Abby Deshman of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association discusses the implications FATCA would have on privacy rights.
This is part 3 of the 9 part FATCA Forum. Calgary411 and I are preparing the transcripts and they will be posted on Brock as they become available during the coming days.
The text of Ms. Deshman’s presentation follows below and the transcript is also online as a PDF document.
John Richardson introduces the Forum, providing background information on FATCA and related US extraterritorial tax policies, and the effects they cause on “US persons,” their families, and on Canada itself.
This is part 2 of the 9 part FATCA Forum. Calgary411 and I are preparing the transcripts and they will be posted on Brock as they become available during the coming days.
The text of Mr. Richardson’s presentation follows below and the transcript is also online as a PDF document.
Russia's Putin signs anti-U.S. citizen adoptions bill http://t.co/6WOLK3dK says US human rights abuses means it shouldn't lecture others
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) December 28, 2012
This is quite interesting. The story appeared in the New York Times a couple of days ago. It did generate a couple of comments about citizenship-based taxation and the problems of US persons abroad.
Apparently the proposed ban on US citizens adopting Russian children is described in the Globe as:
Russian officials portrayed the latest legislation as a tit-for-tat retaliation against a new U.S. law that seeks to punish Russians accused of human-rights violations”
Moscow’s latest legislation – which would also ban U.S. funded civic groups in the country – would put concrete action to rising Russian complaints, voiced most vehemently by Mr. Putin, that the U.S.’s own human-rights failings give it no credibility to lecture others.
#americansabroad can't even get empathy from "homelander" parents http://t.co/0qeGh5Ze – How can the #FATCA attack be better explained?
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) December 28, 2012
I am either a fool or an optimist but I believe that 2013 will be the year that the plight of U.S. persons abroad will begin to be heard. In anticipation of that, it is time to think carefully about and to sharpen the message. What is clear is that:
In this Forum session, Peter W. Dunn, a founding member and spokesperson of the Isaac Brock Society, speaks on the human consequences of FATCA, discussing the HEART Act as well, illustrating these consequences with examples of the financial, emotional and physical hardships sustained by persons the US Treasury Department defines as “US persons,” although they are not resident in, and in some cases not even citizens of, the United States.
This is part 8 of the 9 part FATCA Forum. Calgary411 and I are preparing the transcripts and they will be posted on Brock as they become available during the coming days.
The text of Mr. Dunn’s presentation follows below and the transcript is also online as a PDF document.
Why would the Canadian banks even consider selling out their “US citizen” clients? The banks are aware of the privacy laws and the charter rights, are they not? Well, they understand that their majority clients who are not US persons would be greatly inconvenienced if their banking institutions refused to become FATCA compliant. Billions of dollars are at stake. So I quite understand why they are playing fast and loose with Canadian privacy laws and our beloved charter rights. It’s about money. A lot of money.
But what is the price of an innocent man or woman who has committed no crime? Are they worth one million dollars? a billion? a trillion? If the entire economic system as we know it is at stake, is it right to hand over an innocent person?
The FATCA Fact Finding Forum took place at Toronto on 15 December 2012.
In this Forum session, John Richardson presented a video which dealt with the criteria and methods that financial institutions would use to determine a person’s possible US person status for FATCA purposes.
This is part 4 of the 9 part FATCA Forum. Calgary411 and I are preparing the transcripts and they will be posted on Brock as they become available during the coming days.
The text of Mr. Richardson’s presentation, as well as the transcription of the video, follows below and the transcript is also online as a PDF document at this link.
The FATCA Fact Finding Forum took place at Toronto on 15 December 2012.
The Opening Remarks were given by the Honourable Sinclair Stevens. Mr. Stevens, Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, is the former President of the Treasury Board of Canada and also served as Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion.
This is part 1 of the 9 part FATCA Forum. Calgary411 and I are preparing the transcripts and they will be posted on Brock as they become available during the coming days.
The text of Mr. Stevens’ opening remarks follows below and the transcript is also online as a PDF document at this link.
Continue reading
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Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction
Ronald Reagan
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“The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. … I do not believe in a fate that will fall us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
Ronald Reagan
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“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
John Adams
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“When people fear their government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people there is liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson
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Rather than engage in the insipid ritual of emitting a few conventional and boring and repetitive words in this season of hope and joy, usxcanada went data shopping to try to find a present to post for Brockers. The following perspective on U.S. passport is cross-posted from the growing archive (in less than one year, more than 300 annotated entries) over at USxCanada InfoShop. What will 2013 bring? Certainly to many in our circle, hopes for freedom to be obtained, and joy in freedom achieved.
Jeffrey Kahn
The extraordinary Mrs. Shipley: how the United States controlled international travel before the age of terrorism
Connecticut Law Review 43:3 (Feb 2011) 819-888
http://uconn.lawreviewnetwork.com/files/documents/JeffreyKahn43Conn.L.Rev.819.pdf
[389 footnotes] Career civil servant Ruth B. Shipley acted as chief of the Passport Division of the U.S. State Department from 1928 to 1955. Shipley personally reviewed every passport application, and prior to 1958 Supreme Court decision, her actions were subject to no judicial review. Shipley denied passports to Paul Robeson, Arthur Miller, Linus Pauling, and “many other” Americans during the 1950s. Kahn’s article explores how Shipley acquired such power and how the US passport became an instrument to prevent rather than permit travel. A backgrounder opening (825-842) provides a history of travel controls from 1789 to the Shipley era. Originally the passport was “a document [issued by the country that the traveler sought to enter] that granted a foreigner permission to pass into or out of a country’s ports” (825) — the opposite of what the passport came to be. Kahn concludes that current administration of U.S. citizens has achieved the Shipley effect through authority “diffused among intelligence analysts in multiple agencies who now compile watchlists of people deemed too dangerous to travel.” In this environment, judicial review is crippled by “the traditional deference accorded to national security and the sometimes secret processes by which that government interest is secured” (887).
