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
MuzzledNoMore’s comments express my thoughts as well.
@Blaze and Embee
Yes it appears that Bill Morneau (who all the other ministers etc. are passing the FATCA hot potato to) will not care about us either. It seems that no Canadian government has the ability or will to stand up to US power over FATCA. Not that we shouldn’t keep trying to get answers out of them though.
They must hear “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” endlessly from as many people as possible.
Thanks, everybody.
I actually woke up feeling better today than I have in years it seems. I can’t quite figure out why, because it puts me right in the government’s sights – but that in itself removes some of the impotence I was feeling when I wasn’t being heard by them anyway. Neither am I alone in my complaint (it’s one I’ve been harping on all along), as I’m just one of many Canadians who were harmed by the Canadian government when it sent those 155,000 information slips to the IRS via the CRA.
And now for some encouragement from Ghandi:
First they ignore you, (our submissions to the Finance Department prior to the passage of the IGA)
Then they laugh at you, (as they did when Calgary411’s son’s predicament was brought up in parliament)
Then they fight you, (in court)
Then you win (because we won’t give up)
@Bubblebustin: Reminds me of the joke about N.S.A., “The only U.S. Government agency that actually listens to the American people.”
@Tom Alciere
That’s a good one. If that’s the case, Canada could use it’s own NSA, because NO ONE (except maybe Mr Dusseault) seems to be listening.
I got a response from my letter to my MP, thanking me for informing them of my decision to make myself available as a witness against them. Crazy times these are.
“Canada could use it’s own NSA”
Do you mean the CSE?
A big THANK YOU to everyone who has volunteered to be a witness.
Tom Alciere: Thank you for my laugh of the day! Your NSA joke is now amongst the growing collection of “bon-mots” on post-its stuck to my computer. 🙂
$578,632 donated — $16,338 more needed…getting closer now to closing down my fundraising post.
Thanks to all who have been helping out in many different ways in the litigation.
@bubblebustin, was just trying to catch up here at IBS, and read that you’ve offered yourself as a witness.
Thought I’d say ‘Thank you’ for that, and for all your steadfast participation here over the long run. Always looked for your posts, familiar moniker and icon among those of other familiar regulars here, and always made me glad to see it. Often your posts made me laugh in a time when laughter didn’t come easily or at all. Often your sharing had info from the actual trenches, which must have helped countless others – many of whom probably were silent readers.
best,
badger
@Badger
Those are some of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me. Thank you and others here for your encouraging words – we could all use them more often than we really wish we had to. It’s funny, feeling incredibly flustered and fed up, I recently came very close to just walking away from everything related to US tax – my input here, on Facebook, with our elected representatives. So what do I do instead? Offer myself as a witness in a lawsuit related to it. I surprise myself sometimes.
I guess I got sick and tired of waiting for others to do what I knew I could do and just did it. I’m glad I did, because it’s actually kind of liberating. I hope many others will too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-35626621
Text book FATCA victim, Boris Johnson, has decided to campaign for the ‘leave the EU’ vote in the UK.
Perhaps Boris would consider using the same vigour against FATCA?
@Don
I wrote him long ago at the time he stated he was not going to pay taxes to the US. He didn’t answer me but apparently answered the USG.
@Canadian Ginny – FATCA continues to be the issue politicians want to be silent about leaving it up to the courts.
That’s why if an EU group can be formed, the lessons learnt from the IBS Canada experience need to be taken on board.
IMO opinion I believe an EU court may be sympathic to a challenge, but bigger amounts of money need to be raised so a proper lobbying effort can start.
For me this is Boston Tea Party 2 and needs to be treated as such.
The amount of money that needs to be raised needs to be in excess of the successful Canadian effort because a test case against a FFI who has changed their T&Cs to waive your data protection rights needs to be considered.
It seems to be a three pronged process, sue the Government for the IGA, sue a bank for a test case, and mount a lobbyist campaign to sway MPs. Yes all this will be fighting the wall of FFI money not to mention the Government’s unlimited funds.
Also the Government causing harm by putting resident citizens in harms way for the $2350 renunciation fee something needs to be done about that. The UK Government should compensate dual citizens who wish to leave the US tax system as a bare minimum.
