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.
@ Bubblebustin: “Is it worthwhile trying to talk with the Privacy Commissioner? I guess we won’t know until we try!”
IMO, this may need to be done face to face, not via a letter or email which can just be chucked aside. Are there any Ottawa-area Brockers who might take this on?
@ Pacifica777 – maybe she has been, but she or her staffers have been blowing off the e-mails?”
I won’t rule it out but from what I know of her (and what my friends have said), I think she is a fairly straight arrow. But then I have not heard back from her yet…… sigh…..
@ US_Foreign_Person – yes, you are right that we are not a “visible” group – – no one has yet required that we sew a US flag on our outer garments so all can identify us. But my MP is an intelligent late 40ish woman trained as/worked as a lawyer and then as a chaplain and community organizer, and thus has had a wide range of acquaintances. Probably she has just never thought to ask or has let this unnecessary bit information slip through the grey-matter cracks. Maybe now that this issue has been pointed out, such information might not slip so easily into oblivion. But I realize that probably the majority of politicians are tuned out of anything that is not immediately on their agenda – – my MP may get there over time (sigh).
@pacifica777 says
“I think that’s one of the problems – we’re kind of invisible. (On the other hand, this “invisibility” can be a positive thing when dealing with banks.)”
Yeah, thankfully there’s no US flag tattooed on our foreheads. This witch hunt will be mostly a data mining operation, and the net will be nabbing much more than a few so-called “US persons for tax purposes”.
@US_Foreign_Person says
“How about all them canadian babies that were born across the border in the US because Canada could not provide them with medical services?”
Yeah, all those people should sue the Canadian government for subjecting them to the harms of US citizenship against their will, oh right we’re already sort of doing that.
@MuzzledNoMore
“Well, gosh, how is it that all of us here, who have never sat in the halls of power in any capacity, have had the opportunity, for the past many years, to study this legislation in the greatest of detail? The Minister of National Revenue fell flat on her face IMHO.”
Well, if our human rights friendly PM can justify on camera with a straight face that it was a great idea to sell Canadian weapons to one of the worse human rights abusers in the world, what else can you expect from his minions?
“Quick question regarding renunciations. It says that you have to hand in your USA documents, like passport and social security card.”
Where does it say that?
My social security number was abused (by the IRS), the Social Security Administration’s letter agreed I was eligible for a replacement SSN, correspondence continued occasionally with no result, and 16 years later the SSA reneged on their letter and rejected my application for a replacement SSN. Finally the IRS issued me an ITIN, after several rejections. Subsequently my abused SSN was abused again (by the IRS and US DOJ).
Please, where is “it” so I can hand in my social security card?
“I can say that we now know that the Revenue Minister needs to be reassigned to some Social Worker type portfolio (if such exists) because she is out of her depth in Revenue.”
A US Tax Court judge explained to me the reason why it’s illegal to write and sign an honest declaration under penalty of perjury, the reason why the preprinted jurat has to be signed regardless of whether it’s true or not, is that IRS employees are poorly trained.
So now we know, one of those poorly trained IRS employees is working as Canada’s MNR.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36057947
Boris is an idiot. It’s OK for the Yanks to come in and make him a second class citizen in the UK, but it’s not OK to be part of the EU. The EU has affected Boris’ less than FATCA. Did he ever pay his American CGT or renounce?
The way Boris speaks you’d think he has a zero relationship with the US. Why don’t reporters from the Remain campaign press Boris on this point?
@Norman Diamond: Many persons have had their Social Security numbers made public and still cannot get a new one. See my website which is linked from this post. I usually link a different website but not this time.
Normand Diamond,
It says in the instruction email you are sent when booking a renunciation appointment. “Must bring all U.S documentation, passport, social security card, nexus if you have one”.
Bubblebustin:
At the Nexus office where there were American and Canadian border guards working together, I was interviewed by an American border guard who had both of my passports, he knew I was American. He asked me, “what country do you want this put under”? I told him I didn’t know and it didn’t matter to me. He then said, “we will put it under your Canadian one”. We both kind of shrugged our shoulders and that was it. I don’t think I should lose my nexus card just because I renounce.
@Phil
Well that makes me angry (as if I need another reason) because we were told we have no choice but to be registered under the US – and we live in Canada!
@Phil,
It says “bring” in that excerpt. They ask you to bring several documents to your renunciation, but so far have been giving back all except US passport.
I don’t know anything about nexus, but I did a scan and found this in the “Consulate Report Directory,(page 81) which Mark posted in 2014. Don’t know if it’s relevant, though, as you have a Canadian nexus.
@Bubblebustin,
That would make me angry too — such arrogance!
I just posted this on Maple Sandbox re: the April 14th meeting featuring our sadly lacking Revenue Minister and Privacy Commissioner …
There seems to be some kind of block on the video for the ETHI meeting. It should be available by now (other televised meetings are) but if it’s archived someplace other than here …
http://parlvu.parl.gc.ca/XRender/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20160414/-1/24805?useragent=Mozilla/5.0%20%28Macintosh;%20Intel%20Mac%20OS%20X%2010.6;%20rv:45.0%29%20Gecko/20100101%20Firefox/45.0
… then I can’t find it. I sent an e-mail off to ParlVu to ask them what’s up but I won’t get a reply until Monday. I missed about 30 to 40 percent of the live coverage because it was buffering so much. What I did see made me really not want to see the whole thing but it would be good to have available anyway. We need to be able to extract clips to demonstrate the Revenue Mininister’s [fill in the blank — if I do it won’t be polite].
