March 8, 2016 UPDATE: Legal fees paid — on to Federal Court for Charter trial contesting Canadian FATCA IGA legislation.
Canadians and International Supporters:
You came through once again: $594,970 for legal costs have now been donated and our outstanding legal bill is finally paid off.
Thanks especially to those who donated even though they never had any “spare” money to give, and despite this gave over and over and over again.
This last round of fundraising also shows that our Canadian lawsuit remains dependent on the kindness of our International Friends: There would be no lawsuit without their financial help.
Know that a very generous donation (today) from a supporter in the United States made it possible to pay off the remaining legal debt. Also please appreciate that there would be no lawsuit without the help of the Isaac Brock Society which has kindly let us use its website to solicit funds.
Our next step is the Constitutional-Charter trial in Federal Court.
For this we need more Canadian Witnesses, and my next post will be devoted only to a request for Witnesses willing to go public, like our Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen.
For the future: I want a win in Federal Court — and I want the new Liberal Government not to appeal that win.
Thank you all for your support,
Stephen Kish,
for the Directors,
Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty
@Ginny…….just to clear the air……I have not been offended by anyone and as far as that goes as you know my background to include my surname…….nothing really offends me anymore…I guess you get unoffendable when you have traveled down my road in life.
I have been checking in each and everyday though.
As far as that second lawsuit being launched? Let me say that having engaged in emails with the directors over a long time I am confident that their decision making was done very soberly and well thought out. They did not make the decision lightly, that is for sure so I can not and will not second guess them.
Disappointments? The new Canadian Government. I had high hopes they would throw some bone out to us.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/30/457889016/post-paris-obama-administration-changes-visa-waiver-program
More hassle at airports Obama administration is ordering enhancement to the Visa Waiver Programme.
Changes include increasing the airline’s penalties from $5000 to $50000 for non-compliance (sounds familiar?), more information reporting on which countries people have visited (that sounds similar to my grandmother arriving into the US being asked on a form ‘Do you plan to overthrow the US Government?’) so unless there’s some master database people will just lie.
Expand biometrics so it’s real time – I suppose this means forcing VWP countries to open up their finger print databases to the US Government. Result – very few terrorists caught and some poor guy being refused entry into the US because of some minor crime committed 20 years ago. Again ordinary people being hassled, terrorist still being able to enter the US by other means than the airport.
More frequent submissions to the ESTA system (and of course the US collects $14 for each person), and if a country doesn’t comply – guess what? Its suspended from the VWP and ESTA (again sounds familiar?).
The US is going to create so much cost and red tap to enter it, tourists will be put off.
So there you have it. The US is going to demand access to other countries fingerprint databases, and along with FATCA data equals more future hassles.
I’m sure EU governments will be falling all over themselves to comply.
After 9/11 homelanders blamed Canada for allowing holders of valid US visas to cross by land from Canada into the US.
The US even renewed visas of dead hijackers after they were dead.
Somewhat less dangerously, one time the US almost wouldn’t let a Secret Service agent board a plane because the Secret Service agent had the same racial appearance as my wife.
Maybe the US should put people in concentration camps again if their racial appearance looks Chinese, which after all is the same racial appearance as Japanese, the ones whose ancestors’ country bombed Pearl Harbor. (To clarify, this doesn’t mean that retaliation against Japan was unjustified, it means that imprisoning US citizens of Japanese ancestry, and Canadian and Peruvian citizens of Japanese ancestry. was unjustified.)
It’s show time. The US knows how to put on an act, pretending to know how to deal with terrorism.
BROCK DOWN: A couple of people have commented at the Maple Sandbox that they haven’t been able to get into Brock for a few days (other sites work fine). Anybody have any ideas why?
Thanks very much, EmBee. I went over to Maple Sandbox and posted some suggestions.
Obviously no one reading this here is having that problem, but I’ll post the suggestions here as an FYI.
After you rule out a problem on your end — you’re able to get onto all sites except Brock — it’s possible that your ip address was accidentally blocked by the Brock website’s server. (NOTE: This is not unique to Brock, it can happen with any site.)
This can happen is if the server thinks a site is being attacked – eg, it’s getting bombarded with spam from one ip address — it automatically blocks that ip address.
Sometimes, though, (depends on the server) a server may block a group of ip addresses. Say a spam attack is coming from ip address 461.200.154.65. A server might block all addresses starting with 461.200.154 and some innocent ip addresses get caught in the block.
What you can do:
(1) Our webmaster can see if your ip address is blocked and manually unblock it. To do this, you can email me at pacifica@isaacbrocksociety.ca and I’ll forward your ip address to our webmaster.
To find out your ip address, go to http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup
There is a box showing your ip address just under the second paragraph on that page.
(2) If you do nothing, the block goes away automatically in a few days. Not sure how long, I don’t know much about servers.
(3) To access Brock in the meantime, you could use a proxy site, such as http://myspace-unblocker.org/
Opinion of Obama’s speech tonight – pure hypocrisy.
Terrorists on no-fly list and American ex-pats who renounce US citizenship are now in the same class – no longer can buy guns in the US. That’s on top of we’ve been corralled together with criminals and FBARs.
Says all Americans are equal and don’t discriminate – except if you’re an American ex-pat living abroad.
Obama leaving office in Jan 2017 can’t come fast enough, but as in Canada a changing of the guard will probably not make much difference because you still have the same civil servants in government.
Lynne Swanson recently sent an email to NDP MP Mr. Murray Rankin, asking that he pose a question to the Attorney General. I just did the same. I am also hoping for more donations to pay for our Canadian FATCA lawsuit…
Here is part of the email that I sent:
I am Canadian and US tax compliant, what business is it of the CRA to know everything about my investments and bank accounts in Canada?
