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
Why is it the Trudeau Metre and not the Trudeau Meter? Metre is a unit of length, Meter is a measuring or counting device.
@ Tom Alciere
You’ll have to ask them in their comment section. I wondered about that myself.
Today the OPP in Ontario had their demand for 40,000 cell phone records denied by the court on the basis that it was far too broad. The OPP wanted the information to try and detect any patterns that might relate to a string of thefts. The court said the demand trampled on privacy and Charter rights as it really was a fishing expedition. Sound familiar? I’m sure Mr Arvay can utilize this.
“We still seek Witnesses willing to go public and document in an affidavit for the Charter trial the harm they have experienced”
Someone please contact Joe:
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/renunciation/comment-page-221/#comment-7075371
Today’s donors: thank you so much! To former and current donors, thanks forever.
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/geIrman-high-court-rules-facebook-180646097.html
It’s a long shot,but could FATCA letters be regarded as ‘harassment’ to resident EU citizens?
@Tom Alciere – a Trudometer ? a Tread On Me device ?
I agree, Stephen, that there would be no / could not be an ADCS-ADSC without Tricia and all the unpaid accounting work she continues to do behind the scenes regarding our financial reporting obligations.
Thank you very much, Patricia Moon. We do appreciate all of the many hours you have and continue to put in while juggling other things in your life.
(P.S. You, Stephen, and John Richardson likewise put in an incredible amount of unpaid energy, time and expertise that can never be repaid. Thank you, both! My position as a Director has none of the same responsibilities as that of the other three of you — I am continually amazed at your commitment and contributions.)
@ Tricia, our terrific Treasurer
I didn’t even try to understand the accounting part. You’re an amazing person to be able to work through all that and thank you very, very much for doing it. I could understand the breakdown of donations and where they have come from though. That part is really interesting.
@ All
We have an awesome ADCS-ADSC team and they deserve our deepest gratitude for all the hard work they are putting into this march towards justice. To ALL the donors a big THANK YOU! Please let’s get this funding finished so Tricia can zero out her spreadsheets and relax a bit. New donors are obviously needed and now’s the time.
Some yankeebucks flying your way for that final surge!
SURGITE!
Some canuckbucks too … from Mr. EmBee.
@EmBee — ” … donations and where they have come from though. That part is really interesting.”
Just sayin’ that there are some donations either unclassified or classified with say Canadian source, which really originate elsewhere (like Jamaica for one). None the less the number of countries mentioned is impressive.
https://americansabroad.org/
The ACA continues to put its faith in surveys and the US Congress to sort out FATCA.
They need to get together a lawsuit and forget about offending US politicians in Congress.
@ nervousinvestor
Yes I realize there are a significant number of “unknowns” but that’s the nature of this beast. We have many unsung supporters helping out and we will never know exactly who they are or where they are from. I had to google map “Antiguilla” which turned out to be “Anquilla” in the Caribbean (I think). Anyway, that’s a gorgeous place! BTW under Commonwealth/USA, I think Tricia might have meant to list “USA — 26” since the others listed come to a total of 500. Amongst those would be some who are supportive relatives of expats and immigrants to the USA with financial ties to their homeland and I hope some Americans who understand that FATCA is bad legislation.
@Don, re ACA and its chosen ‘faith’ positions re FATCA;
I am very disturbed by the characterizations of FATCA as an inevitable, necessary or acceptable tool against tax evasion, and the implication that opposition to /rejection of it is misguided, impractical, quixotic, etc. in the most recent (Jan 2016) ACA newsletter as I read and interpreted it:
https://americansabroad.org/download_file/view/810/133/ from https://americansabroad.org/news-and-events/newsletters/
Those who continue to work against US extraterritorialFATCA, and call for its repeal, or challenge the legitimacy, legality, extraterritoriality and innate offense it represents to the sovereignty/autonomy of the other nations (ex. Canada) that make up the world and who reject and oppose the abrogation of our local and international human and legal rights that the US-FATCA and the FATCA IGAs represent (as the ADCS lawsuit opposes here against the Canadian one, and the UN complaint does on an international level) help ACA because those who call for repeal and take legal action in their non-US home country (where they are also often citizens by birth and legal residents) add incentive for the current US administration to entertain input by ACA for their initiatives. I don’t see any appreciation in the ACA remarks for the crucial role of this ADCS lawsuit and opposition to USExtraterritorialFATCA-FBAR-CBT that this forum and other efforts represent.
