Elizabeth May and the Green Party of Canada have spoken out against the recently announced FATCA IGA between Canada and the US.  On Monday, Ms. May raised the issue of Charter rights in Question Period.  From Open Parliament, here is her exchange with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty:

Elizabeth May Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask a question today of the Minister of Finance relating to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, FATCA.

On the U.S. side of the border, there are concerns raised that because the treaties have not been ratified through the U.S. Senate, these may not be legally binding treaties in any case; and on the Canadian side of the border, no less a legal expert than Peter Hogg, former dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, has written the advice that this very likely will violate section 15 of the Charter by treating some Canadians differently from others.

More than 30 years ago, I learned constitutional law in a textbook he wrote.

What will the minister say to its constitutionality?

 

Jim Flaherty Minister of Finance

Mr. Speaker, I was taught by Peter Hogg as well. I got an A in the tax course.

Continue reading →

UPDATE: Sorry folks, the interview wasn’t yesterday, but will air today (March 5) at 4:15 pm Pacific; 7:15 Eastern.

Thanks to the persistence of one read at Isaac Brock, I spoke with Jon McComb of Vancouver’s CKNW, and the interview will play on the live stream at 20:35 Eastern / 17:35 Pacific Time.  Subject: FATCA and its impact on so-called US persons in Canada.

Afterwards, the show is available here: http://www.cknw.com/the-world-today/

If  you have not already done so, please take some time to email or write the Canadian Finance Department  with your comments regarding the signed Information Exchange Agreement between Canada and the United States. (Due date now past: thanks to all who participated).

http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/notices/fatca-eng.asp

ADMISSION FEE $20 UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED (to cover costs)

• Toronto, ON U.S. Citizenship & Young Adults: Navigating The Special Rules Imposed On U.S.Citizens Abroad Sat, June 7, 10 am to 12 noon, Univ of Toronto, St. Michael’s College, Carr Hall, 100 St. Joseph St, MAP NB: $20 individual or $40 for a family of up to four people

Vancouver notes (Feb 22) Updated on March 28 here
Continue reading →

Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), FATCA, Citizenship based taxation, the exit tax, $450 renunciation fee, the requirement to certify five years tax compliance, long lines at US Consulates to renounce, the threat of permanent exile and ten years further taxation after expatriation (Ex-Patriot Act; Reed Amendment), these are obstacles that hinder many so-called Americans from asserting their mobility rights and their fundamental right to change nationalities. Relinquishing US citizenship should be as natural as taking a breath, and so these obstacles fly in face of the freedoms for which early Americans were willing to fight and die:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These days the Obama vanguard will mercilessly mock you if you mention a Creator, natural law and how the IRS violates constitutional rights like the Fifth Amendment. But when the young country called the USA was still trying to assert its independence from Britain and the Crown, Americans had another view of the right to expatriate. They called it a natural right. Today, referring to natural law may flag you as a tax protestor. For early Americans, hindering expatriation was to make a man a slave. In this light, Badger found this in an article by Nancy L. Green:

Justice James Iredell left one of the more memorable expressions of the principle of expatriation, still quoted today: “That a man ought not to be a slave; that he should not be confined against his will to a particular spot because he happened to draw his first breath upon it; that he should not be compelled to continue in a society to which he is accidentally attached, when he can better his situation elsewhere, much less when he must starve in one country, and may live comfortably in another, are positions which I hold as strongly as any man, and they are such as most nations in the world appear clearly to recognize.” [Source: “Talbot v. Jansen, 3 U.S. 3 Dall. 133 (1795) at 162].

From: Nancy L. Green, ‘Expatriation, Expatriates, and Expats: The American Transformation of a Concept’ The American Historical Review 114 (2) (2009) 307-328.”

Today’s Toronto Star Commentary Section has our good friend, Jim Jatras, commenting on the situation in Canada:

“Canadian visitors to Washington sometimes wonder why their embassy stands at the foot of Capitol Hill.

The answer? To be close to where Canada’s laws are made.”

Continue reading →

Finland 1940

We are now refugees
in Finland.

My little daughter
Returns home in the evening complaining that no child
Will play with her. She is German, and comes
From a nation of gangsters.

When I exchange loud words during a discussion
I am told to be quiet. The people here do not like
Loud words from someone
Who comes from a nation of gangsters.

When I remind my little daughter
That the Germans are a nation of gangsters
She is glad with me that they are not loved
And we laugh together.

Bertolt Brecht