[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).
@ NorthernShrike
Regarding a model letter, I think that’s an excellent idea. The letter should be short and include various important links. And we can all customize it if we wish.
Are the opposition political parties (NDP, Green, Liberals) contributing to the fund? Have they been asked? Thx.
How about an add in a big newspaper with the link?
Important rulings regarding 4th and 1st Amendments to the Constitution expected by the USSC.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18388-first-and-fourth-amendments-face-supreme-court-rulings
And what may be an important contact regarding our own Constitutional cause.
Joe A. Wolverton,ll, JD
Twitter@TNAJoeWolverton
jwolverton@thenewamerican.com
Is anyone, or does anyone know a professional fundraiser?
I have sent email to York University’s associations of (full-time) faculty members and retired faculty, informing them of the creation of ADCS-ADSC and asking them to pass the contact information on to their members. I hope people can do the same for other universities in Canada.
I have also sent email about ADCS-ADSC to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).
@Polly,
We are considering possibility of a newspaper ad and other media approaches that would cost our fund money.
But, check out the cost of ads in the major Canadian national newspapers relative to the size of the ad that would reasonably be needed. Also, we have been told that for maximum effect the ads need to be regularly repeated. Perhaps a special donor might be interested in funding such an ad. Any major advertising of this type on behalf of ADCS would also need to be co-ordinated with ADCS-ADSC.
@WhiteKat, please keep asking the question about finding professional fundraisers who might help us out at low/no cost. Anyone know a fundraiser willing to donate time? A group of us are trying to access such people.
@AnonAnon, thanks —could you get back to us later and let us know whether the contact info was actually passed on? Thanks
This fight is definitely at a cross roads now – very scary!
If we don’t raise the funds, it’s game over. In theory, it shouldn’t be that hard to raise 2 million dollars from an estimated 1 million ‘US persons’, not to mention affected family members and other Canadians who get that this affects them too, as well as citizens of other countries who are counting on Canadians to start the dominoes falling.
To put this in perspective, we need a toonie from each US person in Canada or $100 from 20,000 people or $1,000 from 2000 people or $10,000 from 200 people or $50,000 from 40 people or $100,000 from 20 people or $1,000,000 from 2 people, or $2,000,000 from 1 very generous person.
How hard is that? If its too hard, I guess we just have to admit defeat, and start treating our mattresses as our banks.
For anyone on the fence, or waiting to see what happens, please just donate whatever you can afford now and lets get the legal battle started.
I have a friend who is a retired professional fund-raiser. I have asked her for the coordinates for any professional organisations. $1.5 million is a lot to raise; only someone who feels personally connected to the issue will consider taking it on for free.
Can the opposition parties force the Canadian government to look into the constitutionality of the law.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t make that demand.
@AnonAnon
I too would like to hear what response you get from York and CAUT. I am retired from the University of Saskatchewan and thinking upon the best approach for reaching faculty at that university.
@noone:
Your comment:
“Can the opposition parties force the Canadian government to look into the constitutionality of the law.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t make that demand”
In the hearing to vote on the amendments, they WERE asked the question. The answer?
Yes, they did seek advice as to the constitutionality of the IGA and they got an opinion. Committee members were told that they did not have to share that advice and they would NOT share that advice.
I believe the reply was something along the lines of , well that answers the question then because if it was a positive answer you would be happy to share that with everyone.
@NorthernShrike,
if your fund-raiser friend is willing to provide some informal thoughts to us over the phone, please contact me at the ADCS-ADSC site. Thanks
@FuriousAC, So they know it’s unconstitutional and are buying time by signing the IGA to protect the banks. They expect us to sue them.
I can’t imagine that Conservative politicians sleep well at night knowing what a poison pill they’ve swallowed by signing the IGA. No matter how this turns out, they’ve sealed their political fate by their own actions.
Everything the Conservatives have done to please the US Treasury is poison to their party and political gold to the NDP.
This is the short email that I sent to all of my contacts
Something to make Canadians angry enough to contribute – just read this exchange – wherein MP and Green Leader May defends us, and Conservative MP Keddy cites a foreign (US) law to bind Canadians he is sworn to protect and represent the bests interests of:
Canada-U.S. Relations
Adjournment Proceedings
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/5/28/elizabeth-may-11/
May 29th, 12:25 a.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
“Mr. Speaker, I rise in adjournment proceedings to pursue a matter that I raised in question period on March 3. It is appropriate, although the hour is late or one might say it is early morning of May 29; it is the day on which the subject matter of my question will be going through clause by clause before the finance committee. The subject of my question is a very significant and dangerous piece of legislation buried in the current omnibus bill, Bill C-31.
