Quantcast
Channel: theCCF.ca »“Big Brother”
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 11

Government flip-flops on privacy rights

0
0

If there’s one thing we know about politics, it’s that you should never expect the players to be consistent.

Before last fall’s federal election, several prominent Liberal MPs expressed strong misgivings about Canada’s agreement to turn over the personal financial information of “U.S. persons” residing in Canada to the United States government. It was a deal reached to comply with the United States’ new Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). At the Americans’ behest, Canada began sharing tax information about Canadians, some of whom have never lived in the United States, never worked in the United States and never owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a single penny.

No one was clearer about his qualms about this agreement than now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who wrote in a pre-election letter that, “The Government of Canada has a responsibility to stand up for its citizens when foreign governments are encroaching on their rights. We believe that the deal reached between Canada and the U.S. is insufficient to protect affected Canadians.”

In 2014, MP Marc Garneau, who’s now the transport minister, also voiced his disapproval of the agreement by pointing out that the IRS was trying to get the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to “do its dirty work.” Yet now he says he supports the deal.

The current revenue minister, Diane Lebouthillier, has repeatedly defended the agreement and sought to reassure Canadians that it does not violate their rights. According to iPolitics reporter Elizabeth Thompson, a request from that news outlet for an interview with Lebouthillier elicited an email reply from Lebouthillier’s office that said: “The CRA ensures that tax cooperation with its foreign partners is done in a manner fully consistent with privacy rights in Canada. It is important to note that Canada and the United States have a long history of exchanging tax information in a fair and responsible manner, going back to 1942.”

It is of course every policymaker’s prerogative to change his mind, and there’s no doubt that the U.S. has made the penalties for not acceding to its demands with regard to FACTA exceptionally harsh. It is, however, still disappointing that we appear to be no further ahead in addressing the constitutional problems with the FATCA-related agreement than we were when the previous government passed it two years ago.

Indeed, the unfair ramifications of the deal remain: for Canadians, merely having dual U.S. citizenship — for example, because one’s parents were Americans or one was born on U.S. soil to Canadian parents — is enough to trigger the mandatory sharing of private financial details. This is why two Ontario women launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government in August 2014 for agreeing to the information sharing.

That suit is still before the courts, but the feelings of one of the plaintiffs, Gwen Deegan, expressed around the time the constitutional challenge was launched, remain as relevant as ever: “This is an infringement on Canadians of U.S. origin by our Canadian government. It’s literally a betrayal and I feel we can’t just sit idly by and let it happen.”

Deegan is a graphic designer from Toronto who was born in the United States, but has not lived there since she was five years old; she has never held a U.S. passport, nor has she ever worked in the United States. This tenuous connection with the United States still qualifies her as a “U.S. person” whose financial details the CRA will now be turning over to the IRS, if it hasn’t already. Her fellow plaintiff, Ginny Hillis, a retired lawyer from Windsor, Ont., has not lived in the United States since she was five years old; that’s when she moved to Canada with her Canadian parents. Like Deegan, Hillis has never held a U.S. passport.

As I noted in a column in 2014, the interesting thing about Deegan and Hillis’s circumstances is that both women happen to be married to Canadians with whom they hold several joint financial accounts. Why should these women’s husbands — who are not “U.S. persons,” even under the most expansive definition of that term — also be subject to having the details of their financial savings turned over to a foreign government? Do Canada’s constitutional guarantees of liberty, security of the person and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure not apply as forcefully to these men, as well?

At the heart of this debate is the question of whether the agreement with the U.S. is in violation of the Canadian Constitution, as Deegan, Hillis and others have argued convincingly during this case.

If it is, all the American bullying in the world is not enough reason to sacrifice Canadians’ rights.

(Image by Brandon L. under CC 2.0)

The post Government flip-flops on privacy rights appeared first on theCCF.ca .


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 11

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images