It annoys me that politicians get together at G20 conferences, or Davos, with the wine flowing, and decide to negatively impact so many people’s rights without a thought for the benefit of the USG.
For me the main question to be answered is does a non-EU Government have the right to demand tax reporting for the purposes to tax a resident EU citizen who has no finance links with the US (or any other non-EU Government) for that matter? This question must be answered.
In the EU there must be at least 1 million affected citizens (probably many more).
I totally agree with you. While I don’t know what the costs would be, one of my long term hopes is to see an EU, or Australian /NZ/UK suit launched. Or pick a country. I would support such efforts.
While our laws and constitutions differ as do perhaps the type of IGAs countries have entered into, what we have in common is to stop the damage being done to tainted citizens and residents of other countries being held hostages in their own lands. Few can live their normal lives this way.
I hope that our law suit is that template. When we read the life stories of how people in other nations are being so drastically affected, there seems to be no other viable solution to me. What has to be done, since countries aquiesced in protecting their Banks from the long claw of the USG, is that individuals will, as have here in Canada, have to step up within the parameters of their laws and fight this.
Gwen and I are not unique. There will be a Ginny and Gwen in any country to be found. Just look for the helpers.
In many ways, we are somewhat safer in Canada than our colleagues overseas. Far more bank accounts are being closed for Americans abroad etc, as we read each day. To me, this is a world wide rapidly spreading Plague the likes of which have never been experienced. I think of it as the Green Plague: the USA wants your money, all of it now.
It comes down to International and Public law concepts, as you stated. The question to be answered is as you stated: does a non-EU Government have the right to demand tax reporting for the purposes to tax a resident EU citizen who has no finance links with the US (or any other non-EU Government) for that matter?
Which reminds me, does anyone know how the law suit in Israel is faring?
Ordinarily this would be under Media Articles, but when the title is, GOVERNMENT SEEKS FEEDBACK I gotta put it here. Take note new Zealanders.
Govt seeks feedback on NZ implementation of OECD, G20 push to ‘end banking secrecy as we have known it’
http://www.interest.co.nz/business/80205/govt-seeks-feedback-nz-implementation-oecd-g20-push-end-banking-secrecy-we-have-known
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-johnson-now-favourite-succeed-7414556
,
American Taxpayer Boris Johnson leads the polls to Cameron’s EU referendum failure – we’ll see how this pans out.
What is this about Warren Buffet in today’s sub-headline text? If it’s a joke, I don’t get it. Perhaps others do…
Also, the “amout owing” headline figure not changed since Feb 19 at 1:03 pm – despite multiple acknowledged donations. Was each of these donations for $0?
KIngOfTheRoad,
The “donation” from Warren Buffet was an email scam made by someone who sent an email to our ADCS site. To avoid confusion I have deleted the text.
Since Friday we have received about $300 in donations. I was going to wait to update until the mail comes in, in about hour or so, but have updated this amount now.
… and no donations in today’s mail.
@Cancivlib Week 3:
https://twitter.com/JCDoubleTaxed/status/702084373172977664
@FuriousAC
Alberta has it’s own bank and Ontario used to until Mike Harris. I am not sure Gallati’s lawsuit is all that significant. The last time I looked there were still people homeless in Alberta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATB_Financial
Also Alberta ATB lost a lot of money in bad loans to the construction of the West Edmonton Mall.
New Donation just made… I hope others join me in helping those who are doing so much to help us. Thank you again Mr Kish, G+G, etc.
I’ll be able to make another (too-small) donation in a few days, 2nd Class Cdn and Stephen Kish.
One other thing that has not been discussed here is the head of Canada’s civil service Jeanice Charette was FIRED by Justin Trudeau in early January. While it has not gotten much press it is largely believed this was a political decision by Trudeau as felt the upper echelons of Canada’s civil service were too close to Stephen Harper.
I’ve been graphing the post-due-date drive to get the final $30K to send to the legal team. The slope of that graph indicates it will be mid to late March before the zero owed point is reached. We sure could use another April 2015 miracle … or something close. That miracle was when an amount close to what we need right now came in ALL IN ONE DAY! I’m sure Stephen Kish wants to end his daily trips to the post office and his daily recordings of paypal receipts, just as much as I want to put my graph away in the TOUT FINI file. Here’s hoping for a February 2016 miracle.