The ACA newsletter mentions as a highlight of their activities the ACA Foundation’s 2014 academic debate held in Toronto, Canada – but there is no appreciation of (and still NO mention shown) of the extensive input and participation by the audience in the ACA Foundation’s 2014 academic debate held in Toronto, Canada, and the many ordinary Canadians/duals who travelled to attend all day on a work day, and actively participated in questioning the participants. At least one Canadian federal politician – NDP MP Murray Rankin also took time to attend and to speak with those in attendance. I do not think that it is legitimate to continue to omit mention of the substantial opposition and pain expressed at that forum as if it did not exist.
Is that not worth mentioning in the same breath as the two US academics who presented? Apparently not.
I appreciate that the ACA has decided that in order to have easier access to all the federal agencies they list as contacts in their newsletter that they won’t raise our pain, our anger, and our LEGAL and personal OPPOSITION to FATCA outside the US, and choose to dismiss our substantial efforts to apply our LEGAL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS against discrimination, etc. in order to get redress. – whether that is our LOCAL NATIONAL Charter of RIGHTS and FREEDOMS in CANADA as a SOVEREIGN AUTONOMOUS NATION, or whether it is those working in the US to secure the repeal of FATCA, and freedom for those who do NOT wish to continue to be held as economic hostages by the US, and to either disconnect US taxation from citizenship and freedom to travel, or to compel the US to stop the practice of forcing those with unwanted US status to buy out their freedom papers at an extortionate price (compliance costs, plus 2350 US$ State Dept. fee, plus exit tax when applicable, plus associated travel and personal costs to attend US consulate/embassy location).
I appreciate that ACA is working to ameliorate the effects of the injuries that coupling UScitizenship with USextraterritorial-taxation and UScitizenship with the right to travel (US passport laws), but is it legitimate for it to do so by dismissing and omitting the voices of those who are working to more firmly reject FATCA and USextraterritorial CBT?
That is an approach that will alienate many who were born NON-US citizens as well as those who have chosen to make Canada or other non-US countries their HOME.
FATCA is an insult to our HOME countries and to our local, and international human, civil and legal rights.
I am profoundly insulted by any characterization or implication that USextraterritorialFATCA and FBAR are necessary or inevitable evils and that the real task is to make them more palatable rather than oppose them and call them out for the insult that they truly are.
That message, as I read the ACA newsletter (and all the statements by the Democrats Abroad) just make me angrier and more motivated for the FATCA IGA to be declared illegal on my home ground.
As a Canadian citizen (no longer a dual) and resident, I am still left paying for and suffering the insulting and illegal implementation of a foreign law imposed by extortion on my home country of Canada via the IGA whether it applies directly to me or not. I don’t care that I am no longer currently characterized as a ‘UStaxableperson’. My home country’s sovereignty and autonomy and the rights of my fellow citizens and residents is still injured by USFATCA as implemented – and that will NEVER be acceptable.
Apparently the ACA doesn’t get that we have enduring loyalties to our chosen HOMES and fellows, not just to the US status we inherited or acquired or had foisted on us.
@ badger
Right you are — again. Putting sugar on a toxic, bitter plant because someone thinks it must be swallowed doesn’t make sense. That plant needs to be detoxified or better yet, destroyed. ACA is a sugar sprinkler, an enabler of FATCA. ADCS recognises the toxicity of FATCA/FBAR/CBT but ACA thinks it can all be made more palatable with “same country exemption” or some other thingamajig. It cannot!
@Badger
A Tour De Force Post
Exquisitely said!
Well stated, badger. ACA and Democrats Abroad are specifically for American Citizens Abroad who are Homelanders Abroad and who will return to their USA one day. That is, as it should be, their CHOICE, knowing all of their responsibilities of same. Their interest in the others of us is seemingly only for *our vote*!
They are a different breed than those who have CHOSEN to live, work, raise families in and be part of the fabric of other countries and become citizens of those countries — by CHOICE. Some of us do not subscribe to US CBT enslavement with a US portion of any so-called *duality* deemed superior to any other citizenship, even with a *same country exemption* that still imposes the same compliance costs and FFI costs. Some of us do not give tribute to the exceptionality of a land that falsely espouses their FREEDOM. They could very easily and sensibly change to resident taxation as the rest of the world and prove they are about choice and freedom.
