Post 25--The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (2)

I ended the last post with the promise that there was more to come about this wild Canadian taxman.  So, here goes….

In 2006, Irvin’s Member of Parliament (MP) took up his case with the Minister of National Revenue. The MP was told that the CRA does not have a mechanism to compensate wronged taxpayers!  But if Irvin would file a new lawsuit for damages, the CRA would settle out of court. So he did, expecting a settlement. 

Nope!  The CRA lawyers fought tooth and nail filing applications and appeals to have the case dismissed. It took seven long years to have it reach trial. As the CTF told it:

During these years, Irvin’s ordeal became public, touching off a groundswell of support…. He was overwhelmed by letters from other Canadian who told him of their own horror stories with the CRA and contributed money to help keep his case going. 

It became apparent that this wasn’t a one-off case of taxpayer wrongdoing by the CRA. It was much bigger than that.  It was about reining in the power of a government agency with almost unchecked power.

The Supreme Court of BC ruled that the CRA owed a “duty of care” to Irvin, i.e.” to treat him in a non-negligent manner.”  Now that sounds pretty tame  in this context, but the CRA is appealing this ruling, claiming it does not have any legal “duty” to taxpayers or that it should be held to account when it is negligent!  Can you believe it? In this civilized country?  Can you now understand why I am livid? 

The CTF has decided to take up this case. It intends to fight to protect this “duty of care” obligation on the part of CRA.  This is “about reining in the power of a government agency with almost unchecked power.” It doesn’t have the money and is appealing for donations.  You can contact them at
< admin@taxpayer.com >.  It could happen to you. Irving did not think it ever would to him either. 

Post 24--The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (1)

POST 24    The Taxman: A Wild Canadian Bronco (1)      

I am livid and furious with a level of indignation that demands serious restraint on my part lest I spew out a barrage of ugly epithets that are trying to burst out in the open. Doing so would be unfit for a Christian gentleman.  The focus of all this threatening violence? None other than Canada’s taxman, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

I readily admit that all this internal violence and turmoil is misdirected. It should really be directed at myself and my fellow Caucasian settlers in Canada for the way we have mistreated the Aboriginals, an issue that deserves an even uglier barrage than that which is currently threatening to unleash itself. But being human, the oppression that threatens me, even though less than that suffered by First Nations, outrages me more.  I feel it more. So, with apologies to my Aboriginal fellow Canadians, here goes.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is a highly respected and effective coalition of taxpayers that watch all levels of government in the country for the way they raise and spend public funds. When they take up a cause or issue, you can be sure they have done due diligence; nothing sloppy about them.

They recently sent me a circular featuring the outrageous mistreatment meted out to citizen Irvin Leroux from Prince George, BC over a period of  eighteen years, starting in 1993, when they began to audit him. In 1999, the CRA  informed him he owed them over $600,000 in taxes, interest and penalties. Leroux denied this as impossible and started legal proceedings that dragged on and on and, thus became very expensive. Well, let me just tell you in the words of CTF:

In 2005, the CRA conceded that Leroux did not owe them any money. But the damage was done. During this ordeal, the CRA took aggressive measures to collect on the bogus $600,000 tax bill (over $800,000 by the time this matter was settled).

They registered judgements against his house and other lands, and issued a Writ of Seizure and Sale against all his assets. The Business Development Bank foreclosed on the RV park he had built. He was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on accountants and lawyers to vindicate himself.

The ordeal ruined Leroux. He lost his home, his business, his land, his savings and his future. To this day he owes roughly $300,000 to friends and family members who lent him money while he desperately fought to save his business and his life.  No wonder he has trouble sleeping at night, developed a hiatus hernia and suffers many of the symptoms of a man under extreme stress.

The CRA never offered him a penny of compensation for the ordeal they put him through. Not even an apology. 

But this tragedy doesn’t end there…. 

But that is for next time. Any more of this without a break could just give you a heart attack. 

A’a!  Without intending to do so, here I go, slipping in another promise! I’m discovering I can’t do without promises. Let me just promise to keep them to a minimum. And that’s two within just two lines of text!  And, to top it off with a third, I promise to let that subject rest—for a while, anyway. Even though promises are likely to keep cropping up. Can’t do without them!

Post 23--Transparency Follow-Up

You see I kept my promise. This is a short follow-up on the aboriginal transparency or lack of it without promising to do so.  Never kept a promise so faithfully!

