See below March 9, 2016 response of new Liberal Canadian Government to January 21, 2016 FATCA questions raised by NDP Revenue Critic Mr. Pierre-Luc Dusseault (Sherbrooke).
Response comes from Canada Revenue Agency, Minister of National Revenue (who we are suing), Finance Canada, Stephane Dion, and Attorney General (who we are also suing).
SEE THE LINK. The text is in both english and french.
Bottom line: 1) We are still second class — our lawsuit continues; and 2) WE NEED MORE WITNESSES.
— I am amazed that the Prime Minister of Canada allowed this statement to be included in the response, asking Canadians to recognize the public interest of the United States at the expense of the sovereignty of our country:
“…we must resign ourselves to the fact that we are faced with a requirement from the United States and that the requirement corresponds to the public interest of the United States, meaning the integrity of their tax regime.”
— The OPC privacy review was passed on to CRA in January 2016 AFTER the September 2015 turnover of your bank records. In other words, Canada does the privacy assessment AFTER the turnover of private confidential data. See below statement:
“Part (aa): The CRA consulted with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC). A privacy impact assessment (PIA), which is a policy process for identifying, assessing, and mitigating privacy risks, was completed and submitted to the OPC for review on August 27, 2015. The CRA received the OPC’s recommendations on January 4, 2016 [AFTER THE TURNOVER]. The recommendations do not prevent the CRA from exchanging the required information. A response to the OPC’s recommendations is being prepared.”
Mr. Dusseault is now considering his next step. If you have follow-up questions you would like him to ask Mr. Trudeau (e.g., “…But Mr. Trudeau, what about that pre-election statement you made that Canada’s FATCA IGA legislation is insufficient to protect Canadians? What changed your mind?”) you can email him at Pierre-Luc.Dusseault@parl.gc.ca
United States Secretary of State John Kerry offers this accurate assessment of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “It’s clear that the Prime Minister has begun to make his mark on Canada’s future.”
USCitizenAbroad comments on Government response:
“The disappointment is understandable. That said, the Trudeau Government is behaving exactly as expected. The truth is the the previous Conservative Government and various opposition MPs (at least in the initial stages) did more to oppose FATCA (think Flaherty, think Murry Rankin, think Scott Brison, think Elizabeth May and others) than the Trudeau Government will ever do.
In fact, this is much worse. Not only is Mr. Trudeau NOT protecting Canadian citizens, but what he is actually doing is socializing with the Obama Government. He is being friendly to the biggest bully on the block.
Would this be an appropriate analogy to describes Mr. Trudeau’s behavior? An intruder breaks into the family home one night and attacks your teenaged daughter. Instead of protecting the daughter, the father is having a beer with the intruder. That’s Justin!!
At least the previous Prime Minister did not spend his time trying to ingratiate himself to the United States.
But, what is clear is the following …
The attitude of the Trudeau Government is that it its perfectly okay for the United States to use the IGA to claim ANY Canadian citizen that it wants, at ANY time, as the property of the United States of America. That’s the attitude of the Trudeau Government. Now, this has a historical analogy to the “slave trade” where European powers would go to other nations and say “I’ll take this one and I’ll take that one”. The time has come to stop the politically correct BS and tell it like it is.
It’s simple. U.S. citizenship is nothing but a modern day form of slavery. That’s all it is. The U.S. claims a property interest in all its citizens – their only purpose is to serve the Homeland in some way or another. Some on this blog call it “taxation based citizenship”. That’s fine, but how about “slave based citizenship”….”
$3,250.00 USD
@Patricia Moon
I think we can assume that any quotes from Chantal Bernier are selected because they appear to support the Government’s line. Shortly after the introductory remarks by CB, there is the following, very interesting interchange between Murray Rankin and Bernier:
Murray Rankin
Now I have a question for Madam Bernier, from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. We had testimony from Mr. Ernewein, of the Department of Finance, who said, “Our understanding is that in relation to Canadian law, the Privacy Act and its various provisions are subject to other laws of Parliament.” We’re led to believe that this agreement could supersede the Privacy Act. Is that your opinion as well?
