[We now have a NEW POST taking us up to February 1, 2015. This post will be retired from service.]
THE AUTUMN 2014 UPDATE
Dear Donors,
Together, we reached our goal of $100,000 to pay the November 1 legal bill 11 days ahead of schedule!
Thank you Canadian donors from coast to coast and our friends from around the world for your generosity, support and determination — and especially for not being afraid.
The name of our non-profit corporation is the “Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty.”
We were very deliberate in including in our name the word “sovereignty”, which forms a cornerstone of our Claims against the Government of Canada.
Canada and dozens of other countries throughout the world gave into a bully because their “leaders” were afraid of harm caused by a trading “partner” — and they gave their sovereignties away.
Help us convince by example the Leaders and Governments of all countries worldwide that they should return their sovereignties back to their Peoples.
Please continue to support our lawsuit.
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” (Helen Keller)
— Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, and the ADCS-ADSC team
Chers donateurs,
Ensemble, nous avons atteint notre but d’amasser 100 000 $ pour payer notre facture légale du 1er novembre 11 jours d’avance !
Un gros merci à vous, donateurs canadiens, et à nos amis de tous les coins du monde pour votre grande générosité, soutien et détermination. Et surtout pour votre courage.
Le nom de notre organisme sans but lucratif est « l’Alliance pour la défense de la souveraineté canadienne ».
Nous avons choisi délibérément le mot « souveraineté » puisqu’il constitue la base fondamentale de nos revendications envers le gouvernement du Canada.
Le Canada et des dizaines d’autres pays se sont pliés devant l’intimidation des États-Unis parce que leurs « leaders » ont eu peur des menaces de notre « partenaire » commercial. Ils ont donc vendu leur souveraineté à rabais.
Aidez-nous à convaincre les dirigeants et les gouvernements de tous ces pays qu’ils se doivent de remettre leur souveraineté à leurs peuples.
S’il vous plaît, continuez à soutenir notre cause.
« Seuls, nous pouvons faire si peu. Ensemble, nous pouvons faire beaucoup. » (Helen Keller)
— Ginny, Gwen et toute l’équipe de l’ADCS-ADSC
DONATE to www.adcs-adsc.ca (ADSC en français).
@crystal london and northof49 – awesome!
@Everyone who has donated so far, large or small – thank you!
Sorry didn’t know where to post this but here goes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0e_o7nL0WU
Talk about nonsense, this Australian MP, Michael Sukkar, must have used the word ‘congratulate’ at least 7 times giving pats on the back to the Treasury Minister, the Australian Financial Industry for negotiating a successful IGA. According to Michael Sukkar MP, Australian has been spared the 30% withholding tax because of this brilliant work. He also praises how compliance costs are now the lowest they can be.
He didn’t have the guts to turn on his comments section.
However, Michael Sukkar MP failed to mention how many dual US / Australian citizens he threw under the FATCA bus. This video will come back to haunt this guy.
“studentadvocate” has been busy at Globe and Mail, another excellent of all the earlier comments there:
If we had $1 for each hit here or at Sandbox, we could fund this challenge and the one in the US. Even if we just had a dime or a quarter for each hit.
Of course, if we did, we would all be bankrupt. Then, the banks would not have anything to report.
I especially hope people who have learned and benefited from one or both sites will be willing to join us to make a donation to the cause. As Geogre III said, those of us who are active can`t do it on our own.
.
In honour of Em’s many (much more creative contributions), I wax poetic;
My contribution is in the mail.
We’ll see our true just cause prevail;
The Maple Leaf to defend and hail.
With YOUR support we will not fail!
lol…good job Badger…and Em too, for the inspiring poems!
So far, the most anger I have ever felt in my life was the day I watched the Canadian government elected officials “laugh” at Carols son’s position that they were allowing to be created. This, I will never forgive them for. When in public, I will not be afraid to share this and work hard to take Canada back. What do I tell my 5 year old daughter? I would have to lie if I tell her we are all going to be fine. Canadians need to know and so do the US population.
Thanks for this update, Dr. Stephen Kish!!!
