WITNESS SEARCH UPDATE FOR CANADIAN FATCA IGA LAWSUIT:
WE STILL SEEK MORE CANADIAN WITNESSES:
Have you experienced marital stress or breakup, or medical or psychiatric illness because Canada turned you and your family over to a foreign country — or because you were afraid and entered into IRS compliance and suffered harm, or because you are in “hiding” and can’t afford to be IRS compliant or to renounce? Be a witness.
No single witness will be “perfect” from a litigation point of view. We will be seeking more witnesses (almost) right up to the time of submission of court documents. Your specific situation, that we cannot predict, might have unique characteristics that would be helpful in the lawsuit.
If you cannot be a witness, please tell a friend who you think might be interested.
— If you are interested in becoming a witness You will describe your harm in a written affidavit which will be made public and you can contact me at stephen.kish.chair@adcs-adsc.ca See our website at www.adcs-adsc-ca
FOR THOSE CANADIANS WHO ALREADY VOLUNTEERED: Unless you have already been informed by me or by our legal team that you will not be a witness, there is still the possibility — or (for some) likelihood — that you will be asked to be a witness. I’m sorry but I cannot estimate the time it will take for our legal team to get back to you with their decision. This is because they need to “mesh” the characteristics of all of the necessary witnesses and testimonies with the actual detailed submission that contains the entirety of their evidence, which are all still evolving. Please be patient in our getting back to you with a decision. Thank you for your help.
Canadians, please keep the focus on what we need to force change. Here is part of today’s post:
April 5, 2016 UPDATE: WE NEED MORE WITNESSES IN OUR CANADIAN FATCA IGA LAWSUIT:
IRS non-compliant, no meaningful history with U.S., and with reportable account >U.S.$ 50,000
This morning’s Canada’s Globe teaches: “…But there is little evidence that changed conditions prompted all these Liberal reversals. Instead, they evince somewhat of a cavalier attitude, suggesting that now they’ve won, they need not worry about the pledges they made in order to win…”
Surely, all Canadians must now have figured out that all your emails, letters, and meetings with Liberal politicians will never change the mind of Mr. Justin Trudeau. Help us sue these arrogant politicians.
Be a witness or help me find Canadians who are willing to step up to that plate. Not one NEVER IRS COMPLIANT U.S. tainted-without-consent Canadian with a FATCA reportable account (see below for criteria)? Not even one Canadian? No?
@BB “If I could clone myself to be two witnesses I would.”
That wouldn’t help. We need people who are DIFFERENT from you. People who are NON-COMPLIANT. People who are breaking US law. You are not doing anything ‘wrong’. You don’t risk penalties for having your account data sent to the USA because you have already sent it yourself.
The problem is that people do not want to hurt themselves. Even our plaintiffs do not have 50K in reportable accounts, and are thus safe, relatively speaking (i.e. USA won’t find out what they have in the bank and won’t be able to assess penalties – the first step towards actual confiscation). We can rant and rave all day about the fact that we don’t have people with severe enough potential harms (I.E A REPORTABLE ACCOUNT AS THIS IS THE KEY THING THAT CONNECTS A US PERSON TO OBVIOUS HARM), but what do we expect?
I have an idea. How about we find 50K and put it in an account in Gwen or Ginny’s name.
@BB, easy to say when you are not facing the harms.
@BB, also its not just YOURSELF you affect when you set yourself up for harm as a NON-COMPLIANT person, it is your spouse, your immediate family. Until you are really in that situation, you do not know what you would do.
BB, please don’t put words in my mouth.
That is nice. I get put into moderation. For what? My last comment was innocuous.
BB, my knickers are in a knot because I am frustrated, scared and upset like everyone else who is NON-COMPLIANT.
“Had I decided to not comply, I would probably determine that being non-compliant witness would be the right thing to do.”
You complied because you thought it was the right thing to do, as you have written at Brock in the past on more than one occasion (pre lawsuit). Now you have changed your mind and think the right thing to do would be to be a non-compliant witness. That is cool. But is a complete 180 from your prior position.
One cannot BOTH think that complying with extraterritorial US law, AND being a non-compliant witness in a Canadian lawsuit challenging US extraterritorial law are the ‘right things’ to do.
And on that note, before I get thrown into moderation again by moderators who prefer BB over WK, I will disappear.