Imminent:
http://www.fin.gc.ca/notices-avis15/2015-12-07-eng.asp
@Bubbless……whats imminent????
“Finance Minister Bill Morneau is moving ahead with his government’s plans to cut taxes for what it calls “middle class” workers, while at the same time hiking taxes on the “top one per cent.””
Does the “top one per cent” include everyone who is or ever was a US person, regardless of actual income level?
I sent an e-mail to Murray Rankin asking him to please pose a question in Parliament about FATCA. I don’t want them to file FATCA away, out of sight, out of mind.
Thank you, EmBee
No longer imminent, George, although I can’t find any other news on the Minister of Finance’s press gathering other than Stephen’s comment.
Here are a couple somethings out on probably that notice:
http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/finance-minister-bill-morneau-says-liberals-moving-ahead-with-middle-class-tax-cut-higher-rate-for-wealthy
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/morneau-liberal-taxes-middle-class-1.3353939
Thanks Calgary411. I think not increasing TFSA limits is a bad idea. People aren’t saving enough for their retirement in Canada. Not that I will buy any because of my US tax situation. My lawyer at one point said that he thinks all those accounts considered non-reportable under the FATCA IGA will one day be treated like RRSP accounts under the treaty, but who knows.
Just as our new Finance Minister is using the tired “gee, the books are worse than we thought” line as an excuse, we can expect a “gee, now that we’ve had a good look, FATCA is good for Canada and Canada’s banks” as a reason to carry on. The court will be the only salvation-and that will be appealed, more $$$…
The government will use Section 1 of the Charter to justify the IGA by proving that the damage to certain Canadians is necessary to mitigate sanctions on our banks by the US. The Arvay team has to prove that these reasons are not good enough to violate our Charter rights.
Marie, I have always felt that Charter Section 1 vs. the loss of Charter and Constitutional rights will be the key question to be decided in Federal Court.
EmBee,
Well, it appears that NDP Murray Rankin (one of our good supporters) won’t be the NDP MP who questions the AG/MNR, in Question Period, on Mr. Trudeau’s pre-election statements. The NDP MP who will/might do this is Pierre-Luc Dusseault of Sherbrooke. When he was elected in 2011 at the age of 19, he was the youngest MP elected to Canada’s Parliament.
I think it is probably safe to assume that he knows absolutely nothing about FATCA and why the Conservative Government took away our Charter rights (threat of economic sanction) — and will need to have this explained.
He does ask questions in Question Period and did so yesterday (December 7).
Those interested should contact him at Pierre-Luc.Dusseault@parl.gc.ca
Very important to CC AND send same email to his Parliamentary Assistant Harun Jasarevic at Pierre-Luc.Dusseault.A1@parl.gc.ca
Convince his assistant to pass on your email to Mr. Dusseault.
You may wish to attach as background information the Arvay letter and our Claims.
https://adcsovereignty.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/2015-11-09b-et-nygard-et-al_delivering-letter-of-same-date.pdf
https://adcsovereignty.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/hillis-filed-amended-statement-of-claim-to-the-defendants.pdf
Personally, I am getting closer to political process fatigue (I hope you and others are not) and am focusing on our litigation and its funding.
Maybe you can convince Mr. Dusseault to add our situation to his problem with Canada Post as a priority. A question he raised yesterday in Parliament:
“Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I did not thank the voters of Sherbrooke who put their trust in me to represent them here in the House a second time. I also want to recognize and congratulate the member for his election to the House.
I was a little surprised that his speech did not mention Canada Post as a priority. He raised a number of issues in his speech, but he did not mention Canada Post. I have to wonder whether that omission was intentional, since the government is being unclear about the return of home delivery and about the commitment made by his party, which now forms the government.
Did he intentionally fail to mention this issue? It is a very important issue for the riding of Sherbrooke, for municipal officials in Sherbrooke, and for the mayor of Montreal, who expressed his interest in and concern for Canada Post and the return of home delivery.
I would like to know whether his government was truly and unambiguously committed to bringing back home delivery across Canada, including his riding and my own, the riding of Sherbrooke.”
I will talk more about this in the future but I did some research and found out that on only one occasion has the government lost at the Supreme Court of Canada on Section 15 grounds but later won on Section 1 grounds. So I have actually come to believe that in fact whether or not the plaintiffs represent a “class” protected by Section 15 will be one of the main arguments of the government albeit a very weak one. Lower courts have already found citizenship even in the context of tax law to be a class protected by section 15.
The argument that FATCA is no different from sections of the tax law dealing with 65+ survivors benefits(something challenged unsuccessfully) are bogus in the sense that those provision are “affirmative.” In no way is FATCA affirmative or beneficial to those affected by it.
@Tim
Very interesting. What was that “one occasion”.
@Marie. Same question from me. “What was that “one occasion”?”
Tim, I cannot predict what will happen in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Everyone however should take note of the Government response to our claims and how it has already decided to use Section 1 of Canada’s Charter of Rights. The Government actually admits in its Response to Ginny and Gwen’s Claims that infringement of our rights (if this happens, which Government denies) is necessary to protect Canada from the consequences of FATCA non-compliance. Canada wilfully takes away our rights because it fears the United States:
@ Tim
“found out that on only one occasion has the government lost at the Supreme Court of Canada on Section 15 grounds but later won on Section 1 grounds”
I would have to disagree. Are you by chance referring to the 1995 case Eagan versus Canada?
So the government decides that it is not an infringement of Sections 7, 8 and 9, but as a back-up, argues that if it is an infringement, it is justified in an free and democratic society. Sweet!!!