As I read this morning on other threads, Deckard’s comment and then Furious AC’s comment, I commented,
For me, we must raise the money for this important challenge to what is happening in Canada!!! It is vital to a lot of “me’s”. We must get the word out and find the financially-able donors it will take to keep Canada a sovereign nation, the assault on *US Persons* our main, but not the only, reason.
Please read and pass on Stephen’s important update, including the links that show just one sickening example of who becomes U.S. citizenship-based taxation COLLATERAL DAMAGE, just one reason this is so very important.
And, another example for those of you who haven’t seen it: this is my son’s situation so casually mocked by Conservative MPs.
Fund this challenge now.
Fund it to match the size of your outrage and your anger if you can.
Defend Canada. Defend yourself. Defend your family savings and your rights. Defend our Charter, and the rule of Canadian law as supreme over the economic invasion and blackmail of Canada by the US.
Oppose US extortion via economic sanctions and US might makes right.
Defend the right of those deemed USPersons to the same level of human and civil rights that our fellow citizens enjoy.
Defend our right not to be deemed criminals based solely on our accident of US parentage, our or of US birthplace, or our US defined status – which the US imposes despite our legal residence and lives lived entirely outside the borders of the US; in Canada and elsewhere around the globe.
Defy those at home in Canada who signed us away to FATCA as well as those who created and impose it from afar.
Some of those here will be struggling to the last with their Form 114 (formerly the FBAR) reporting to the Financial Crimes Enforcement (FINCEN) online, which is due tomorrow (June 30, no extensions). You will see the website with the seal of an agency whose express purpose is to catch criminals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Crimes_Enforcement_Network and you will be wondering yet again why your legal local bank account information (locally held, funded and taxed in your HOME in Canada, England, and elsewhere around the world) should be demanded extraterritorially by a US CRIME ENFORCEMENT agency, on a form meant to trap hardened criminals, and with a confiscatory and draconian penalty structure even for those deemed ‘NON-willful’.
This blog post by Samuel Clemmons is a remarkable description of the UnLaw FATCA and its precursor, the FBAR (now Form 114): http://samuelclemmons.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/fatca-enforcing-the-unlaw-of-the-land/
Read it. Consider your ‘crime’ of having a legal local transparent savings account in Canada or any other country you call home. Consider that you already pay full taxes in your home country – which may also be where you were born – outside the US, or where you swore allegiance in becoming a Canadian. Consider that you are already subject to and compliant with the laws of that home country – outside the US. Consider that you may never have even set foot in the US. Consider that your US parental DNA, or your birth in a US border hospital is sufficient to make you of interest to a US crime agency. Consider that US residents are not required to do this for their legal local bank accounts – even if they haven’t paid their US taxes.
You live outside the US, and so are predetermined and pre-emptively deemed a criminal, and you must prove annually FOR LIFE, to the satisfaction of US Criminal Enforcement agencies that you and your USperson children (think RESPs as ‘foreign trusts’) are STILL not drug lords, money launderers, terror funders, etc.
If your means allow, let your donation to this fight match the strength of your outrage that you, your family, or anyone you know ‘abroad’ is being subjected to foreign=Made-in-the-US laws that subject all of us outside the US, and our legal local transparent savings to laws meant for criminals. And pay for the privilege of the insult and burden via the taxes and account fees of ALL of our fellow citizens and taxpayers outside the US. Every single person in a country which has signed an IGA with the US will be paying fealty to the US in the form of their home country taxes allocated to implement FATCA, and to enforce it – FOREVER AND EVER.
FATCA is a TAX imposed by the US on the ENTIRE WORLD.
Send a message to the country where you live, via this legal challenge in Canada that your human and civil rights will not be trampled without a fight. The venue may be Canada for now, but if successful, this challenge will set alight equivalent efforts all around the world.
CANADA DAY is coming.
Celebrate Canadian sovereignty and stand up for our Constitution and Charter of Rights by making a donation to the ADCS fund NOW!!
I also want to thank Stephen for highlighting what he wants to see happen. I agree, besides challenging and defeating US FATCA law in Canada (and hopefully eventually in other countries) as also a step in killing off US CBT, none of this should be imposed on innocent Canadians, especially those we call “Accidental Americans”.