The story was released at a strategic time in the life of the band: just before elections for chief were held.  And you know what happened? He was turfed together with the manager. Whereas the chiefly gauging of the people was explained in terms of the short window of opportunity for the chief, this one actually did not even have that excuse, for, apart from a brief interruption, he served for 34 years! That was more than enough time to rake it in, while his people were unattended to. This time he was voted out.  I hope he will share his takings over the years with the impoverished Prime Minister, the poor man who rules over some 34 million subjects but makes less than the chief with a  constituency about the size of an extended family.

The interesting thing is that the three councilors who were voted in are left with the responsibility of  choosing a new chief. However, according to the re-elected incumbent, Barbara Cote, the Council will most likely ask an outsider to come in and help make the transition. “I really think we need someone…to sort us out,” she said, “perhaps someone from the federal government (FG).”

That, to me, is an extremely surprising development.  Ask the FG to help the band to sort itself out? That FG that has been blamed for so much of the Aboriginal crisis by its mismanagement?  There are both provincial and national Aboriginal umbrella organizations with their officials. Why not invite them in?  Or am I surprised because I’ve been deceived by the media and the literature that feed the public with a barrage of government failures?  I cannot avoid the question: Are the officials of these umbrella organizations less competent and more inept, more corrupt and oppressive than the FG?  Somebody please help me understand.

I do not write about such negative Aboriginal developments because I want to berate them or because I wish to picture them as incapable of handling their own affairs. For one thing, these are not exclusively “their own affairs:” These are public affairs involving public funding. That public is getting impatient with the shroud of intransparency with which billions of tax dollars keep being handed out to a people who claim they wish to live according to their own cultural norms. The situation is feeding into the growing public contempt for a people who are seen to be dishonest, incapable and under the thumb of an elitist bunch who seem never to have heard of accountability. 

I hereby challenge the Aboriginal community to clean up their act and demonstrate to us the positive side of their culture, not merely by putting on occasional Aboriginal cultural shows but by using those public funds to liberate their people from a long history of enslavement to inept FG officials and establish clean regimes that benefit the entire band.

Aboriginals, you people have suffered enough from all angles. No one will put an end to that suffering but you yourself, while us Aboriphiles—a neologism I just coined—can support and cheer you on from the sideline.  I long for you to rise and shine. 

I cannot suppress a vague kind of promise: I will occasionally return to the “Aborigin file.” Keep an eye on it. 

(Major source: Bethany Lindsay, "Highly-paid Shuswap chief, councillor swept from office." VS, November 8, 2014, p. A8.)

Post 22--Aboriginal Transparency

Pos

In the previous blog I  promised—there’s that word again!—that I would explain what I meant that Caucasians are not the only ones to oppress Aboriginals.  Aboriginals themselves oppress each other, at least, occasionally. The Vancouver Sun (VS) of November 5 & 7, 2014, featured some articles alleging an Aboriginal chief’s mischievous financial management at the expense of his own people. I refer you to:

“Family at centre of pay firestorm…,”  Nov. 5.

“Reserve life out of step…,” Nov. 7.

According to the VS, the chief of a very small community, smaller than my extended family—the band has 267 members, of whom a mere 87 live on the reserve--, takes home $200,000 a year, while his subjects live in poverty and hardship, without any development taking place in the reserve. The chief is not the only one: The CEO of the band’s corporation has earned an average of $536,000 in the past five years.  

Though this may be an extreme case, it is not unusual. I have many reports like it in my files. Not only that, but during my RV travels through BC, including the north, I have several times had Aboriginals complain to me about such chiefly mischief.  The communities are not getting their share in terms of development. For this reason, the Federal Government has passed a law demanding transparency. Fair enough, you would think. Who could possibly oppose such a move?

Would you believe it that Canada’s opposition parties oppose this move? I cannot imagine that!  That’s a requirement for all government spending at all levels!  Aboriginals have their own defenders of the situation. The VS reports that Edin Robinson, a prominent Aboriginal writer, objects because chiefs are in effect asked “to prove they aren’t liars and cheat.”!  Well, is that so bad? Isn’t that the point of disclosure? We all know the temptations public money represents for those responsible for it. Aboriginal chiefs are no exception: They are as human as the rest of us! So, Robinson is right on. 

