Letter (Late!) from Joe Oliver on FATCA

FATCA

I today received via e-mail a letter from Joe Oliver in response to letters I wrote to Jim Flaherty on behalf of Maple Sandbox a year ago.
One was the letter Do All Canadians have the Same Rights sent to Jim Flaherty on November 25, 2013 by Maple Sandbox and Isaac Brock Society. We did not receive a reply until today, but we got our answer in February when the IGA was announced and again in June when the Cons passed the enabling Act.
The other was my Christmas wish list letter. We didn’t get our Christmas wishes last year and we all know what we’re getting this year from our Grinch government and our Scrooge banks.
The betrayal, letter and delay speak for themselves.
It seems they are going out in a mass e-mail. I had an e-mail from someone today whose friend received one and a very irate telephone call from someone else who received a letter from his Con MP.
He was so enraged he was planning another donation to ADCs. I urge others will express their rage the exact same way.

16 thoughts on “Letter (Late!) from Joe Oliver on FATCA”

  2. @SwissPinoy. The letter is Con speech for:

    “Congress has spoken.”


    MP Mike Allen is the only Con who was honest and brave enough to say exactly why they caved.

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  3. Rage expressed! Just sent him ANOTHER email and I am VERY crabby this morning. Really, do they think we are fools? The CRA reporting rather than the banks, what in Hell is the difference? Is that suppose to make us delighted? RRSPs, TFSAs..etc are protected? Has Mr. Oliver never heard of FBAR? And the reciprocity sentence almost put me away. Really, does he actually believe that one? That’s pretty much what I asked him. Grrrrrrrr

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  4. @PastBeyond60: Be prepared to wait over a year for a reply.
    By then I hope we will have a new government.
    So, how optimistic am I that a new government would overturn FATCA? Not at all with Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. With the NDP or Greens, I think they would amend the Act or the IGA to carve out Canadian citizens and possibly Canadian permanent residents. But, it’s unlikely NDP or Greens would form the government.
    Our best (and perhaps only) hope is the lawsuit.

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  5. The only remotely positive thing in Oliver’s letter is his confirmation and re-iteration that CRA will NOT collect US tax liabilities on Canadian residents who were Canadian citizens at the time the alleged tax liability was incurred. Presumably that also includes non-filing penalties. So, at least for many so-called US persons who are (or certainly have been for some time) Canadian citizens, the option remains not to submit to US tax claims but to avoid setting foot on US soil. Though I suspect any US-source income or US property holdings might still be subject to “attachment” by IRS.
    However the letter certainly makes clear the main priority of this excuse for a Canadian government was to protect its banks and large investors, and not its citizens.

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  6. Here is my reply to Oliver with a cc to Nathan Cullen, Murray Rankin, Scott Brison, Ted Hsu and Elizabeth May:

    Thank you for your very tardy response to communications sent to former Finance Minister the late Jim Flaherty over a year ago asking a simple question: Do all Canadians have the same rights under Canada’s laws and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

    That question was clearly answered in February with the announcement of the FATCA IGA The answer was a clear and unequivocal “No.”
    Your letter can be summed up in three simple words from Conservative MP Mike Allen at the Standing Committee on Finance: “Congress has spoken.”
    Mr. Allen seems to be the only member of your party who is honest enough to say exactly what happened with FATCA.
    I have faith Canadian courts will see it differently than you do and will conclude that yes, all Canadians do have the same rights in this great country–regardless of where they were born.
    Lynne Swanson
    Co-Adminstrator Maple Sandbox
    Chair, Litigation Committee, Alliance for the Defence of Canadian Sovereignty

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    1. Thanks for the reply to Joe Oliver. It is sad to see that he misses the point of your simple question or pretends that he does to please the Harper government. When the leaders are sheep, we are all in trouble. I hope you are right that the Canadian courts will see it differently.

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    2. @Pat:  In case you or others have not seen the letter sent jointly from Sandbox and Brock to Minister Flaherty here is Open Letter:  Canadian Rights vs Foreign Demands

      As you will see, we began the letter with:

      We write to you today asking a simple question: Do all Canadians have the same rights under Canada’s laws and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

      We laid out our situation as best as we could.
      The IGA, Con Finance Committee treatment of our issues, the enabling law and now the Oliver letter serve as the answer to that letter.

       

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  8. I also rec’d a reply from Oliver to a letter I sent back in July. It is the same drivel that totally ignores the trampling of privacy rights. I don’t give a fig about the US thinking I might owe them something because they have no jurisdiction to collect here. I do care about my personal information being bandied about, and this point the government is willfully ignoring, I suspect because they know they’re in trouble on that angle.

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