These children (now many adult children) born to US parents in Canada or Canadian parents in the US but who returned to Canada as infants or young children had no choice whatsoever in where they were born or to whom they were born (not to mention that their parents had no knowledge of the US CBT consequences for the children they brought into this world). Citizenship-based taxation is indeed immoral law if it subjects these persons to all of the consequences of such absurdity. Just what, Michael Kirsch and Richard Harvey, is the fair share to the US for these persons?
As an aside, it is doubly immoral law if it will ENTRAP into US citizenship any of a country’s most vulnerable with ‘mental incapacity’ (be it a developmental disabiity, brain injury from an accident or age-related dementia). They are unable to renounce US citizenship because they do not understand the concept of ‘citizenship’ (let alone US citizenship as they are not of that country) — and a right does not exist for a parent, a guardian or a trustee to do so on their behalf, as their duty is to look out for that person’s well-being.
As Stephen says:
It has always concerned me that ACA may be the reason “Accidental Americans” bestowed with US citizenship are now so threatened by US citizenship-based taxation combined with FATCA, implemented by intergovernmental agreements with so many countries.
https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2013/06/29/accidental-americans-born-abroad-to-us-parents-and-not-registered-with-the-us-are-they-automatic-us-citizens-or-do-they-have-a-right-to-claim-us-citizenship-when-they-can-make-that-decision-as-an/comment-page-2/#comment-412753
My prior comment to Plato:
@Calgary: Likewise, I don’t think the Supreme Court decision of 1986 was ever intended to force people to be US citizens and thus US taxpayers. I especially don’t think it was intended to force citizenship back on people who had full intent of relinquishing US citizenship when they became citizens of other countries.
As someone said in the early days here, the US used to punish people for becoming citizens of other countries by stripping them of their US citizenship. Now, they punish them by trying to force US citizenship on them.
Dual citizenship never made sense to me. It makes far less sense to me now than it ever did.
Blaze, of course you know I believe in your every word written there.
another level of absurdity
https://uk.screen.yahoo.com/10-weird-things-banned-governments-161002628.html?vp=1
Folks–I have contributed to this effort in the recent past (earlier this month). However I am disturbed by the recent direction of some threads on here towards America-bashing–which I do not support. I will acknowledge that @NativeCanadian might have a basis–based on his/her status as a native North American–for burning both the American and Canadian flags. But those reasons are not connected to FATCA in any way and I cannot support the burning of the American flag in any other context. The tenor of the conversations here has taken a disturbing direction that I cannot support. The burning of the American flag represents the burning of the American people and that is not a direction that can be taken until the courts on both sides of the border have had a chance to weigh in. Thus, without further information, I cannot donate further to ADCS-ADSC.
I have an email in to Solomon Yue–with a cc to Dr. Stephen Kish–asking for more information about a parallel effort that I understand is taking place to oppose FATCA on US soil. Once I hear further from Solomon I will make my decision as to whether to donate further to that effort. For the moment, basically, I cannot donate further based on the America-bashing attitude I’m seeing here.
Essentially I am awaiting Solomon’s wisdom at this point.
@Dash1729 – the Isaac Brock Society blog is not the same as the ADCS effort. Although Isaac Brock bloggers and commenters support the effort at ADCS they are not the ADCS. People are allowed to express their opinions on IBS without (at least with little) censure. The opinions on IBS have no influence whatsoever on the direction of the legal challenge that is being undertaken by ADCS. If you don’t like what certain people are saying on IBS, please do not hesitate to make your feelings known to them (as you have done here), but please do not allow your dislike of certain commenter’s opinions to dissuade you from supporting this cause whose mandate has not changed.
Dash:
Without any comment as to your feelings, would you be so kind as to post here at IBS any response you receive from Solomon Yue. Many of us will be interested as to what their effort is producing.