WhiteKat, it’s not actually the US law that I (and my Canadian born kids) are concerned about breaking. I could care less about that. It’s the Canadian laws that I (we) have broken in order to be able to function in Canada. We have all lied (which will turn into perjury under oath) about our status as US persons for tax purposes as regards TFSAs, Canadian mutual funds, and a whole host of other things that have not happened yet but will inevitably come to pass, such as the sale of a principal residence. Truth be told, I don’t care about telling a lie to my FI, and, frankly, I don’t think they care either. I have been with these people for many decades and even though they do in fact know, they don’t want to know. But a court of law is a different forum. There is no doubt in my mind that if we were all to out ourselves, publicly and under oath, our conveniently negligent Canadian FIs would be forced to act. It’s not the letter from the IRS that I fear, it’s the shutting down of my Canadian accounts that is the real danger to me. And that is why the issue of confidentiality of the Court proceedings is so crucial to me. I know that poor Stephen has been hounded by this ad nauseum, but just because the issue is seemingly unresolvable doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue. The lack of confidentiality is a huge issue for me, my kids, and anyone else with a lifetime’s worth of assets in Canada. How do we get around this?
@WhiteKat
You have not been placed in moderation. Askimet had your comment awaiting a spam check. We have no control over this. I have printscreened it so I can show you.Not sure I can make it show here. Would you like me to email the whole thing to you if I cannot get it to show on a comment on this thread?
PM, thanks…bad timing combined with prior ‘in moderation’ messages got me thinking WK was being a bad girl again…lol.
@WhiteKat
not a problem. let me send it to you anyways. I want you to be sure.
The link is too small……
Would mods please take my comments down, including my offer to clone myself. They don’t reflect well on the effort to find witnesses. My apologies.
@Canadian Ginny
Thank you for explaining why you have your doubts as to whether a witness–who comes forward initially to provide an affidavit–would then be called for examination or eventually at trial. Hopefully that helps put a few potential witnesses’ minds at ease.
Thanks, Dash. Explaining procedures is the least I can do here. Naturally, if one hasn’t been through it, it’s hard to imagine. Really not like portrayed on tv law drama shows, fun though they may be to watch.
As an aside, a lot of Americans have asked if I wore a wig in court. We do wear robes and white shirts and tabs, but no wigs. Though on many a bad hair day, I wouldn’t have minded.
Lol, Ginny. I know those robes intimately – years ago back when I used to do seamstress work I sewed dozens of them for a local designer. I hadn’t thought about that for a long time.
I see that after one day, my notice on Kijiji Ottawa has had all of 10 views. This is a process that will only work in the aggregate: a bunch of notices in many cities, renewed from time to time.
On the question of border babies…There was a 25 day doctor’s strike in Ontario in 1986. For the duration of the strike most Windsor babies were born in Detroit. That is likely a goodly number of individuals who are now age 40.
We did a kijiji ad for the Lethbridge area which should be up in a couple of hours. We titled it, “FATCA: If this has harmed you, there’s a way to help fight it.”
NorthernShrike and EmBee,
Thanks for the Kijiji’s. If our ads result in only a single good witness, that will be a success. My St. Croix Courier ad was apparently posted today and will be posted also on Friday.
Northern,
Ginny was written up in the Windsor Star newspaper — maybe it would do a freebie ad or another article in which witnesses are mentioned….
The article ended with: “Not only do we hope she wins, we hope others support her in the cause.”
http://windsorstar.com/opinion/the-stars-view-ginny-hillis-is-a-bureaucracy-fighting-hero
@ Stephen Kish
That’s the best article I’ve read all week. I hope someone can slip in the link to ADCS in the comment section. My old sign-in doesn’t work. Maybe only FB users can get in now.
Apologies for bad arithmetic! The doctors’ strike was 30 years ago, not 40. The Canadian Museum of History has an online exhibit:
http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/hist/medicare/medic-7h11e.shtml
Here’s an idea, either for the Windsor Star or a community paper in Windsor: an article remembering the strike, particularly by someone who was living in Ontario at the time (I was not). Towards the end, one could describe the consequences for anyone born in Detroit. Community papers in particular may welcome free lance articles, especially if they don’t have to pay for them!
The ad for kijiji Calgary that I put up yesterday now has a count of 51 visits. How many of those might be other Brockers or just me checking is unknown. I have not gotten any email queries, but at least it may give a bit more awareness. Thanks, LM.
Thanks everyone on the Kijiji ads – I might try another letter to the editor in some of my local newspapers. Maybe at the same time mentioning my MP’s party’s flip-flops on FATCA.