Of course, the real reason for resistance to transparency is all too transparent. The scandalously high salaries of a few elites ruling a community smaller than my extended family are totally indefensible, especially in view of the conditions of poverty and neglect that prevail on the reserve. It cannot stand up to the light of transparency.  

The stated reason for the scandalously high salaries—higher even than that of our Prime Minister and Premier!—is that it goes counter to Shuswap culture. That may be true to a degree, but such traditions have developed under conditions of trust, fairness and equality. When those conditions no longer hold, it is time for serious review. The source culture of that money, Canadian taxpayers, does demand transparency.

I recently attended a lecture in a local church where the speaker, while claiming not to be defending such practices, tried to explain that there is a story behind the news that the media do not tell. That story is that most reserve chiefs and managers are in office for only a few years. This is their one and only chance to lift themselves out of their life-long poverty. So, they take advantage of it. I have lived in Nigeria, where this same story unfolds at every level of government with the result that 80% of Nigerians are poor in spite of the country’s oil income. Yes, the story is quite understood, but it is no excuse.
 

I am not sure who is responsible for this situation. I believe it is a long succession of Governments that have allowed it to develop. I praise our present Government for trying to stem this scandalous situation and am deeply offended by the parties who opposed this demand for transparency. 

(I have submitted another version of this post in the form of a letter to the VS editor.) Am still waiting to see whether it will be published.)

Post 21--Aboriginal Canadians--Initial Musings

 

Before I say anything else, please understand that I am horrified at what Caucasians have done to/with the Aboriginal population of Canada as a whole and BC in particular—BC simply because I live there and am more aware of what is happening there. Which does not mean that I am as aware or as knowledgeable as I either could or should be.

 

I have been interested in the “Aboriginal issue” for many years and have been collecting myriads of news articles and other materials ever since I returned to BC to retire in 2001. This means I have several file boxes filled with this material as well as electronic files. I have been entertaining the hope to do some serious research on the topic after I was finished with my major writing projects, namely the 8-volume series on Christian-Muslim Relations and the 5-volume memoirs. Now that I have completed those two, I find I no longer have the energy or the ambition to start another major project like an “Aboriginal study.” Actually, it probably should have been a "Caucasian study."

If I still had the required energy, the project would have been basically sympathetic to the Aboriginal side.  The raw treatment they have received at the hands of the “Christian” settlers is simply so outrageous from the Christian perspective that we Christians and  our churches should collectively hang our heads in total shame—which, of course, we did during the life of the recent reconciliation campaign.  It actually is amazing that there are any Christian Aboriginals and that one finds churches scattered throughout most of the reservations. I am not going to devote a lot of space to Caucasian colonialism. The facts are all too well documented in a rich genre of literature, though I may occasionally offer some perspectives on that history.

However, the Caucasians are not the only ones to have abused the Aboriginal peoples of BC.  That’s the subject I will write about in the next post.

O’o, there I go again with several promises in the above. Try and find them! Since the previous blog, I have discovered that it is hard to live without making promises. I am beginning to wonder whether we should consider our human race as a Promising Race  just we often characterize it as a Rational Race. Well, whatever.

So, in spite of my promise to the contrary in Post 20, here’s another promise: My promises will be kept to small formats like the next post or some occasional perspectives. They will be nothing big that will obligate me to do something substantial and lead you to expect blog upon blog on this or that topic that I could interrupt only at the peril of losing your confidence and patience. Been there; done that. Never again--hopefully!

Post 20--Confession: Unfullfilled Promises

This blog series is my fourth. You want to know why I keep starting up new ones only to abandon them after a few months? I could not keep up with the promises I made. I had big plans and made many promises to my readers. I had every intention of keeping them, but every time it well apart.  I kept running short of time and the topics I promised to you, my readers, were just too many. So, I’d give up in despair and then would feel intensely disappointed with myself. A half year later, I would start up again—with the same intentions and the same result.

Well, this is post number 20 in this current effort and this time I will not allow another failure. I will make fewer promises. For example, I will not promise to write a specific number of blogs a week or a month, though I hope I will manage one a week—but, remember, that’s my hope within myself, not a promise to you. I will also no longer promise to write on this or that subject and then find it crowded out by more pressing current events in the community.

I actually found myself making such promises even in this blog. I started writing about faith and science, only to “temporarily” abandon it in favour of a more immediate topic.  Since then, other “immediate” topics have intervened and I suddenly realize I am back on the same treadmill.  I want to stop it right now! No more of this! No more such empty promises!