Chantal Bernier
The Privacy Act has been declared to be quasi-constitutional by the courts. He was perhaps referring to section 8 of the Privacy Act; that section does mention “subject” to other laws. However, in general, the Privacy Act has quasi-constitutional status.
Murray Rankin
Therefore, what that means, in lay terms, is that if the intergovernmental agreement or the provisions of Bill C-31 are in conflict with the Privacy Act, the Privacy Act would prevail
Chantal Bernier
That would be my view, certainly.
You will note that the response from the Government is organised such that questions answered by Canada Revenue Agency come first, and questions answered by Revenue Canada follow. Part (aa) of the questions was answered separately by each agency.
The CRA response to Part (aa) indicates that they submitted a privacy impact assessment (PIA) to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and that the OPC responded with recommendations. Neither of these have been published, but they should be available under the Access to Information Act. I have applied for access under the AIA, but it has been a long time. I can do it and turn the info over to ADCS, but it might be simpler for ADCS to do it themselves. Once acquired, it could of course be digitized and shared. ADCS?
Done and cc’d my MP, LM.
Response received:
Is that to represent the renunciaton / relinquishment fee for our US-deemed US citizenship, WhiteKat (which is for the moment US$2,350)? That fee sounds reasonable — a done deal I’d come up with for my son (and likely other families for their entrapped family members) to reimburse the Canadian government, with no other strings attached.
Free the US slaves abroad.
Valuing the cost of slaves from: https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php
OR, the reason for FBAR / FINCEN114:
@Calgary411
Very interesting article which has provided food for thought.
In my previous post I had focused on the value to Canada of not having U.S. citizens living in the country as “Trojan Horse Soldiers” – being used – as Adam Smith might say, to plunder “The Wealth of OTHER Nations”. It is in Canada’s interest to buy back those citizens which the U.S. claims to be its own.
Here is the reason.
Under U.S. law both corporations and humans are considered to be U.S. people. It has clear that ALL U.S. persons travel the world at an “IRS Discount”. In other words, the extra-territorial reach of the USA into other nations, makes ALL U.S. persons live and work at a competitive disadvantage relative to the citizens of other nations.
It’s interesting that when a U.S. corporation does an “Inversion” and ceases to be a U.S. person, the value of that corporation immediately increases. In other words, for a U.S. corporation to invert, is to immediately increase the value of the corporation.
The same principle would work for humans who are U.S. citizens. It is obvious that U.S. citizens, because they are burdened by the U.S. rules, have fewer opportunities than citizens of any other nation. Were Canada to do a buyout of any Canadian citizens that the U.S. claimed as its own, those Canadian citizens would cease to be U.S. citizens after the buyout. Think of it, by a cash transfer, the IRS discount associated with those Canadians would immediately vanish.
Example: Let’s say that a U.S. citizen were subject to an IRS discount of 30% of its true value. The buyout would create an immediate return – to the original 100 value – because the individual would no longer have that IRS discount.
Let’s consider the following two people:
Type A person (no U.S. citizenship) = value $100
Type B person (U.S. citizenship and subject to 30% discount) = $70 value.
After the buyout, the value of the Type B person would increase to $100.
This is a percentage increase of 30/70 = a percentage increase of 43%. This is obviously a tremendous rate of return. Incredibly this rate of return is the result ending slavery!
Why not!
I agree with USCitizenAbroad. It is time to stop being politically correct and call this noose around our necks what it is – modern-day slavery. I suspect people are uncomfortable with this because they think:
1) we are not physically tortured or completely limited therefore, it cannot be true.
2) most Americans only understand slavery in terms of America’s historical experience (which is not at all accurate) and which automatically includes the issue of race; an uncomfortable subject which would not seemingly apply. (except that there is effectively nothing different between nationalism and racism, both are rooted in hatred)
3) We are not in the same situation as people in third-world countries who are more physically/financially oppressed than we are therefore we cannot claim to be mistreated.
NONE of those things erase the fact that clearly, the only thing we represent to the US is money. So how is this “crack-down” anything less than the US laying claim to what it owns?
