UPDATE SEPTEMBER 19, 2015: SEE ALSO DISCLAIMER AND LITIGATION UPDATES.
[This post, which began in May and having over 1000 revisions and 2000 comments, is being retired from service and updates. It lived through the success of reaching a total of $500,000 in donations from our kind, dear supporters who had little money to give, the hope and disappointment with the summary trial decision, and the certainty that we are now finally moving on to the Charter trial.]
CANADIAN CHARTER TRIAL UPDATE:
— We have instructed the Arvay team to prepare for the “Constitutional-Charter” trial. This means that our focus now, as it was in the beginning of our lawsuit, is on the Charter trial.
Unless there is a new expense in the future that we have not anticipated, the monies from your donations will be sufficient to take us through the “constitutional-charter” trial in Federal Court. However, to pay other legal bills we will need additional donations from our supporters, and a request for donations will appear on another post soon.
OUR LITIGATION HISTORY:
One year ago, on August 11, 2014, Litigator Joseph Arvay filed a FATCA IGA lawsuit in Canada Federal Court on behalf of Plaintiffs Ginny and Gwen, the Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty (en français), and all peoples.
Because of a Government delay we initiated a “summary trial”, using a portion of the arguments, which offered the possibility of preventing private banking information from being turned over to the IRS before September 30, 2015. See Alliance’s Claims, our Alliance blog, and AUGUST 4-5 SUMMARY TRIAL FILINGS in LITIGATION UPDATES.
@PatCanadian thank you for organizing this
I will be there along with my mother.
we would not miss the opening day of this fight for all the tea in boston harbor 🙂
Looks like there will be more than 10 attendees so that means that a small courtroom will not be adequate. People who will make the decision to attend at the last minute should therefore be assured of a seat in a larger courtroom.
Tricia had a good suggestion for people who are mailing cash and are wondering if it arrived — give Stephen a key phrase which he can include in the updates. That way you can be reassured your ADCS care package arrived while giving a little boost to readers. You can be creative in the packaging of your donation too — remember the Belgium chocolate wrapper?
@mettleman Great that you can attend. I will add the two of you to the list. See you at the court house when the battle begins.
Good to see that the actual thermometer was updated. Donations remain very slow but I’m hoping that it will prove a psychological boost to see the big bulb at the bottom now mostly red.
I’m not usually one to advocate for global warming and climate change but looking at the state of that thermometer I think we are going to need a long, hot summer especially in Vancouver!
I will be able to donate again but not until July.
@CF
Thank u… every little amount helps all…
Check this one out folks:
Isa providers refuse to open accounts for British-Americans
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/isas/11634040/Isa-providers-refuse-to-open-accounts-for-British-Americans.html
nervousinvestor: Thanks for the link! It just went in my UN Complaint addenda file.
@MuzzledNoMore Glad to be of assistance despite the horror of the subject matter.
Thank you, CF, and welcome to Isaac Brock.
Hi everyone, here are some hints at finding reasonably priced accommodations in Vancouver area for August 4-5 court dates. I’m not making any recommendations except to say that I know people who have stayed at UBC and the Beach Apartment Hotel. They were quite satisfied for the price.
Donating to ADSC is the priority. But for those who can donate and attend, I look forward to seeing you there. So far, we have 16 people who have committed to attending, myself included.
Guide to moderate range lodging near Federal Court House:
Downtown Vancouver hotels with map:
http://hotelguides.com/british-columbia/map-vancouver-bc-downtown-hotels.html
Accommodations in courthouse area with moderate price (click on # in courthouse grid):
http://hotelguides.com/district-maps/british-columbia/map-hotels-near-vancouver-bc-downtown-courthouse.html
#1: Residence Inn by Marriott
#8: Burrard Motor Inn
#12: 910 Beach Apartment Hotel
#14: Comfort Inn Downtown
#16: Moda Hotel Vancouver
Holiday Inn is also an option. There are a couple of Brockers planning to stay at Holiday Inn in Richmond near the airport. There is also Holiday Inn Downtown #7 on map.
Bubblebustin may be able to arrange a block of rooms at the Westin Grand Hotel (#22 on map in Yaletown grid), walking distance to court house, if enough people are interested. This is a bit more expensive. There are some rooms that can be shared.
Links to budget hotels:
http://www.tripadvisor.ca/HotelsList-Vancouver-Cheap-Hotels-zfp5096.html
http://govancouver.about.com/od/vancouveronabudget/tp/Top-8-Budget-Vancouver-Hotels.htm
(Vancouver YWCA on the above link has a number of different housing options)
http://www.vancouver-serviced-apartments.com/home.php
UBC has a variety of types of lodging for visitors both moderate and budget:
There are a couple of Brockers planning to stay at UBC Triumph House.
http://vancouver.housing.ubc.ca/other-housing/visitor-campus-housing/
Transit options in Vancouver:
Best bet for those on a budget is public transit. Bus and train service are quite good. Translink has routes, schedules, trip planner on its website:
http://www.translink.ca/
http://infomaps.translink.ca/System_Maps/103/CC-Apr%202015.pdf
Here are some taxi options just in case.
http://www.avancouvertaxi.com/
http://www.yellowcabonline.com/
Dining options to follow next week.
Please contact me if you have lodging questions or wish to be added to attendance list at patcanadian2015@gmail.com.
