January 8, 2018 Canadian FATCA IGA Legislation Litigation Update:
Litigator “Change” (back to what it was before): It is not uncommon for lawyers to move from one law firm to another. The Constitutional Lawyer Joseph Arvay, based at the Vancouver law firm of Farris, Vaughan, Wills and Murphy, has been the lead on our Canadian FATCA lawsuit in Federal Court from the beginning. He has been assisted in large part by Mr. Arden Beddoes, also at Farris. However, both Mr. Arvay and Mr. Beddoes have recently moved to the Vancouver law firm of Arvay Finlay.
This is to inform our supporters that yesterday the ADCS Board transferred our FATCA file from Farris to Arvay Finlay, where Joe Arvay will be lead lawyer on the case, and Arden Beddoes will remain heavily involved, as he has historically been while he was at Farris. So, the law firm may have changed, but the key litigators remain the same. There has been no delay resulting from this change.
Information on Joe Arvay can be found here.
Next steps: No delays on our part. We are still waiting for Government’s expert witness affidavits.
Why are we doing this lawsuit? Because our present Prime Minister, Mr. Justin Trudeau (pre-election) wasn’t really serious when he told us on June 25, 2015 that: “…The government of Canada has a responsibility to stand up for its citizens when foreign governments are encroaching on their rights. We believe that the [FATCA] deal reached between Canada and the U.S. is insufficient to protect affected Canadians…”
Nice to see the old gang back together.
Smart move, Canadians. 🙂
Yay, we have Arvay again. 🙂 Where is Gruber now?
Glad to hear Mr. Arvay is back on board!
Putting faces to names … looks like a nice bunch to me.
https://arvayfinlay.ca/our-team/
@All…..I may not like the politics of Arvey but he is outstanding in his chosen craft. This is a big boost IMO.
It should also psych out the Government!!!!
Would Arvey jump on a sinking ship? It shows Arvey still smells VICTORY.
Hey……YOUR Prime Minister also said A Canadian is a Canadian too!!
is there any chance of this actually going anywhere?
Glad to hear Mr Arvay’s back on the case.
Wondering just today how you were doing, EmBee. Happy to see you back pecking. I also slipped on the ice before Christmas and injured a wrist – fortunately just one and it’s either a sprain or mind fracture (not interested in going to emergency to catch the nasty flu going around). What a pain with even just one semi out of commission. Hope you’re mending quickly. Happy New Year!
I’m glad to see Mr. Arvay back on the case. Courts aren’t swayed much by facts or laws so I hope they’ll care about who’s on the case.
@ BB
Sorry about your slip. Obviously I EMpathize. It does feel good though to have Mr. Arvay on the ADCS team again. Mend well and may we all see a victory in court this year.
Thank you, EmBee. And yes, have Arvay back gives me the warm and fuzzies – which we could all use right now.
This is good news! Thank you, Stephen!
BB: No, you definitely didn’t want that flu. My husband and I just got over it ourselves. The Christmas turkey is still in the freezer!
Sorry to hear MNM – but be careful, I hear it can rebound.
It’s always a good time for turkey.
Thanks for the update Stephen. Glad to hear we have Joe Arvay back on our team. Wishing all the best to our three plaintiffs in 2018. Ditto to my fellow Brockers. This is a long game we are fighting here— I’m hoping to see us win a battle or two here in the upcoming year.
This amused me because I never thought of it this way, yet it’s true.
“The United States of America has sanctions against –
Cuba.
Iran.
North Korea.
Sudan.
Syria.
Burma.
US citizens who leave the USA.”
How very true.
Good luck Canadians, but I have to say that you are going to need it by the bucketful with an opponent with unlimited time and money and a court system that tends to favour their paymasters.
Mike – “…a court system that tends to favour their paymasters.”
American courts do that. Canadian courts are well respected, as far as I’ve ever heard.
To be honest plaxy I have no idea. I can’t help suspect that any court is going to be reluctant to go against the government and besides, from what I do know this court case could still be rumbling on when this government are gone and so are a lot of the people who have been waiting for this nightmare to end.
I still wish them the best of luck though.
Without referencing the Canadian case specifically, it seems to me the prospects for IGA court challenges have been greatly improved by the advent of the Common Reporting Standard.
CRS provides for all the cross-border account reporting that could possibly be required. Subjecting the US-born (and only the US-born) to double due-diligence is unjustifiable (in my non-lawyerly US-born opinion).
The Wikipedia page on Joseph Arvay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Arvay) lists “important active cases”, not including this one (FATCA IGA). I personally would consider it quite important, but have never attempted to edit a Wikipedia page. Perhaps someone both more knowledgeable in Wikipedia and the current case could propose an edit.
Meanwhile please know that people outside Canada are watching closely. Cheers, Canadian friends!
@ Fred (B)
Strange the four cases listed on Wikipedia under Mr. Arvay’s “Important Active Cases” are listed as active cases. No one ever updated it? Of the cases I recognise on that list, the Supreme Court ruled on them several *years* ago.
Yes, I too think it would be good if someone puts our active case under that heading.
Editing Wikipedia is extremely easy, and well documented.
Regarding updating Arvay’s Wikipedia page, anyone can make edits so it is up to anyone whether they want to make an edit. But I’m not sure if there is that much substantive to add to that Wikipedia page as yet.
The Wikipedia article refers primarily to Arvay’s work as a constitutional lawyer, and there is actually very little to say in that regard so far in the present matter. So far the only work of Arvay that can be documented (his private work with the plaintiffs and covered by attorney-client privilege obviously is not a topic for a Wikipedia page) is the summary trial from Aug 2015. Unfortunately that news isn’t good (Arvay and plaintiffs lost that skirmish). Moreover that summary trial didn’t address the constitutional claims at all.
So far, there is very little to be said about Arvay as a constitutional lawyer in the FATCA case that can be referenced in an appropriate way for a Wikipedia article. Eventually there will be but we aren’t there yet.
It WOULD, however, be interesting to look at those other landmark Arvay cases that reached the Supreme Court and a landmark ruling. How long did they take to make their way through the legal system? I’m sure they were slow, but I have the impression that the FATCA case is moving very slowly even by the standards of courtroom. It would be interesting to know why.
Good to hear the lawsuit is back under Mr. Arvay. It would be nice if Mr. Gruber could rejoin as well (likely wishful thinking). Quite right about Justin Trudeau’s FATCA quote. I wish someone would put it to him during one of his live town hall question/answer sessions. Thanks for the update.
Thanks for the update. Hope that the team will stay in place, and that this gets done this year 2018!
The big question is why did Trudeau flip? Darn right that the [FATCA] IGA “is insufficient to protect affected Canadians”! There was no attempt in the agreement under the Conservative gov’t to restrict the FATCA law to non-dual U.S. citizens that were temporarily working or investing across the border.
Instead they allowed the widest net possible to be cast, to include Canadian citizens resident in Canada, paying taxes in Canada, simply based on their birthplace, or the birthplace of their spouse or parents. And in doing so, they have made it very hard for these Canadians to save for retirement, etc. because we are caught between two systems: what one hand gives, the other hand takes away.
@Mike, yes, it does feel like the US has “sanctions against US citizens who leave the US” — treated like criminals who have to file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement group for simply using a local (non-American) bank!
“The big question is why did Trudeau flip?”
He was in a quantum state, both for and against Canadians, until the ballot boxes were opened and the cat died.