@Dash1729
I have to echo GwEvil’s comments. In addition to the focus of the blog not having anything to do with ADCS purpose, there are many different, opposing points of view expressed regularly here and that is as it should be. We try very hard here, to allow people to have their say, particularly because they are coming from a place of deep anger due to the treatment they have received from their own government – the US government. Over time, some limits have emerged but by and large, we try not to censure. If someone speaks about burning the American flag, I do not believe the intent is toward the American people. It is out of extreme frustration due to the lack of acknowledgement and support which is a regular feature of this situation for all of us who feel quite persecuted. I believe you have been here long enough to have observed this many times. While I am not condoning the action, many here have been working hard for nearly three years now. being respectful, writing letters, emails submissions, doing interviews, writing posts, tweeting, info meetings, protests, etc etc. And the result is FATCA is here and with very few exceptions, no one really seems to be listening. Suggesting actions which are guaranteed to draw attention are not uncommon in protest situations (civil rights movement, Vietnam, etc). I think it is fair to say the majority of people here are not suggesting this and there is no way those of us involved with ADCS are saying this.
If you want to talk more about this, please contact me at us.expatcanada at gmail dot com.
Thanks for your excellent comments to Dash1729, Trish and Gwen. Nothing better can be added.
It will be a shame if some ADCS support is lost from followers to this blog because of one person’s expression of anger in so many efforts being ignored.
You’re correct, Trish, in saying that Dash1729 has also witnessed the hard work so many of us have carried out that has not resulted in stopping the implementation of the FATCA IGA in Canada and taking away our rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That makes us all angry; each of us will have a different way of expressing that anger.
I hope you will hang in there with us, Dash1729. I think you may also refer to other instances. If so, please point them out as well. We want to be aware and the intention is not to offend but, yes, to be angry.
This is, for those affected, an outrage — an assault on our very beings — who we are, as well as what we’ve saved for our families’ futures. This is our lives.
@Dash1729, and to others with similar concerns;
I hope that you will be able to see the point of view of those who after a long struggle to come to terms with what is happening to us at the hands of the US as a nation, can no longer find any room in our hearts and minds to extend respect to the US government, or a symbol thereof, despite the abiding love we may bear for Americans as individuals – such as our family members, friends and others who still live there.
These views and actions have not come about unprovoked. There have already been very real injuries, and very real harms, and now, we are perched on the cusp of a disaster for over 1 million people and families in Canada – and we are seemingly without a remedy or recourse in sight to prevent it – though we have tried many avenues.
In terms of national symbols, US FATCA is due to take effect here on CANADA DAY – the equivalent of the Fourth of July to us – a day to celebrate our home and our flag.
Not satisfied with extraterritorial efforts to govern individuals abroad via the unjust terms of US CBT, the US government has now invaded Canada our HOME country, and all the other countries of the world by proxy via FATCA. At threat of force via severe economic sanctions which are tantamount to extortion. The same sanctions it recently threatened to use as a weapon against Russia over the Ukraine. What has my home country of Canada done to warrant one and the same punishment? We have been charged with and committed no crime against the US as a nation, or as individuals. Canada has done the US no harm.
Yet, here we are. FATCA is being imposed upon us extraterritorially by US might. It did not seek to address its concerns via a mutual treaty process between sovereign nations. The US reserves the ‘right’ to change the terms of FATCA unilaterally as it sees fit – without consultation or negotiation – as it already routinely does via the ‘savings clause’ and the “last in time” rule. And the US government routinely issues disingenuous statements that seek to camouflage that truth.
That is the height of arrogance and of disrespect to our home country – be it Canada or England or anywhere else in the world. I hope you can understand why some of us find it increasingly difficult to be concerned about disrespect for an outward symbol of the government at whose hands we suffer this deep and unforgivable insult and trespass.
Inside the US itself, the burning of the flag is protected by the First Amendment:
“…. Although the Flag Code is U.S. federal law, there is no penalty for a private citizen or group failing to comply with the Flag Code and it is not widely enforced—indeed, punitive enforcement would conflict with the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.[56] Passage of the proposed Flag Desecration Amendment would overrule legal precedent that has been established….”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States
I hope that despite your personal feelings, you will consider what is at stake here, and consider that the right of free speech is often in conflict with other beliefs and values that people hold in a democracy, and in an open forum such as Brock. The IBS site is not one and the same with the ADCS Legal challenge, though it is publicized and discussed here as well as at Maple Sandbox and elsewhere. We are also not on US soil, and so each one of us is free to think, speak and act as our conscience dictates and as local law allows.
