by Douglas Christie
April 2005
The state grows and the individual diminishes. This general rule is irrevocable and immutable unless people resist.
Recently I learned from the Ontario Court of Appeal in the case of Dr. Klundert that an honest but mistaken belief about the constitutional validity of the Income Tax Act is no defense to a charge of evasion. This happened in 2004. In the same year, the same Ontario Court of Appeal found in the case of Ricci that a mistaken belief that the Income Tax Act does not apply to you, even though honestly held, was likewise no defense to a charge of evasion.
In order to pay my income tax for the year 2004 I have had to obtain a business loan. This was for the first time in 35 years. It is obvious that taxes are killing everyone. For every dollar I charge in fees I pay 15 percent right off the top. Then I pay all my office and business expenses. On the balance I pay income tax, which seems like around 45 percent.
I am no accountant. When I talk to my accountant she tries to explain to me. I really don't understand. Like many people, I'm too tired from the stress of my work to be able to comprehend the minute, totally artificial rules and regulations.
When I question the validity of the tax she says "don't forget whenever someone else fails to pay, that means all the more for you to pay." This is particularly her comment when I mentioned that my greatest satisfaction comes from defending people charged with income tax evasion. I remind her about what they do with the money when you do pay your tax. Of course without income tax we would not need accountants, to the same degree that we do now. Imagine a world where accountants’ sole job was to help people be more productive rather than be punished for their productivity.
Taxation after all is the bureaucratic engine’s gasoline. It fuels all the relevant non-productive, confiscatory work which bureaucrats enjoy. It creates the state which tells you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, where to do it, at what time to do it, what to pay for it, what quality of work must accompany it, who may buy it, where you may sell it, what you may say about it when you sell at, and of course what you may say about the government that imposes all this upon you.
In Canada taxes funds the Human Rights Commission, which can hold you liable for what you say and make you pay a penalty and remain silent about it. This is to maintain our sacred multicultural society from unpleasant truths that might be spoken about things like the Air India bombing. Immigration likewise can be a taboo topic. You can be considered a threat to national security if you have incorrect political opinions, just like Ernst Zundel, or charged with a word crime like James Keegstra, Malcolm Ross, John Ross Taylor, Tony McAleer, and more recently Dr. David Ahenakew.
All of this of course can only be enforced when there are lots of bureaucrats, policeman, prosecutors, judges, and appropriately respectful media people, all duly paid one way or another from taxes. Even the media persons are largely paid through government advertising contracts as we have come to realize in the Adscam. And an even larger percentage of the public debt every year is incurred to keep the insatiable bureaucracy happy and even growing.
One has to understand that the Canadian system is not just corrupt in a few areas like Adscam, or HRDC grants. The Canadian system is systemically corrupt. Those who think the judiciary are inclined to uphold individual liberty against the power of the state are generally sadly disappointed. Those who see the day-to-day operations of the courts have come to realize that judges are generally quite sympathetic to the concept of state authority, power, and regulation. Hence they do not readily or perhaps ever strike down the taxing authorities power. Taxes are to the government what heroin is to addicts. It is the vehicle of greater power, control, and the ability to reward your friends and punish your enemies.
As a lawyer, I have always upheld the rights of individual against the state. I have done this not because I think there is no point to a state. Rather, I believe that in modern times the state has become enormously over-powerful. To protect the rights of the individual against the state will require both courageous lawyers and citizens willing to pay the legal price of resisting tyranny.
It is frequently easier to pay the tax than to fight it. It is often cheaper to placate the powerful with the guilty plea and beg for mercy than to make a plea of not guilty and go to a long and costly trial. The costs of trials in the legal system are only increasing. This can make, in civil matters, justice only available for the rich. In criminal matters likewise legal aid provides very little, if any, real defense.
The worst-case scenario is the defense of a civil claim, or a quasi-administrative tribunal’s claim. In such circumstances, legal aid is never available. If we want justice, we will have to organize large pools of capital that are capable of providing a credible defense in civil and administrative tribunal cases. This is particularly so in the realm of defamation where a poor plaintiff is virtually unable to protect their reputation.
That is why I see the Canadian Free Speech League as playing a vital role of leadership in the preservation of freedom of speech and individual liberty against the power of the state. Freedom of speech is indeed the first freedom.
It is only with freedom of speech that all other freedoms can be and might be preserved. It is freedom of speech that is most under attack by the governments’ secular religion of political correctness. This is today being enforced primarily through government-funded bureaucrats, disguised as lawyers. They have the security of tenure, lack of competitiveness, excess time, unlimited resources, and quite often the burning hatred for anyone who disagrees with the state religion of (shall we call it) "multiculturalism."
If the Canadian Free Speech League, funded by individual donations, can make a difference in a few cases, it is capable of turning the tide against censorship and oppression of individual freedom. Ironically, this is only possible with money.
The same people who might donate to such costs are already being taxed to death by their political opponents. By political opponents, I do not mean partisan. I mean those who basically despise individual liberty and worship at the shrine of the state to the state goddess of multiculturalism. It is sadly the truth that the defenders of individualism are attacked from both sides.
They are attacked by the government-funded regulators, supported by taxes, and at the same time the very money that they could use to defend their liberty is being taken away from them by taxation to feed their adversary in the litigation. This can only be defeated by the most courageous and dedicated self-sacrifice, both on the part of lawyers who seek by peaceful means to turn the tide against this state of coercion and also by dedicated citizens who support and fund defenses of others when they themselves are not under attack.
If you cannot see that your brother's freedom is your freedom, he will soon see that neither you nor your brother have any freedom left.
Three cheers for liberty, for you, for me, for those whose opinions we do not share, that each of us may grow in understanding and respect for the glorious creation that is the individual person.
Taxation and its soul-destroying weight must be resisted at every turn by courageous individuals, using every political and legal means. How ironic that just recently, the NDP demand as a condition of supporting the corrupt Liberals, that the latter do away with billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts. I suppose they think we are so shallow that we will not agree to the removal of someone else's burdens because like my accountant they want us to believe that your relief is my greater burden. By such reasoning any slave who escaped from the plantation could count on the jealousy of those who remained as slaves to provide the information necessary to return the escapee to the same slaves state that they endure.
Let us hope more people come to realize that the increase of your freedom is not the diminution of mine, but quite the contrary. Freedom, like so many other finite commodities, is actually increased by giving it away to others. Let us further hope that throughout the world, men and women will come to cherish freedoms so much that they will not surrender any of it to governments who diminish the significance of the individual by taxation in order to empower the state.
Let each of us do for ourselves what we can, and voluntarily for those who cannot. Only by such heroic acts of individual courage can we hope to achieve dignity for ourselves and the true nobility possible for all free man. Free the West!
Douglas Christie
April 2005