Chair of Canadian Mint helped run offshore 'tax-avoidance scheme' for clients

The chair of the Royal Canadian Mint, who also served as an adviser on international taxation to the federal Finance Department, helped engineer the transfer of millions of dollars of a prominent Canadian family through offshore tax havens in what others involved characterized as a "tax avoidance scheme," documents obtained by CBC News show.

Slightly more than $8 million was moved through offshore entities in Bermuda, Barbados and Antigua, later prompting allegations that the arrangement, if exposed, could lead to potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in "taxes, interest and penalties." The documents show there were also concerns about secrecy and instructions to shred files.

The hundreds of records are part of a sprawling lawsuit against James Barton Love, a Toronto tax lawyer who chairs the mint's board of directors, and others by descendants of former prime minister Arthur Meighen. Quietly settled in 2011, the lawsuit saw family members allege that the offshore transactions, which began in 1996, were unlawful and negligent and that Love "breached his fiduciary duties and acted oppressively."

Love countered in sworn statements that the offshore manoeuvres "resulted in significant savings of Canadian tax" for Meighen's heirs — an amount he estimated at $1 million.

He also emphatically denied any breach of trust and said he had "specifically advised" there were risks to the offshore arrangement.

None of the allegations was ever tested in court.

'Complex transaction'

Love, a close friend of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who was appointed to the Mint's board in 2006, was also a trustee for most of the last decade of the Arthur Meighen Trust, an entity set up by the former Conservative PM in 1949 to distribute his wealth to his family. Before taking on that formal role, documents show Love had been an adviser and "close" friend to several Meighen family members.

If you have more information on this story, or other investigative tips to pass on, please email investigations@cbc.ca.

It was in that advisory role that Love, in the mid-1990s, informed the managers of the Meighen Trust that they could get "Canadian tax relief on the income from about 40 per cent of the [trust] assets" if they moved the money offshore, Meighen's great-granddaughters say in their statement of claim.

The use of secret accounts in offshore jurisdictions like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands has been thrust into the media limelight in recent years, following a spate of data leaks — including from several Swiss banks — that exposed account-holders’ identities and information.  The most recent large leak was made public in April, when CBC News teamed up with the U.S.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to report on secret accounts linked to 130,000 people worldwide.

More at cbc >>
-----------------
Also:  How the rich hide money offshore >>
How the rich hide money offshore

Meteorite strike may have caused loud boom in Quebec, Ontario

cbc

A meteorite strike may have been seen and heard on Montreal's West Island, the Vaudreuil region and the Ottawa area on Tuesday night, according to multiple reports.

Social media in parts of Quebec and Ontario were buzzing with reports of a loud boom on Tuesday at about 8 p.m. E.T.

Quebec provincial police said they received several calls about the incident, and had no reports of explosions or fires.

Andrew Fazekas, a spokesman for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, felt the tremor from his home.

He told CBC it possibly could have been a shock wave caused by a meteorite entering the atmosphere. Experts will analyze the data Wednesday, to confirm whether it was a sonic boom.

No reports of damage

Fazekas speculates that a meteor, the size of a sofa to a compact car, may have fragmented with some bits making it to the ground.

He says on his website that scientists will now comb through the reports along with any photo and video evidence in order to triangulate the trajectory of the possible meteorite.

Although the fall of a meteor can often be detected by seismographs, Earthquake Canada says it has not registered any such event.

Fazekas added this appears to be a minor event since there are no reports of damage.

Public Masturbation on the Rise in Vancouver

By Jon David Kahn 

Known as the Hollywood of the North, Vancouver is one of the few destinations where one can ski and golf on the same day. These are just two of the many wonderful things to know about Vancouver. Here's another one: incidents of public masturbation are on the rise. 

Vancouver Police are telling residents to call 911 immediately if they see sexually motivated offences. Since the beginning of October, Police say they have received numerous calls about prowlers and incidents involving men masturbating and exposing themselves in public. Most of the incidents reportedly occur between the hours of 5 p.m and 7 a.m. but police are not hearing about them until later. 

Police want residents to report suspicious activity immediately but warn them not to confront any of the offenders.

