— Still expecting that the Constitutional-Charter trial will take place in 2017. Date however, still uncertain and will depend on how Motions are decided by the Court.
— The Government lawyers have now asked the Court, by way of a formal motion, to compel the Plaintiffs to provide certain additional documents and our lawyers will be resisting the motion.
One of our Plaintiffs, Ginny, comments on the Motion to compel more documents from Plaintiffs: “They are asking for more answers from the plaintiffs which we and our lawyers deem unnecessary and pedantic, let alone not legally relevant. For instance, here’s a little example. They really want to know my credits and debits from my chequing account? Sure, I could tell them the whole unabashed truth under oath… The debits are the usual household monthly expenses of the average family with one exception. Barclay,the greatest dog on earth eats a lot and is rather spoiled and gets more haircuts per year than I do. In the last few days of the month, we hold our breath and hope we make it to the end without going into overdraft. And so my question to them is: how is this relevant to your [Charter] section 1 argument?…Why can they not tell us whose banking account information has been turned over to the IRS via the CRA, whether over or under the >50K aggregate [see Plaintiffs’ questions and Government “responses” below in link]. We’d like that on the record, whereas I can bet the farm that the average Canadian does not care what Barclay’s food costs are.”
— See the (amended) Claims of the Plaintiffs and the now published as affidavit last response of Government to the Claims.
Note the changes (underlined) from original response on page 137 (14) in which Government denies Constitutional violations and now argues that “To determine whether any Charter rights or constitutional principles, written or unwritten, have been infringed unjustifiably by such alleged enforcement requires a factual matrix where the US has actually attempted to recover, in Canada, taxes or charges against a particular individual residing in Canada.”
Note also that Government has now DELETED on page 139 (16) its previous statement: “Furthermore, the defendants deny that there exists a principle of fundamental justice that foreign tax debts are not enforceable in Canada.”
— See the many questions asked by Plaintiffs to Government detailing the type etc. of FATCA information provided by Canada to United States and by U.S. to Canada, response of Government, and Objections raised by Government to Plaintiffs’ question.
I was particularly interested in knowing details on the bank account information that flowed from Canadian accounts in U.S. to Canada as part of the so-called “reciprocal” FATCA agreement — a key justification, in addition to promise of economic sanction for non-compliance, for Canada to “agree” to the FATCA IGA.
Government response to the request for information on the reciprocal bank data are: “On the advice of counsel. I am unable to answer” with the attached objection: “The Defendants object to Q. #4 and refuse to answer it because doing so may require disclosing sensitive information or potentially injurious information as those terms are defined in s. 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-5.”
[Also, I wanted to know: “…how many of the persons associated with those accounts had already been reported by the United States to Canada for tax purposes…? See the answer in link to this question…]
— Still seeking Exit tax witness. Supporter suggests (and I agree) that anyone who took measures to reduce asset worth to avoid exit tax would be considered…