WEEKENDS: The flow into the fund often stops BUT our Badger has more time to tell it like it is and tell it brilliantly. That’s a good thing. I noticed paypal donations and direct donations are only 6% apart, according to our Tricia’s report. I wish I could do paypal to help with the weekend flow but I can’t (I’m a cash and cheque type person). Could some of our dear paypal supporters make this weekend double good plus plus by sending in something? Please?
@Badger – Well put. The USG has taken away ACA member’s financial rights, implemented passport revocation, what else is needed for the ACA to wake up?
– Elimination of the FEIE and start signing ‘collection’ IGAs so the IRS can tap into a country’s local tax collection system?
Governments around the world have left these issues to their courts, and leaving people to form groups to raise money for legal fees that could have benefited their families rather than law firms.
Someone needs to talk to the ACA or form a separate group to raise funds for a EU challenge or else the future I’ve laid out above will be reality.
How do U.S.A. bureaucrats figure they had jurisdiction on this one?
Swedish citizens get 11 years in U.S. prison for al Shabaab support
http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-security-alshabaab-idUSL2N14Z2Y5
EmBee,
One donor, from somewhere in Canada, fooled us all and just sent in a donation, not by PayPal, but by Interac transfer. That works too.
Interac transfer — that’s great! It’s another thing I don’t do so I never even thought of it. Thank you, interac supporter. 🙂
@Calgary411
I think you’ll appreciate this. One of my minor children has some money saved up from baby sitting and odd jobs. The amount is now large enough that she asked me to help her invest the sum for down the road. So off we go to my favourite discount brokerage, RBC Direct Investments to open an investment account for her. Because she’s a minor, the account has to be opened as “BC_Doc In Trust For Canadian Born Teenage Daughter.”
So we get logged in to the RBC website and proceed to the application screen. So far so good. Then the Unaskable Questions start getting asked:
1) Trustee– Are you a U.S. Citizen or a U.S. resident for tax purposes?
a) Dare to click “Yes” and up pops a notice, “To comply with regulations, you will be presented with a W9 form with your application package.”
b) Social Security Number (SSN)– Write it down heren Now consider yourself officially marked and packaged for the IRS. Good luck sucker.
2) Is the Beneficiary a U.S. Citizen or a U.S. resident for tax purposes?
a) Go ahead, I dare you– click “Yes”– Guess what, you’re going to receive another one of those tasty W9 forms so we can serve your minor up to Uncle Sam as a tasty treat.
b) Social Security Number (SSN)– welcome to our data base kid. If you’re lucky, in a few years, we’ll draft you and send you off to some country whose name you can’t pronounce to die so that a bunch of Homelanders can get fat sitting on their couches while they watch Netflix and oil their guns.
3) How many countries is the beneficiary a resident of for tax purposes?
Reason– You may have told us you’re only Canadian but it really doesn’t matter what you think kid– if the U.S. says you’re American, then by God, “Congress has spoken.”
a) Beneficiary’s country of residence for tax purposes?
4) Beneficiary’s country of birth?
a) Select your country of birth– by now, you know where this is headed. It’s part of a new U.S. policy called, “Leave no (ex-pat) American behind.” Even if they don’t want to be American. Or consider themself to be American. Or didn’t even know they were American.
************************************************************************************************************************
How did I answer these questions? My name is BC_Doc. I was born in Montreal. Je suis Canadien.
Here’s to the day I am no longer a second class Canadian citizen and don’t have to tell White Lies to protect my family and safeguard my future.
@All Thanks very much for the kind comments Will try to keep them in mind when there is a mess to untangle (inevitable with so many entries….)
@nervous investor as we went along, we tried to notate “unknowns” via stamps. I can certainly list Jamaica but had no way to know without at least a postal stamp.
The majority of the 55 unknowns were from within Canada. I could have added them to Canada but for some reason did not.
@EmBee The US IS included on the original file……..this happened the first time on another text box (for some unknown reason it shortened the text box leaving out the bottom entry) but I did not catch it when I uploaded the file to the Media Library the second time. Unfortunately I cannot fix this as I don’t have access to that file on this notebook. But there were indeed 26 donors from the US. Will fix tomorrow.. Sorry for misspelling, will also fix on tomorrow.