The Sex Crimes Unit of the VPD is on the case and there is an increased police presence in the areas where this type of activity has been reported.

Known as the Hollywood of the North, Vancouver is one of the few destinations where one can ski, golf and masturbate in public all on the same day.

Why Toronto Can't Fire 'Crack Mayor' Rob Ford

Business Insider

Pamela Engel

REUTERS/Mark Blinch

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has made international headlines with his crazy antics this month — he's admitted to smoking crack cocaine in a "drunken stupor," made lewd remarks about oral sex at a press conference, and apologized for going on a bizarre, "extremely inebriated" rant about wanting to murder someone.

It's mind-boggling that he's still in office and refusing to step down or take a leave, but there's really not much the city can do to remove him.

In fact, Toronto has already tried once before to toss Ford from office because of conflict of interest issues, but he won on appeal and was able to keep his job.

Unlike many municipalities in the U.S., Toronto does not have a recall process. Voters don't have the option to gather signatures on a petition and launch a special election to oust officials who have behaved badly.

The Atlantic Wire points out that there are only three circumstances that would make Ford ineligible for office: being convicted of a crime and imprisoned, missing three consecutive months of city council meetings, or violating conflict of interest rules.

Considering that the next election is in 2014, it's unlikely that Ford will be convicted of a crime and jailed before then. And he's still desperately clinging to office despite repeated calls for his resignation.

It seems that the only option left for the city council is to let Ford keep his position but render it completely worthless by taking away his power.

NOW magazine in Toronto has a pretty good breakdown of what that would look like. The council has already begun to slowly strip Ford of his authority. If they continue in this vein, which they plan to, most of Ford's duties could be transferred to the deputy mayor and he could lose his budget.

The province of Ontario could also step in and create a law declaring the mayor's office vacant, but the provincial government is reluctant to interfere in municipal affairs unless specifically asked by the city council. And the council isn't keen on asking a higher government to step in, because that might make it seem like the city can't handle its own affairs.

At this point, the city just has to sit and wait.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-toronto-cant-fire-crack-mayor-rob-ford-2013-11#ixzz2kkySOnzU

Trudeau accused of promoting drug use ‘directly to children’ after Liberal leader discusses pot policy at school

Tristin Hopper

Justice Minister Peter MacKay is accusing Liberal leader Justin Trudeau of promoting recreational drug use “directly to children” after Mr. Trudeau discussed his party’s plans to legalize marijuana while speaking to a Brandon, Man., public school.

“He’s already sending children the message recreational drug use is OK. Now, he’s delivering that message directly to children,” wrote Mr. MacKay in a fundraising letter sent out on Thursday.

“That’s wrong, on so many different levels,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Trudeau’s “allies in the media” are “making excuses for his mistakes.”

The issue also appeared to dominate Mr. MacKay’s appearance at the final press conference of a gathering of provincial justice ministers in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Just as questions wrapped up on Thursday, Mr. MacKay interjected to call Mr. Trudeau’s actions “disgusting,” “appalling” and showing a “profound lack of judgement.”

Mr. Trudeau was in Brandon on Wednesday to offer support to the Liberal candidate running in one of four federal byelections.

According to a series of Tweets, including some from the managing editor of the Brandon Sun, Mr. Trudeau stopped in to a school in Sioux Valley, where he took some by surprise when he explained his stance on pot.

In fairness, James O’Connor, managing editor of the Brandon Sun newspaper wrote in a Twitter message, Mr. Trudeau was asked about it.

Keep reading on National Post >>

Canada: The hidden costs of espionage

Photo: Stuart Mackenzie/Getty)

In 2008 Brian Shields made a disturbing discovery. The security adviser to Nortel Networks, which would soon file for bankruptcy, had been investigating just how badly the company’s internal systems had been infiltrated by hackers. It couldn’t have been much worse—the hackers had even accessed the files of the company’s CEO, Mike Zafirovski. A group based in China, according to Shields, had been rifling through Nortel’s confidential material for about a decade, making off with proprietary information. His attempts to warn his superiors about the extent of the problem, he’s said, were mostly brushed aside. Shields went public about the extent of hacking at Nortel last year, speaking with the Wall Street Journal and then others, and has since given many talks at security conferences about the ordeal. He’s not shy about blaming the widespread hacking plot for contributing to the company’s demise, pointing out that China’s Huawei Technologies arose as a serious competitor soon afterward. (Huawei has repeatedly rejected any connection as false.)