The question that I asked is somewhat poignant. I will share with members that when I went back and read the text of the question, I realized that this was the last time in question period that I put a question for former minister of finance Jim Flaherty, our late and dear colleague. As much as I was very fond of Jim, as I read the answer I realized that the reason I put in a slip to pursue it in adjournment proceedings was that I did not actually get an answer.
As I say, it is poignant and bittersweet to pursue in adjournment proceedings at 12:15 a.m. the matter of the constitutionality of something that many Canadians have probably never heard of: the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, otherwise called FATCA, which is buried in Bill C-31, the current omnibus budget bill.
What this Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act does is this. We know that sometimes we call the United States “Uncle Sam”. In this instance, Canada bent over until we said “uncle”, and that is on the matter of the U.S. doing something quite extraordinary. It has passed a domestic law and insisted that the rest of the world bow down and allow a U.S. law to apply extraterritorially all around the world.
As a former U.S. citizen myself, I find it ironic. When my family first moved to Canada, it was very clear that going to Canada and becoming Canadian citizens was something to which the U.S. government said, “Okay, forget it now; you cannot come back here and pretend you are Americans. We know you are Canadian now; no coming back here”. The laws were very clear that we were not U.S. citizens anymore. That was fine with me, because I was Canadian and that was all I wanted to be.
Now that the U.S. seems to find itself a little short of money, it is almost like people going around and trying to lift up the sofa cushions and reach for loose change under the seats where they had not looked before, in case they might find some money. Maybe a more appropriate visible image is of grabbing people who have any connection to the United States by their ankles and shaking them upside down to see if any loose coins fall out of their pockets.
The reality of this is that we have, under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, acceded to the United States as if we were subject to a binding treaty with it, something called the “intergovernmental agreement”. In point of fact, the U.S. Congress has not ratified this so-called treaty, so it should not be binding on Canada at all. On top of this, we know that no less a constitutional expert than Peter Hogg has advised the Government of Canada in his letter, which I obtained through access to information, that the provisions under this act “…are discriminatory in a way that would not withstand Charter scrutiny”.
In other words, we are being forced through an omnibus procedure and into committee tomorrow at clause by clause, and unless my amendments are accepted, we will once again have passed a piece of legislation that is discriminatory, treating Canadians of different classes in different ways, which offends section 15 of the Charter. We will have done that to accede to something that is not even accepted by the United States as a treaty, because it has not ratified it.
There is a solution to this, and this solution has come from many legal experts. We should remove this from Bill C-31.”
Canada-U.S. Relations
Adjournment Proceedings
http://openparliament.ca/debates/2014/5/28/gerald-keddy-7/
May 29th, 12:25 a.m.
Conservative
Gerald Keddy South Shore—St. Margaret’s, NS
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue and for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the intervention by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and the fact that she stayed here this evening to pursue this, because the hour is late.
I disagree, of course, with her interpretation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. The reality is, and the hon. member would know from having American relatives and family members, that Americans have always been taxed based on citizenship. There is nothing new here. An American citizen living outside of the United States is supposed to pay taxes in the states. That is the law and it has always been the law. Enough of my own relatives are American citizens, so I know that for a fact. To say that this changes those rules is simply incorrect.
The unfortunate part of this is that there will be some citizens who, by default or by accident of birth, will be American citizens, such as Canadians, for all intents and purposes, who happen to have been born in the states. They will have to correct their citizenship. However, dual citizens have always had a tax obligation. American citizens living in Canada who have permanent resident status have always had a tax obligation. This is not new.
One key concern was that the reporting obligations with regard to accounts in Canada would force Canadian financial institutions to report information on account holders who were new residents and U.S. citizens, including U.S. citizens who were residents or citizens of Canada, directly to the IRS, thus potentially violating Canadian privacy laws. That was a key concern. Without an agreement in place, obligations to comply with FATCA would have been unilaterally and automatically imposed on Canadian financial institutions and their clients as of July 1, 2014. As I said earlier, this would be based on the fact that they were American citizens living outside of the United States.
To directly address these and other concerns, our government signed a Canada-U.S. intergovernmental agreement, or IGA, in early February of this year. Under the intergovernmental agreement, financial institutions in Canada will not report any information directly to the IRS. Rather, relevant information on accounts held by U.S. residents and U.S. citizens will be reported to the Canada Revenue Agency.
The hon. member talked about Canadian citizens. Canadian citizens are not caught in this loop. Dual citizens will have to pay taxes in the U.S. or, properly speaking, for the hon. member’s benefit, they have to file tax returns. They may not have tax debt, they may not have to pay taxes in the states, but they do have to file returns, which they have always had to file. The CRA will then exchange the information with the IRS through the existing provisions and safeguards of the Canada-U.S. treaty, consistent with our privacy laws.