@Dash1729
I share concern at the prospect of any kind of “flag-burning” – it is usually bad optics, and too easily associated with fanaticism: fundamentalist preachers burning Beatles albums, Nazi brownshirts burning books, etc.
Also want to emphasize the ADCS is NOT the author of the flag-burning concept. It is easy to confuse the two. The ADCS is a single-purpose non-profit organization focused on essential legal action. IBS and Maple Sandbox are communication channels that are helping create a movement; a town-hall meeting – or Tahrir Square – for like-minded people united by common concerns. Not everyone will agree with each other; there is no Party line (unlike the mindless parroting of the Harper Conservatives).
We do need powerful propaganda images – posters that embody the core issue of this human rights crisis. maybe commission various artists to create them?
Check out this famous gun control poster that used a handgun painted in the colors of the American flag. It’s powerful use of US flag image without any kind of burning:
https://lh3.ggpht.com/-e-vcDcTHzWg/UVsmOfVizhI/AAAAAAAAU_w/Sfgo1MgJ_8E/s1600/gun+control+01.jpeg
We also need strong, memorable statements that quickly convey the core of the issue at an emotional and existential level. Remember JFK’s 1963 speech at the Berlin Wall:
“Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ ”
Or the anthem of the US Civil Rights Movement: “We Shall Overcome.”
Lynne’s statement to the Finance committee is very powerful:
http://maplesandbox.ca/2014/lynnes-opening-statement-to-the-finance-committee/
@dash
The more the US goes after the life savings of people living outside the US, many of which have the flimsiest of connections to the US, the more pissed off they are going to be.
As a former military service member, I once proudly saluted the American flag. Now I curse it every time I see it. For me, it no longer represents freedom — it represents tyranny.
I sincerely hope that things will change for the better and I will make contributions to the legal challenges on both sides of the border as I want to do my part in the effort to restore liberty in America. Good luck to Rand Paul and the Tea Party movement — my heart is with you!
But one thing I will not do is what you just did, which was to castigate the victims, and is not much different than telling a woman who is about to be raped that you won’t help her because she cursed and spit into the eyes of the rapist.
And now that I think about it, when it comes to Americans living abroad, Uncle Sam is really nothing more than a financial rapist, so the analogy above is actually rather fitting.
@Dash: I know Native Canadian personally. I know he is a man of honour and integrity. He is a patriotic Canadian who had no ill feelings toward the US until they attempted to invade the his family’s honest, law-abiding lives.and
I know Native Canadian is a loving husband and father born in Canada who has witnessed the absolute devastation and terror FATCA has brought to his wife simply because she was born in the United States. He has tried to do everything he possibly can to protect her from an unjustified assault on her by a foreign bully.
I know how horrified Native Canadian is that his family’s financial records could go to a foreign government simply because of his CANADIAN wife’s place of birth.
I know Native Canadian has been speaking out for months on FATCA. He has contacted the media. He has contacted MPs. He contacted Jim Flaherty and Joe Oliver. When he contacted Joe Oliver, he was told there was no record of his many contacts with the Minister’s office.
He was with me when I testified before the Finance Committee. He helped me organize John Richardson’s presentation in London Ontario.
He has also reached out repeatedly to try to inform the native community about FATCA because such a large number
All of his efforts have fallen on deaf ears. His Con MP will not return his telephone calls or respond to his e-mails (nor will mine)
Native Canadian is absolutely livid about the way we are being treated–for very just cause.
I personally will not participate in the burning of a flag, but I feel physically ill every time I see one because of what the FATCA Attack has done to me. Someone else suggested to me she would bring an American flag to our Fourth of July Bash to burn (Yes, we will be bashing both the United States and FATCA, but we will not be burning a US flag in my condo).
Like all of us, Native Canadian is outraged that his long-held Canadian rights are going up in flames because of the threats of the United States on Canada and on Canadian. So, it is not surprising he wants to set fire to the what is supposed to be a symbol of freedom and liberty.
I hope you will try to understand how desperate Native Canadian and others are feeling by this invasion of the United States into our honest, law-abiding lives.
As others have said, ADCS is separate from either Brock or Sandbox. For the first time in 41 years, I am not celebrating my Canadian citizenship on Canada Day. Instead, I will make another donation to the ADCS fund.