The hacking at Nortel isn’t unique. In recent years Coca-Cola has been infiltrated by a group of hackers connected to the People’s Liberation Army in China, according to Mandiant, a security firm. The company said more than 100 of its clients had information stolen, and other companies, such as Google, have been vocal about similar problems. With each new revelation, governments must take these long-simmering risks more seriously. Which helps to explain a recent bombshell decision by Industry Minister James Moore: in a brief press release, the government announced that after conducting a national security review, it would not allow the proposed sale of Allstream, a division of Manitoba Telecom Services, to Accelero Capital Holdings. The only explanation for quashing the $520-million deal was a cryptic reference to a fibre-optic network operated by Allstream that services governments. Naguib Sawiris, the man behind Accelero, is based in Egypt and has business interests in North Korea, which may have raised red flags.

The rejection demonstrates just how important national security concerns are becoming in mergers and acquisitions, and how they crash headlong into the federal government’s stated openness to foreign investment. Nowhere is this tension greater than when telecommunications equipment is involved. It provides a gateway to track phone calls, e-mails, documents—essentially all kinds of data that reveal what a government or a company is up to. While 20 years ago protecting sensitive military outposts was necessary to deal with threats from other countries, safeguarding digital information is just as important today. So far, the government’s attempt to juggle security and foreign investment has only resulted in confusion. Sawiris, for one, has had it. “I am finished with Canada,” he told an English-language Egyptian news website recently. “The world is big, and my money can go anywhere.” With BlackBerry now courting bidders, finding a balance has never been more crucial. Erring in either direction could cost the country billions in either lost deals or lost intellectual property. Just a few careful tweaks to current vetting policies could be make-or-break for deals in the future.

Keep reading on canadianbusiness >>

World’s first palm scan-activated bitcoin ATM to open in Canada

Follow The Money

http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-atm-canada-first-799/
The world’s first bitcoin ATM will open in Vancouver, Canada, next week – dispensing Canadian dollars in exchange for the anonymous crypto-currency. But only if your palm scan matches the ATM’s records, that is.
The machine will be set up near downtown Vancouver coffee house Waves, is one of five ATMs bought by Canadian firm Bitcoiniacs from Nevada-based producer Robocoin.
The machine will exchange bitcoins for Canadian dollars via Canada’s VirtEx exchange. The transactions themselves will be anonymous, the vendor says, but clients will have to identify themselves via a palm scanner first.
This is done to enforce Canadian anti-money laundering laws, due to which the ATM will only allow transactions of up to 3,000 Canadian dollars (around $2,700) per day per customer.
The four other ATMs will be rolled out in Canadian cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Calgary or Ottawa in December, the company says.
“Basically, it just makes it easier for people to buy and sell bitcoins,” Mitchell Demeter, founder of Bitcoiniacs and co-owner of Robocoin, told CBC.
Bitcoin is an internet-based currency designed to exist without any centralized regulatory authority. New Bitcoins are generated by spending computer processing time to conduct complex calculations, and the process is limited by a maximum of about 21 million bitcoins that can exist.
The currency has long been a fad among online privacy activists, financial futurists and shady dealers, but is so far little known to the general public. It lately hit the headlines after the FBI bust of the Silk Road website that US authorities say facilitated the trade in illegal goods and services, from drugs to assassinations.

Why tourists don’t like Canada

Steven Threndyle/

(Photo: Robert Francis/Flickr)

Canadian Tourism Commission CEO Michele McKenzie announced last month she would be stepping down after a difficult decade at the helm of the national tourism marketing body. Statistics tell the tale: from 2000 to 2010, Canada’s share of global international arrivals decreased from 2.9% to 1.7%. Our share of revenues fell from 2.3% to 1.7%.