I like Calgary411’s link; have never seen anything quite like it. But on an extremely simply level, who can argue with the following 3 items from it that support this idea:
1) Some assets have value because of the potential income they can generate.
We are assets to the US only in terms of what income we will produce and which they can tax. Notice the US does not consider our function as informal ambassadors to have any value whatsoever. Even though many of us saw it quite clearly and spent years of effort trying to show the US was more than what it seemed. How devastating to find out first-hand for ourselves, we were nothing more than fools. Brainwashed by the exceptionalism we were indoctrinated with from day one.
2) ….the value of a slave is the value of the expected output or services the slave can generate minus the costs of maintaining that person (i.e., food, clothing, shelter, etc.) over his or her lifetime.
In this, the US completely rakes in the benefit as we are abroad and cost them nothing. Yet they can count on many years of earned income, unearned income, etc from those “US Persons” abroad. And for anyone who thinks we owe them our lives just because we benefited when we grew up there, they benefited from us while we were there, being responsible, law-abiding citizens who contributed to society. It does not mean we owe them for our entire lives.
3) For a female slave, an additional thing to consider would be the value of the children she might bear.
The US plays it’s hand early on this one; even requiring children to file their own FBARs. Children born abroad constitute NO cost to the US yet represent nothing more than $$$$ for the US to tap in to.
I wrote a post a while back which included a section comparing which human rights were affected/denied to the slaves; there were an uncanny number which had modern day equivalents. I cannot understand how anyone could defend a position that we represent anything more to the US than as beings to tax. How is that NOT SLAVERY?
In retrospect, I should have equated FATCA IGA with unreasonable searches as there is nothing to suggest that having a legitimate foreign account is automatically suspect. Yet the US has even managed to get other governments to agree to do this for them. And we can now add the passport revocation as a further impediment to freedom of movement. I also should have made the point that progress regarding certain rights obviously has been made. What is interesting is that some of the very same rights are still being denied, but to a different group of people. What about that? Why is that not slavery?
On another level, one undeniable truth since all this started: the number one shared-state of all expats is FEAR.. Does a free person primarily operate with regard to their government out of FEAR?
@NorthernShrike
Exactly. I can still hear Ms. Bernier saying those words……”That would be my view, certainly.” How unfortunate they lack real power. I can still hear Murray Rankin and Nathan Cullen as well…….such powerful arguments that were simply mowed down since the CONS were in power….
I can also remember now, some unclarity with regard to not only checking/responding to concerns from the Privacy Commissioner, but the Justice Department as well…….
@Patricia Moon…………for a long time I have felt the language and tone nneded to change and become in your face.
Remember my mantra that we must sto[p using the tetrm dual nationality and refer to it as Clingingt Nationality.
I pray that Ginny would be cross examined and state that she has Clinging Nationality!!! That would then cause the Judge to ask whats that? There is actually published material in academia using those words.
We must refer this as nothing more than Racism.
As I wrote earlier today, we must refer to the IGA as being the tool that strips away your Canadian Citizenship. This is a great one as Trudeau is “protecting citizenship rights of terrorists.”
And yes…this is Economic Slavery. It is so wrong that a child carries the sin of the parent.
Patricia……hopefully more media releases will now use the inciting rhetoric which I have provided an example of.
This essay has Stephen using the term Second Class Citizen…..sorry that is playing nice with someone who has shown up to fight you with a switch blade.
If Ginny goes to BMO in Windsor to open an account showing her Canadian Passport, stating she is a Canadian Citizen will she be treated to Bob who was born in either London, Ontario or London, England? She will be STRIPPED of her Canadian Citizenship and treated like an American!
The IGA is simply a nice word for a STRIP SEARCH without a warrent or probable cause.
Remember these people will dress things up nice becuase they are ashamed of what they are doing and do not want to get into the mud. George4 says, bring them into the mud and let them get their nice suits and shoes dirty in the muck of life.
As a young lad I would nip off to the corner store and buy issues of Playboy. Every so often store clerk would dress this young teen down by proclaiming I was buying smut. George would proclaim its not smut, its Art and inn fact the articles were well written and broad in scope. I said those things to keep my ego nice and clean, I did not buy and look at smut!!!
