are the ones who are face-to-face with the customers yet, if there is a letter from the bank asking for new personal information and a signature on a strange form, none of these folks can help them. Even the manager of several branches I have gone to seem to really know much about FATCA; they’ll say, “Oh, that’s something you have to deal with head office”.
So local customers are getting no information in preparation; when the ax falls, to whom do you think these customers are going to rail and rant and question – – the face of the bank-person they know. The FATCA info on the internet at my bank (TD) is not REALLY helpful and mostly just tells customer to go away and find an accountant or lawyer to explain things to them, which certainly doesn’t show much respect or care for their customers. And not everyone has a computer or, even if they do, would even think about looking at a FATCA page. It’s really unfair and sidesteps their “relationship” in a “gotcha” manner.
So the teller, in some ways, is showing more courage than her “superiors”; she knows she can’t do anything about it, but she can understand and reach out to the customer in an empathetic manner when the bomb drops. This particular teller immigrated to Canada with her parents when she was a school-aged child (from a country in Europe) so when I ask “so, should your country of birth still be following you forever to pay taxes?” she can relate; she can also relate to the issue of potential for 2nd class citizenship based on nationality or parentage…… I should bring her a box of locally-made (and wonderful) hand-dipped chocolates………
@All – – have you given your local bank teller (or bank manager) the news of what is the full reality of FATCA?
@ EmBee –
I just checked my Kijiji ads; things have picked up since I added that video of the parliament hearings yesterday – – so far over 300 visits!
Come on folks, is there no one out there from BC, Manitoba, Quebec, Newfoundland, etc willing to post a few Kijiji ads?
@LM re: “@All – – have you given your local bank teller (or bank manager) the news of what is the full reality of FATCA? ”
One day, a few months back, I was in a particularly foul mood (yeah imagine that), and I emailed a link to the interview I had with CBC Radio’s ‘All in a Day show’ to two nice ladies at TD bank that had been my financial advisors for years (one with accounts I held at TD, and one with accounts I held at TD Waterhouse). I copied them both in on the email, and they both know each other. Prior to that “confession” email, I had moved, some, though not all, accounts from both TD and TD Waterhouse, so now they know why. I never heard back from either of them. I suspect they feel sorry for me. If I do hear from them, I will move the rest of my accounts as well.
@LM, Of course, now I feel awkward to make contact with either of them. I would so love to have been a fly on the wall when they discussed the email that they both got from the US person in their midst. And I sent it to their TD email addresses. My bad!
The US refusing OECD is à good thing. It Will give a good reason for the rest of the world to refuse IGA agreements and FATCA.
An interesting article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/bank-accounts/11200683/Your-bank-can-give-your-details-to-foreign-governments-you-agreed-to-it.html
Probably has little to do with you, WhiteKat; it’s risky these days to put anything in writing via email…
@LM,
I just posted your request for a few Kijiji ad posters at the top of this thread.
Thanks for your incredible commitment!
@ Stephen Kish (RE “I just posted your request for a few Kijiji ad posters at the top of this thread.”)
Thanks for doing this, Stephen.
I’ve always felt it better to take action than to just rant and risk continued discouragement and eventual depression…..
That being said, I do very much appreciate those who rant and rebut so well in response to the various articles and commentators out there that, in their ignorant over-simplification and homelander-arrogance, very much deserve the articulate sting of other Brocker’s pen (or keyboarding).
IBS and ADCS need both kinds of action!
LM,
You’re absolutely right. It is really negligent and reprehensible that our local Canadian banks and other financial institutions have not adequately or at all educated their front-line persons, those dealing with the Canadian banking public, about FATCA so they will be knowledgeable and be able to give correct information to anyone asking about FATCA. There will be many mistakes made to blame on that negligence.
We had the story of one such “Canadian” bank employee who happens to be a *US Person* some time back (and I will try to find it). How many other regular-Joe Canadian bank employees will have the *US taint*? How will they deal with their *US* personhoods, working for a “foreign financial institution”?
A VERY important article, nervousinvestor. Just what are we, especially those U.S.-defined *U.S. Persons*, to do about these kinds of incomprehensible banking agreements that give our banks carte blanche to throw privacy rights out the window and turn over our banking information to anyone, let alone a foreign country?
@ Calgary411
Hmmmmmm, a bank teller in one of the Big 5 (or smaller) banks that has US Personhood. Now that would be interesting!
They just had the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Maybe someday FATCA will crumble just like the Berlin Wall did.
Sigh.