A sharp decline in U.S. visitors and flat traveller numbers from overseas have left tourism operators ever more dependent on the domestic market. Canadians themselves accounted for 80% of spending in 2012, up from 68% a decade earlier, a recent Scotiabank report found. The report blamed the Canadian dollar’s appreciation, which eroded price competitiveness, “as well as the rapid growth in emerging markets as a tourist destination.”

That has left Canada with a wide and growing tourism deficit. Though the sector accounts for only 2% of the economy, it employs almost 600,000 people. And in the eyes of critics, it is getting even less competitive. “The cost of the product we’re selling continues to rise. Our airports, for instance, are used as a cost centre rather than as an economic engine,” laments John Winter, CEO of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce.

Keep reading on Canadian Business >>

Canada's jihad problem

Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Global News wrote about Canada's Islamofascists who traveled overseas to wage jihad:

Earlier this year the world was captivated by scenes of horror in southern Algeria when a group of extremists attacked a gas plant in which over 800 people were taken hostage. Close to forty foreigners lost their lives. We were soon to learn from the Algerian government that two Canadians, Ali Medlej and Xristos Katsiroubas from London Ontario, played a lead role in this terrorist attack and that both had died as the Algerian army tried to end the siege.

Lastly, we now also have information that several Canadians have traveled to Syria to wage Jihad. A few weeks ago Ali Mohamed Dirie, a Canadian of Somali ancestry, died there. It is important to note that he was a convicted member of the Toronto 18, which had planned to bomb the Toronto Stock Exchange and storm the Canadian Parliament and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We also learned that an Acadian named Damian Clairmont from the Maritimes, grew up in Alberta and converted to Islam a few years ago is also now in Syria fighting alongside Al-Qaeda.

Yes, they've got a jihad problem alright and they're going to have to reconsider their ultra-liberal immigration policy if they want to protect themselves.

Clinical trial starts to restore vision loss using gene therapy

GlobalToronto

Calls for herbal supplement regulations

GlobalToronto

Nobel literature prize goes to Canadian writer Alice Munro

today

PETER MUHLY / AFP - Getty Images

A photo taken on June 25, 2009 in Dublin, Ireland 

shows Canadian author Alice Munro who

 has been awarded the 2013 Nobel Literature Prize.

Alice Munro, a Canadian master of the short story revered as a thorough but forgiving chronicler of the human spirit, won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. 

Munro is the first Canadian writer to receive the prestigious $1.2 million award from the Swedish Academy since Saul Bellow, who left for the U.S. as a boy and won in 1976. 

Seen as a contemporary Chekhov for her warmth, insight and compassion, she has captured a wide range of lives and personalities without passing judgment on her characters. Unusually for Nobel winners, Munro's work consists almost entirely of short stories. "Lives of Girls and Women" is her only novel. 

"I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win," the 82-year-old said by telephone when contacted by The Canadian Press in Victoria, British Columbia. 

Munro is beloved among her peers, from Lorrie Moore and George Saunders to Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Franzen. She is equally admired by critics. She won a National Book Critics Circle prize for "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage," and is a three-time winner of the Governor General's prize, Canada's highest literary honor. 

Atwood — a fellow Canadian who also figured prominently in the Nobel buzz — tweeted, "Hooray! Alice Munro wins 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature." 

Munro's publisher, Penguin Random House, welcomed the award with "jubilation and great pride," and sent "joyous good wishes to our beloved author and to our family of her publishers and editors." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Munro on Twitter "on behalf of all Canadians." 

The award is likely to be the capstone to Munro's career. She told Canada's National Post in June that she was "probably not going to write anymore." 

In announcing the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy called her a "master of the contemporary short story." The academy's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said he had not managed to get hold of her but left a message on her answering machine. 

"She has taken an art form, the short story, which has tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection," Englund told The Associated Press 

Munro is the 13th female literature laureate in the 112-year history of the Nobel Prizes. 

Her published work often turns on the difference between Munro's youth in Wingham, a conservative Canadian town west of Toronto, and her life after the social revolution of the 1960s. 

In an interview with AP in 2003, she described the '60s as "wonderful." 

It was "because, having been born in 1931, I was a little old, but not too old, and women like me after a couple of years were wearing miniskirts and prancing around," she said. 