But hold it! No more promises is itself a promise!  How on earth do I get off this treadmill?  To be honest, I’m not sure about this. Some time ago, a Vancouver Sun columnist declared that there are no absolutes. I drew his attention to the internal fallacy of his statement, for that statement itself was absolute.  He admitted it was so and only threw up his hands like, “Now what do we do? How do I get out of this without retracting the statement?” That’s where he left it. Well, that’s where I leave it as well.  Just this promise, just one, no more!

Thanks for your patience in reading this confession. Tomorrow I will….  A’a, there we go. Another promise? 

Post 19--Dalai Highlights

An Exotic Visit

 I started that letter to the editor of the GS (see previous post) with the statement that Vancouver is an interesting place and exciting.  How many cities in the world bring together such interesting people as the Buddhist Dalai Lama from Tibet, the Muslim female human rights activist Shirin Ebadi from Iran and the Christian apartheid foe Bishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa?  Three races, three nationalities, three religions, three Nobel prize winners and three gifts of God to this one world.  Then our city joined them to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Jew, and to Jo-Ann Archibald, a BC First Nations leader.  And all of that crowd moderated by our own Vancouver Michael Ingham, the most controversial, though now retired,  Anglican bishop in the world.  The menu just doesn’t get more exotic than that!  His current 2014 visit is equally exciting, even if, perhaps, not quite as exotic this time.

The Warm Heart   

 As exotic and different as the actors on the stage were, they dealt with a concept that is central to the main institutionalized religion in Vancouver, i.e., Christianity, namely the “warm heart.”  The warm heart was the Dalai’s main message, but, unfortunately, at that time he confessed not to know how to achieve it. It was still in the conceptual stage. I am not sure whether, between that earlier visit and the current one, he has come to any conclusions on the subject. However, it is important for peace that we learn how to develop the warm heart. It is its absence that has led to the violence and terrorism that marks our time. 

As I emphasized in my GS letter, especially Christian schools and churches continue to emphasize the need for a warm heart and how to achieve it. If dialogue is to be a major element during these visits, I am utterly surprised that this Christian recognition has not bubbled up to the surface in the discussion. At least the reports in the print media have been silent on this score.  

Mind-Body-Heart Connection

The Dalai’s visit was apparently the trigger that motivated a Vancouver-based company, Lululemon Athletica, to help fund research into the connection between mind, body and heart at the Dalai Lama Centre for Peace and Education, also based in Vancouver. I think it a great gain if the research will end up showing a close connection between these three sides of human beings, a subject that has been avoided in the public school system but, again, since of old emphasized in Christian church and education.  Within the Christian community, it is especially the Reformed tradition that has given much prominence to that connection. Hence, if the Centre is really interested in both dialogue and that connection, she should turn to the Reformed community and its philosophers and explore its vision on the subject. Again, they are right here in Vancouver; you don’t have to go to the ends of the earth for it. At the same time, I would encourage leaders in the Reformed community to reach out in dialogue and share their insights, in the process hopefully also learn something from the Dalai’s side, since genuine dialogue implies mutual sharing. Come on, fellow Reformed guys and gals, let’s pay them a visit and get the dialogue rolling.

Multi-Culturalism
During this time of multi-culturalism, there is a lot of back and forth discussion during which participants take opposite sides. The popular side tends to emphasize differences between peoples living together, while the more academic prefers to major on the similarities. The Dalai sides with the latter. During his visit he affirmed that the similarities should be emphasized, rather than the difference.

The discussion is an example of the tendency of people always to choose opposite sides. Not only individuals choosing opposite sides from each other, but even one side being the dominant school of thought in a given period of time, let’s say for a decade, only then to reject that position for its opposite. Now that one becomes the reigning common sense or the politically correct. Human beings are like a pendulum, always swinging from one opposite to the other.

This tendency is not just a matter of innocent opinion or academic theory; it shapes politics, a point we must save for another day. But let me state my own take, which is that both similarities and differences must be acknowledged and embraced together, for that is reality. They both exist; neither can be wished away. Again, this will receive more attention in another blog—some day. 

Enough heavy stuff for the day. Good bye, Dalai Lama. Thanks for honouring us with your occasional visits. As you have moved on, so will we.