Trudeau needs to be brought into the mud pit….the media will help….
Another part of this slavery issue is enforced citizenship by descent. A child deemed citizen by the U.S. Is not allowed to renounce citizenship until he/she is an adult but a child living in the U.S. for 3 years after the age of 14 and then leaves the U.S. is able to pass on U.S. Citizenship even their presence in the U.S. is not a personal choice. The slave child passes on slavery as a child but cannot renounce slavery as a child. They get us both ways.
@George I prefer U.S. CONTAMINATED Canadian. That’s what I am…contaminated .
Thank you USCA and Tricia. I remember your earlier powerful post, Tricia. The analogies you highlight in your comment above are telling — this IS indeed US slavery and Canada and other countries are enablers at a cost, in their hypocrisy, to their own economies.
@Calgary, yes I was momentarily dyslexic. I meant $2,350 USD per US person head, not $3,250.
I love the sound of $2350
For George
“People, American Citizens were placed in internment camps in WW2 because of family origin. This is no different.”
CANADIAN citizens were placed in internment camps in WW2 because of family origin.
Peruvian citizens were renditioned to the US and placed in US internment camps in WW2 because of family origin. Were some renditioned to Canada for the same purpose, I don’t know. By the way, Peruvian citizens are 25% human. When the US paid US$20,000 to each human that they had interned, the US paid US$5,000 to each Peruvian that they had interned.
I vote for Canada. The CANADIAN government should be blamed for repeating what it did in WW2.
“However, we must resign ourselves to the fact that we are faced with a requirement from the United States and that the requirement corresponds to the public interest of the United States, meaning the integrity of their tax regime.”
Hell no.
The integrity of the US’s TAX regime is the IRS employing identity thieves, title 26 of US Code.
The integrity of the US’s FBAR regime is the repudiation of its 4th and 5th amendments, title 31 of US Code.
‘I’ve lived in the USA for 29 years and never once have I been asked “are you now or have you ever been a Canadian person?”’
29 years ago Form 1116 asked what your citizenship was, in addition to your residence. That question posed human rights problems, at a time when the US used to pay lip service to human rights. The US eventually deleted that question from Form 1116.
These US banks don’t need to ask what your citizenship is unless you’re Eritrean. They only need to know your country of Residence. Guess why.
In 1812, after Her Majesty’s Navy forcibly conscripted American citizens of British descent on the high seas, the United States went to war.
In 2016, when the United States government forcibly conscripted Canadian citizens of American descent, reaching across the 49th Parallel into Canada to loot its citizens wealth, Prime Minister Trudeau went to Washington, for tea and cake.
“People, American Citizens were placed in internment camps in WW2 because of family origin. This is no different.”
CANADIAN citizens were placed in internment camps in WW2 because of family origin.
Peruvian citizens were renditioned to the US and placed in US internment camps in WW2 because of family origin. Were some renditioned to Canada for the same purpose, I don’t know. By the way, Peruvian citizens are 25% human. When the US paid US$20,000 to each human that they had interned, the US paid US$5,000 to each Peruvian that they had interned.
I vote for Canada. The CANADIAN government should be blamed for repeating what it did in WW2.
I know this too intimately well, Norman Diamond. Since my family was interned during WW2. My uncle nearly died of pneumonia in Slocan. To this day, I still do not understand how people can equate the internment of Japanese-Canadians/Americans to the captivity of those soldiers in Hong Kong and say that we deserved it because we were of the same skin color. To this day, I can only suspect that we were not considered Canadians or Americans; just as Japs.
But what gets me is how many Japanese-Canadians and Japanese Americans sing the praises of Barack Obama and Stephen Harper who did, and Justin Trudeau who currently is doing the exact same thing; stigmatizing and creating second class citizens. All three of them are engaging in financial warfare and causing great harm.
in general, the Privacy Act has quasi-constitutional status
WTH do they mean by “quasi-constitutional”? Either a law follows the Canada’s Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982 or it doesn’t. And frankly, the Privacy Act appears to be black and white unless they rewrote the Privacy law to shove the IGA through.