Munro, the daughter of a fox farmer and a teacher, was born Alice Anne Laidlaw. She was a literary person in a nonliterary town, concealing her ambition like a forbidden passion. 

"It was glory I was after ... walking the streets like an exile or a spy," recalls the narrator of Munro's "Lives of Girls and Women," a novel published in 1971. 

She received a scholarship to study at the University of Western Ontario, majoring in journalism, and was still an undergraduate when she sold a story to CBC radio in Canada. 

She dropped out of college to marry a fellow student, James Munro, had three children and became a full-time housewife. By her early 30s, she was so frightened and depressed she could barely write a full sentence. 

Her good fortune was to open a bookstore with her husband, in 1963. Stimulated by everything from the conversation of adults to simply filling out invoices, her narrative talents resurfaced but her marriage collapsed. Her first collection, "Dance of the Happy Shades," came out in 1968 and won the Governor's prize. 

She later married Gerald Fremlin, a geographer. 

Her stories are usually set in Ontario, her home province. Among her best known is "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," the story of a woman who begins losing her memory and agrees with her husband that she should be placed in a nursing home. 

The narrative begins in a relatively tender, traditional mood. But we soon learn that the husband has been unfaithful in the past and didn't always regret it — "What he felt was mainly a gigantic increase in well-being." The wife, meanwhile, has fallen for a man at the nursing home. 

Some have called her "the greatest author in North America and, yes, I tend to agree with that," said the academy's Englund. "We're not saying just that she can say a lot in just 20 pages — more than an average novel writer can — but also that she can cover ground. She can have a single short story that covers decades and it works." 

Last year's Nobel literature award went to Mo Yan of China. 

The 2013 Nobel announcements continue Friday with the Nobel Peace Prize, followed by the economics prize on Monday. The awards will be handed to the winners on Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

Canadian Muslims Protest "Honor Killing" Label As Racist

By Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
October 7, 2013

Are they willfully misleading? Or are Canadian Muslims who are fighting federal funding to investigate honor violence in the Muslim (and other) communities simply naïve victims of the same propaganda used routinely to explain away the religio-culturally-based murders of Muslim women?

Every year, according to United Nations reports, 5,000 women worldwide are killed for reasons of "honor" that relate to matters of modesty and obeyance, though most experts maintain the numbers are far higher. And the number of victims of honor violence, which can involve beatings, acid attacks, or locking a woman in her home, is literally incalculable. In the United Kingdom alone, more than 3,000 such honor crimes occurred just in 2010, according to a study by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organization (IKWRO). The vast majority of those crimes, the organization states, were committed by Muslims, though Sikhs and Hindus have also been known to commit honor-related crimes.

In Canada, the decision to earmark funds to combat honor violence began in 2007, after a series of honor crimes over the previous two years resulted in the deaths of two women and one man. Soon after the program was announced, on Dec. 10, 2007, the father and brother of 16-year-old Toronto native Aqsa Parvez, strangled her to death. The reason: she had refused to wear the hijab, or scarf.

Yet recently, some groups have begun speaking out against the idea of specifying these crimes as "honor killings" and providing targeted programs to address them, even as two subsequent events underscore just how urgently such funds and programs are needed.

The first of these was the 2012 conviction of Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya, and their son Hamed in the murder of Mohammad and Tooba's three teenage daughters and of Rona Amir Mohammad, Mohammad Shafia's other wife in a polygamous arrangement – a case that received worldwide attention. That conviction confirmed the findings of a University of Sherbrooke study released earlier that year showing an exponential increase in the number of honor killings in Canada. Only three known victims were killed between 1954 and 1983. Since 1999, 12 women have died in honor killings.

All of the murders, the study reported, took place within immigrant families. (It is worth noting that the increase may or may not reflect either the growing numbers of Muslim immigrants to Canada over the years, or a better understanding of honor crimes among law enforcement and other agencies.)

Yet according to a recent report from Women's e-News, many Canadian Muslim women now are speaking out against the government's new focus on these crimes, arguing that honor violence is no different from any other form of domestic abuse. Opponents of the idea call the projects "racist," and claim they put an unwarranted and biased focus on Muslim and Hindi families. "When women of color are killed, we ask these larger questions around their culture. We ask what's wrong with their entire people – their culture, their religion – instead of a particular person," Itrath Syed, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in "Islamophobia" in Vancouver, for instance, told Women's e-News.