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie (and the acronyms play havoc) …
IRS — One thing to rule them all
FATCA — One thing to find them
FinCEN — One thing to bring them all
CBT — And in the darkness bind them
U.S.A. may see economic sanctions from Saudi Arabia.
Saudis warn of economic reprisals if Congress passes 9/11 bill
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/16/politics/saudi-arabia-government-9-11-congress-bill/
@EmBee, it appears all of the televised playback files for the 14th are not yet available, but all of the audio-only are available.
FWIW
@ The Mom
We’ll see what comes up on Monday. Maybe the video archivist is on sick leave or something. Typically these videos are available by the next day.
@MuzzledNoMore
I don’t know this for a fact but I believe it is possible that our legal team already has plenty of witnesses whose bank accounts are valued below the $50,000 threshold. If I’m not mistaken Mr. Arvay is simply looking to expand the witness list to include people with higher value accounts and, therefore, a different set of harms.
I hope–but am not 100% confident–that you are right on this. If Arvay DOES still need witnesses in other categories (ie not the ones with big bank accounts) I fear that the prominent request for >$50k accounts will be a big turnoff to prospective witnesses in other categories. The hunger for >$50k witnesses has grown increasingly strong in the daily changes to the message at the top of this post in recent days. I also hope–but again am not 100% confident–that these $50k witnesses are not essential to the case–that there are already sufficient witnesses of more modest means to more than make the case and these >$50k witnesses would merely be icing on the cake of an already very strong case.
@Mr. A.
I too am concerned about why the hunger for more and more witnesses–especially in the >$50k category–has become more and more ravenous. If the Charter is to mean anything even a single strong witness should make for a strong case. I actually do think it is important to show harm but there are many ways of showing harm. It shouldn’t be necessary to have a $50k bank account on the verge of being seized before you’ve been harmed.
For example, Rosa Parks–who has been quoted in the top message in recent days–showed that being forced into a lower quality bus seat due to her skin color was a significant harm. She didn’t have to show monetary damages above some threshold before the harm was considered significant.
Elizabeth Thompson reports on the sorry state of the protection of privacy for Canadians (not to mention, now, the privacy of those defined as *US citizens who happen to abide in Canada*?)…
iPolitics, Elizabeth Thompson, April 17, 2016: Reporting of government privacy breaches varies widely
I want to thank Bubblebustin for her kind support yesterday when I was at a real low. Sometimes there is no where else to go when I desperately need to release my overwhelming anger and sense of unworthiness and loss. It seems no one else can really understand.
My feelings yesterday bubbled up after receiving a document from the university that might help me to become “FREE.” A small statement at the end written by the head of the department made me realize the real impact of all this on me and was a real blow. He said “(She) has acted as our Chief Resident this past academic year. She has received above-average evaluations with the areas of inter-relationships, sense of responsibility, and continuing care being highlighted. She is an open, friendly and enthusiastic individual.”
I realized I no longer feel like that person. The most important impact on me of FATCA is not about money. It is about the value of me as a person and as a citizen. It is about the social value of people and communities, about justice, about so much more than money and it leaves me bereft sometimes. That’s why I am so angry at what Canada has done. I expected better of Canada. The United States…well that’s a different story.
The only way for me to try to control this loss is to fight and sometimes get angry…very, very angry and, of course, anger can be so very destructive.
The IBS community helps me keep some perspective in this and for that I am truly grateful. I hope and pray that our lawsuit is successful.
Cheryl,
Bubblebustin has restored my sense of self-respect many a time in her special way – as have others here at Brock. So, thanks for all Brock is and does here when there is no one else who really understands. So I echo …
On the search for more witness:
Stephen and others leading ADCS have rightly warned potential witnesses that they may expose them to unknown perils, and that they can expect only vengeance, certainly from the US.
I have no quarrel with that. I think that anyone choosing to be a witness should be prepared for the worse. That being said, let me make a couple of observations.
A witness in this case gives up his or her anonymity. You can expect your name to be known to both Canadian and US governments. With respect to the latter, what can they do? Well, in the first place they are probably not going to know where your assets are located (unless you reveal this, and I don’t know why you would need to do so.) If they did know where they were, or if they went on a fishing expedition across the range of Canadian financial institutions, the banks and insurance companies could not give them any information. Financial institutions are still bound by Canadian privacy legislation. The FATCA IGA does not suspend this legislation; it is a specific mechanism operating strictly through CRA.
Suppose you have a reportable account, and the US government finds you in the CRA data handover. You can expect the worst from the US. But guess what, do you think anyone in the handover will be treated with compassion? The stories we have heard of individuals entering the OVDI show that persons voluntarily coming forward have been treated with utmost cruelty. Those discovered through the handover — all of them — can be expect to be treated worse, if that is possible.
I present the disclaimer that I am not an expert of any kind. I may be totally wrong, but that is my take on the situation. I have volunteered to be a witness, but my case is not compelling. I am still willing, should circumstances change, so it is a risk I am willing to take.
@Cheryl
We all have good and bad days… this is the only mb that understands what u feel… my own family & friends do not get it…. Who would think the US would have created such a sub class of people…. US persons… citizen or not… I use to trust the govt… I have learned so much from others on this mb or my own reading…. we all should be enjoying our lives but this issue has made a bunch of people… who may or may not have anything in common… fight the one thing we can all agree on…. this must be stopped…. u are not alone… Posters have helped me get a different perspective…. My elders may not be as crazy as I thought… they live through a war and were 2nd class citizens… they were correct… trust no gov’t… When things get to be too much…. its time to take a break… do something u enjoy… take a walk… garden… whatever….
Thanks US_Foreign_Person and Calgary. I just sometimes need to let it out or I feel like I’ll burst, then I feel better…kinda selfish but there you are.