I would also like to note that under the intergovernmental agreement, the IRS will provide the CRA with information on certain accounts of Canadian residents held at U.S. financial institutions, so we have some reciprocity.
This is an extremely complex intergovernmental agreement and treaty. It covers a lot of issues. However, the bottom line is that no one will be taxed who has not already taxed.”
@OMG:
Sure they know. They say they got an opinion. They also got told by Allison Christians. By Arthur Cockfield. By John Richardson. By Elizabeth May and many others in all the finance hearings, both house and senate.
THEY KNOW that the IGA as signed overrides current Canadian laws regarding privacy and discrimination. Get that? OVERRIDES current law.
As Elizabeth May stated in the committee for amendment voting: The amendments as put forward are a viable alternative to what has been signed. It saves the government from ” a certain constitutional challenge”.
Yet all, and I mean ALL amendments put forward that would carve out Canadian Citizens and Permanent Residents from the language was rejected out of hand because, as one Conservative mp stated: ‘US would not like that. It is their law and their language.’
Well, that is not true because the IGA is CANADIAN capitulation to IRS demands.
The IRS has NO legal authority to put forward these IGA’s and they have been told they have no authority to engage in negotiations with countries as though they were the Senate. Yet they have bypassed Congress illegally and Canada knows this.
Yet, when our Canadian delegation were in DC with hat in hand they were told , as described by conservative mp Allen that, ‘the IRS spokeswoman said that it was too bad, but “Congress has spoken”
Which is a lie and they know it but accepted it, tail between their legs and slunk home to perpetrate this atrocity on their own people.
AND reiterated that very phrase to all those putting forward amendments to the IGA: “Congress has spoken”
NO they have not. Congress has NEVER authorized this , ever.
There is huge push back in the US over FATCA and now that they have implemented a delay , again, it was put to the conservative mps on the committee that there was no need to rush this through.
If they would not agree to pulling out the IGA from the budget bill, C-31 then certainly amendments to carve out Canadian Citizens and Permanent residents was a reasonable and desirable means to thwart the IRS evil penalty designs on innocents in Canada while protecting the banks.
Still, they voted it down out of hand.
So, they KNOW what’s coming legally.
What they fail to recognize is what is coming electorally.
@Badger:
And we know Mr. Keddy does not know what he is talking about but Elizabeth May certainly does know what she is talking about.
Just as in the committee sessions, he makes clear they were and are only interested in protecting the banks.
And , clearly there is NOT nor will there ever be reciprocity.
@omgheestillanamerican
I am sure they got an opinion that we got… but the difference is that they figure no one will do anything about it & try to hide it in the budget… if I didn’t know about this nonsense… I would have… I use to believe the gov’t was for the good of us… not this bs… never thought we would become part of the US… one foot in… rest of the body will come on through… We should be able to sue…. free of charge.. all these traitors individually for being traitors to our country… make them give back all that money we gave them to do a proper job.
Man… I realized I was old when I went through my phone books for contacts… gone… ohh… crap… gone also… geez
Carol and Badger,
Like both of you, when I introduce our donation website to new contacts, I ask them first to listen to the exchange between Canadians trying to defend our country and the representatives of our government on the House Committee who oppose us.
Others might use this approach as well, as I can’t imagine a more powerful statement.
@FuriousAC, they count of the fact that these negotiations were done in secret. They count on the fact that they have muzzled the press not to talk about it and think that the group at IBS and Maplesandbox is small enough that they won’t make a difference, that they might not raise the money necessary for a lawsuit or make a difference in the elections. This is sickening.
I hope the opposition parties will help fund the lawsuit.
It would be nice if the TV anchors who first ran the story a couple months ago would announce the challenge, showing some extracts of the video. Has anyone contacted them?
@FuriousAC, I guess we can take solace in the fact that one day our nightmare will be over and things will go back to the way they were although that might take several years. The Conservative politicians however will be joining the unemployment line as they should and their betrayal of Canada will not be forgotten. The party may even die for good and a new Conservative party will have to spend years trying to overcome the stigma.
I wonder if we might be able to tap some rich NDP donors. A political issue like this comes along once in a lifetime and could prove to be a real winner for their party. If we can get proper funding for our lawsuit the political circus that will be created is advertising the NDP couldn’t buy for any amount of money. The timeline for the lawsuit means that there could be an election right in the middle of it which the NDP can exploit. All the news outlets would cover our case because the NDP would be drawing attention to it every chance they got.
The NDP could even use the anger that Conservative voters feel toward the Conservative party and use us in their political commercials. Something like I used to be a hard core Conservative but am now voting NDP because the Conservatives have handed Canada over to the IRS.