Keep reading on The Investigative Project on Terrorism >>

Canada: Tour the Kingston Penitentiary

GlobalToronto

Canada : Whole truth? Hardly: Media Party spins quite a tale about its two latest heroes

Sun News

EZRA LEVANT | QMI AGENCY

The Media Party has two new heroes: Tarek Loubani and John Greyson.

A search of the CBC's website shows more than 5,000 stories on the two men. By contrast, lowly Nelson Mandela only has 2,000 mentions.

So, who are these saints? The Media Party says Loubani is a doctor and Greyson is a filmmaker, and they're being held in an Egyptian jail without charges. That's part of the story. Here's the rest:

Loubani is, in fact, a doctor from London, Ont. He calls himself a Palestinian refugee, though he came to Canada from Kuwait, where he was born. But it's politically sexier to say you're Palestinian.

Loubani is an extreme activist. When a Canadian cabinet minister was announcing a grant to help people with disabilities, Loubani stormed into the press conference, disrupting it, shouting about how he's a refugee from Palestine. Even though he's been in Canada since he was a child. And he's a rich doctor, doing just fine.

Loubani just wouldn't leave the press conference, even when security guards asked him to. He kept shouting like a crazy person until police escorted him away.

So, sure, he's a doctor. But he's also a professional protester, an extremist activist. Who went to Egypt in August. Who would go there in the middle of a civil war? A trouble seeker, of course. He says he was trying to go to the Gaza Strip, a little piece of land ruled by Hamas, the terrorist group that is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That's why he was arrested by Egyptian police. They're at war with the Muslim Brotherhood right now.

Loubani and Greyson have been happy boosters of Hamas before, with Greyson involved in running an Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas forces in Gaza.

It's technically accurate to call Greyson a filmmaker. But it is more informative to mention he's a leader of the extremist group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid - the anti-Israel group that has marched in the gay pride parade in Toronto. Which is odd, because Israel is the only country in the Middle East where homosexuality isn't a crime and where they actually have a gay pride parade, too.

The punishment for being gay in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip is the death penalty.

Greyson is obsessed with sex. He makes movies about his obsessions, with titles like Urinal and After the Bath. He explores his sexual feelings about Pierre Trudeau. Of course he's a professor at York University.

So, yes, Loubani is a doctor. And yes, Greyson is a filmmaker. Are those really the most relevant facts to report about them? Or is it more relevant to point out they are anti-Israel propagandists and activists who have made common cause with the Muslim Brotherhood's Hamas wing for years - not just in the streets of Toronto and London, Ont., but in Gaza itself?

That these men are not mainstream or moderate. It's lucky they were arrested by the Egyptian military, which only held them - as Canadian police would do, if foreign provocateurs came to town in the middle of a massive riot.

They're lucky they weren't arrested by the more enthusiastic members of Hamas' religious police. They might not be as tolerant of Greyson's sexuality as Canada is. They might not be as tolerant of Loubani's free speech as Canada is.

But there's another story here: You just can't trust the Media Party to give you the straight facts, can you?

KUDOS to CANADA for ditching Barack Hussein Obama’s and Justin Trudeau’s favorite terrorist-funding ‘charity’

barenakedislam

Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced that it has revoked the charitable status of Muslim Brotherhood front group Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Development Foundation, after an audit of its books produced evidence linking it to Pakistani terrorists.

Frontpage Magazine  (h/t Traduction) “The Government of Canada has made it clear that it will not tolerate the abuse of the registration system for charities to provide any means of support to terrorism,” said a CRA press release.

ISNA Canada is finished as a charity. According to the CRS, this means it “can no longer issue donation receipts for income tax purposes and is no longer a qualified donee under the Income Tax Act. The organization is no longer exempt from income tax, unless it qualifies as a non-profit organization, and it may be subject to a tax equal to the full value of its remaining assets.”