Thanks for helping out those who will travel to Vancouver, PatCanadian. You’ve provided some excellent resources.
@PatCanadian, “Hi everyone, here are some hints at finding reasonably priced accommodations in Vancouver area for August 4-5 court dates.”
Your comment does not fit with the lifestyles of the rich and famous image of expats.
Interesting Video
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4260796624001/former-irs-commissioner-demands-change-following-data-breach/?#sp=show-clips
OK, folks, I’m going to play action cheerleader again.
I just posted the following ad on my local Kijiji (under “COMMUNITY / OTHER”).
Raising those last $90,000.00 is job one so feel free to copy the text and post away in your local community (and elsewhere if you dare). I can send you the visuals if you want.
See the ad at
http://www.kijiji.ca/v-view-details.html?adId=1076046062&posted=true&adActivated=true
Title = DO YOU VALUE THE CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS?
BTW, my computer calendar says that May 29 is JFK’s birthday! While he wasn’t the best president (if he had not died, and Johnson taken over, would all his rights policies really have been enacted?), he would roll over in his grave if he knew how the US has changed. Sad, sad, sad.
Thanks for reminding us, LM.
“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in — to prevent them from leaving us.”
Sorry LM but I have to demur. There was no golden era in which American politicians at large liked emigrants and respected our human rights, and JFK is no exception. He signed the Revenue Act of 1962 which created all the modern foreign trust & foreign corporation laws, plus the definition of “US person”. and also advocated for the elimination of the FEIE:
https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2012/02/12/after-five-decades-of-abuse-enough-is-enough/
Remember, it’s only a wall if the Soviets are building it. If the Americans build it, it’s a perfectly legitimate way of asking people “what you can do for your country”!
@Eric
I must agree with you. The US government has always had its darker side–people who criticize the US government today tend to nostalgically remember a golden age in the past when things were different but it is very hard to pin down when that golden age actually happened and I don’t believe it ever existed.
Slavery, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, McCarthyism, the Vietnam era, support of human rights abusers in other countries, civil rights violations, the NSA, FATCA–the darker side of the US government has, sadly, always been in evidence. I’m not sure when the golden age is held to have happened.
JFK was one of those presidents who seem to come along about once a generation–like B. Clinton and Obama–relatively young (for a president), physically good looking for a guy in his age group, charismatic, often a Democrat, and who represent a passing of the torch to a new generation of leadership. He represented a change in the public face of the presidency, certainly, but I don’t see a lot of evidence that he could or would have changed the much darker internal workings of the government.
@ Eric
Thanks for the history lesson!
Pingback: $90,456 needed in 66 more days to make the $100,000 August 4 2015 (our Federal Court day in Vancouver Canada) payment for Canadian FATCA IGA lawsuit/ Il nous reste 90,456 $ à ramasser pour notre poursuite judiciaire | Maple Sandbox
Another Interesting article …. to which I was referred by the following response to a comment in another forum:
Robert Black nervousinvestor • 16 hours ago
I have been involved in high dollar business transactions with China over the years and they were always very stringent on currency controls (especially outflows). However, I was waiting for the last domino to fall to fully ‘buy-in’ to the idea of China challenging the dollar and easing their currency controls….looks like I am almost sold now on the idea (however, lets see what the US will conjure up to try to prevent this):
China to Ease Limits on Overseas Investments
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ch…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-ease-limits-on-overseas-investments-1432841526
Just guessing but I’d say most Canadian Brockers recognize that Bill C-51 (2015) and Part V Bill C-31 (2014) both need to be repealed. Our freedom to say what needs to be said about the latter comes under threat by the former. Although we may not have received recent, definitive reassurance from the NDP that they will undo the harm of FATCA I got an e-mail this week from Tom Mulcair which indicates that Bill C-51 is still on the NDP To UNdo List.
I hope Tom still includes FATCA in “damage by Prime Minister Harper and his Conservative government”. In the meantime, thank goodness for Ginny and Gwen’s lawsuit. The federal election is later and the result cannot be predicted. The lawsuit is sooner and with our donations we can do something right now to set the wheels in motion to defeat FATCA and ultimately US CBT. Surgite!
The biggest problem that I see with C-51–and similar laws in the US–is that there is a clear attempt being made to expand the definition of “terrorism” as much as possible with a clear view to curtailing civil liberties.
There have been–by my own definition–only two acts of terrorism in the US in the last 20 years–9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing–and none in Canada in that time period. There is no question that terrorism is horrible when it does occur but it is–at least by my definition–thankfully very rare at least in North America.
The new definition of terrorism has been expanded far, far beyond the proper use of the term. “Intimidating the public…including their economic security” is now considered an act of terrorism. No one in Canada–with the possible exception of tenured professors and Canadian senators–enjoys real economic security. Anyone can lose their job. But by the above definition, a boss who threatened an employee with firing–for any reason–has threatened their economic security and could be charged with terrorism. It sucks to lose your job–and it’s happened to me so I’ve been there and am not just speaking abstractly. But it’s not a terrorist act.
Just curious–how do you think Trudeau (the elder one) would have reacted to C-51? He’s the guy who first gave Canada its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But he’s also the guy who used the War Measures Act (in response to the last real act of terrorism–by my definition at least–on Canadian soil). A bit of a mixed bag was M. Trudeau.