@ calgary411 I wonder how the banks will deal with their senior level bank employees with a US taint? There will be some in Canada. Often these people are heavily recruited because of their skills.
heartsick and LM,
Banks’ senior level employees with a US taint will have more education and more likely to be compliant (their U.S. tax compliance may even be a senior executive perk) than this bank employee, a personal banker, who says she came to find out that she was supposed to be filing US taxes every year through her job at the bank she works for: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/expat_tax/comment-page-74/#comment-2018275.
These lower level bank employees could turn out to be valuable allies if they have any sense of justice, fair play, or better yet, a US connection of their own. They could, for example, choose to overlook any US-ness inadvertently disclosed in casual conversation at the bank branch. They could, if they happen to notice US indicia, ask to “update your personal information” and thereby eliminate a US connection. (“Do you have a piece of Canadian i.d. instead of that US passport you showed us a decade ago? Great, that health card will do just fine. We’ll just delete the passport and add the card.”)
One of the great weaknesses of FATCA is it’s dependance on individual bank employees to ferret out the information. If they decide they don’t like FATCA because they don’t want to become informants for a foreign government they can start to “overlook” certain things and the whole business falls apart. Most ordinary Canadians have an instinctive and inherent distrust of the US government, bank employees included. Unlike the high mucky-mucks who are only interested in the bottom line, the front line employees are there to solve problems for their customers, not create them.
Need more reason to support this challenge and fund the fight against FATCA in Canada and around the globe?
Came across this fulltext of a July 2014 article from Tax Analysts – which contains several important points and helpfully remind us of things we might already have known, but that are confirmed here.
This point is interesting in light of this legal challenge:
“…within Treasury there was discussion about whether there were going to be conflict of law issues
and how best to address them. Interestingly, the absence of an explicit intergovernmental cooperation provision in the bill, in combination with the broad general grants of authority provided
by the statute, turned out to work, Grinberg said.He added that if Congress had inserted an intergovernmental cooperation provision, and if it had been broad enough to allow Treasury to exclude specific countries entirely from the scope of FATCA, it could have opened the floodgates for many countries to ask for that treatment, and the politics and implementation could have been impossible…..”…
So, Congress spoke – and there was to be no special consideration of Canada – with which the US already had the most extensive bilateral tax treaty. A signal that in the view of Congress, and eventually as signalled by the Harper government, whatever the impact on Canada and Canadian citizens and residents was fair game – as a Canadian Conservative MP lectured us in the Bill C-31 hearings – the Conservative party of Canada followed their US political masters; “Congress has spoken” said MP Mike Allen http://openparliament.ca/committees/finance/41-2/32/mike-allen-1/ .
Also, confirmation and reminder of why we shouldn’t give banks (which are referred to as “FFIs” Foreign Financial Institutions” in FATCA speak) as Canadian CBA members any access to our savings and our business. Contradicts the CBA’s preferred way of re/casting their role – which was to put all their efforts into lobbying the Harper government to sign a FATCA IGA, in spite of Finance Minister Flaherty’s initially strong public opposition (on record for posterity in his letter printed in some Canadian media – but not in the US) ;
The article says: “……. it was FFIs themselves that turned out to be Treasury’s best lobbyists
for FATCA, Grinberg said. He said that once the FFIs accepted that FATCA would not be repealed, they
started pressuring their governments to help them. ‘‘Do something that is illegal for you to do under
domestic law or Uncle Sam whacks you. That really put financial institutions between a rock and a hard
place,’’ Grinberg said…..” Volume 75, Number 1 ■ July 7, 2014
‘FATCA: From Bold Idea to Reality’
tax notes international
http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/website.nsf/Web/InternationalTaxNews/$file/tnisample.pdf
@badger,
Not sure we need MORE but what you’ve posted is certainly enough to clear up any doubts, for any who might possibly believe the oft-repeated claim that the CDN government procured special exemptions that the US did not grant any other country.
@Tricia, I am hoping that readers are motivated to fund the ADCS challenge if they haven’t already done so – they can choose their most pressing reason out of the many and various.
Readers should understand that the legal impediments to FATCA were very clear to the US (and the IGA signatories like Canada), from the very beginnings – yet they hoped that US might and extortive means, bank lobbying, and the lack of any voice or political representation in the US and here at home, would let them roll FATCA right over us. They CHOSE to hurt all of us and to make no exceptions for their closest ally and neighbour. Congress, Treasury, Obama, and other US politicians CHOSE to harm Canada and Canadians and try to extort our legal local assets via threat and force. Canadian representatives of the Conservative party, Harper and his minions, CHOSE to assist the US to harm ordinary Canadians – and subvert our Charter and Constitution.
Little did they anticipate that opposition and legal challenges would get this far – in Canada, and in the US.
Our cause is just!