The CRA, which is the Canadian equivalent of the IRS, issued the 71-page “letter of revocation,” after auditing two years’ worth of activity that took place from Jan. 1, 2007, to Dec. 31, 2009. Complete with flow charts, it detailed funding transactions between ISNA Canada and the Kashmiri Canadian Council/Kashmiri Relief Fund of Canada (KCC/KRFC), a group the CRA considers non-qualified donees under Canada’s Income Tax Act.

The CRA believes ISNA Canada did this for the purpose of relinquishing control of the funds to the KCC/KRFC, who in turn sent money to the Pakistani-based Relief ISNA Development for Kashmiri Muslims (ROKM) for ostensible “relief work” in Kashmir. ISNA Canada supplied official donation receipts to the donors, while it disbursed more than $280,000 to ROKM, either directly, or via KCC/KRFC.

The CRA said the ROKM is the charitable arm of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a political group that contests the legitimacy of the Indian government’s control over the state of Kashmir, to the point of advocating secession. ROKM’s efforts includes activities perpetrated by its armed wing, the Hizbul Mujahideen. The Council of the European Union considers the Hizbul Mujahideen a terrorist organization as does the Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, which cites Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967 as the basis of that designation.

The foundation “facilitated the transfer of resources that may have been used to support the efforts of a political organization . . . and its armed wing,” the CRA said in a letter sent to ISNA Canada. “Canada’s commitment to combating terrorism extends to preventing organizations with ties to terrorism from benefiting from the tax advantages of charitable registration,” it added.

Acting ISNA Canada president G. Nabi Chaudhary disputed the CRA’s contentions. “The money did not go to any groups who were freedom fighters,” he insisted. “We made sure that all of the money the charity sent to those organizations was spent on the needy, to help the misplaced. We had people on the ground who were working with the relief organizations.”

ISNA Canada board members contradicted Chaudhary’s assertions. “Once the money left Canada, (the foundation) had no control over the money, how it was spent or what it was to be spent on,” board members said, according to the CRA.

The CRA is conducting other audits of charities affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America Canada. Their efforts were precipitated after a 2011 investigation conducted by Star, a Canadian newspaper, revealed that ISNA mismanaged more than $600,000 in charitable contributions earmarked for the poor. An audit showed that of about $810,777 collected over four years, only $196,460 aided the poor.

Canada: Brampton Muslim cleric preaches adulterers, gays can benefit from being stoned to death

Toronto Sun

By Simon Kent 

www.brantfordexpositor.ca

Death to all sinners! Homosexuals and adulterers, you better start start running, because this means you!

Oyez, oyez, let’s all watch as Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak of Brampton takes his death by stoning show on the road and brings it to a neighborhood near you.

Oh, yes!

Oh, no.

Have a look at the YouTube video and you will have some insight into a man who truly believes that `sinners’, as defined by his own interpretation of Islamic law, can truly benefit from a jolly good stoning.

Listen as he explains that a Muslim who is sentenced to death by stoning actually benefits from this gruesome capital punishment as his or her soul is being purified even as the stones rain down on their head.

It would almost be funny if it were in a Monty Python movie. Almost, but not quite, because there is no joke to make about a medieval form of punishment like stoning.

More importantly, why is it that in the 21st century people can free to spew such hateful material all in the name of religion?

Alas, it might be more widely spread than Canadians would believe.

In 2010, the Pew Research Centre in Washington published the results of an extensive poll of Middle East countries and tapped into their views of modern life.

According to the Pew results, at least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favour making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion.

Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favour these harsh punishments.

Thankfully that will never happen in Canada because we are a free, open and tolerant society that will never become a theocracy where common law is subjugated to religious dogma.

Being free, open and tolerant also means that people Sheikh Faisal Hamid Abdur-Razak can take advantage of free speech and spew hatred against people who live a life he doesn’t approve of.

It doesn’t mean we have to applaud, though.

Video Here >>

Canada's Trudeau smoked pot while an MP

Fox News

Canada's Liberal leader and strong candidate for prime minister, Justin Trudeau, admitted Thursday that he has smoked marijuana since being elected to parliament, after recently calling for legalizing its use.

The eldest son of late prime minister Pierre Trudeau told the Huffington Post that he smoked pot five or six times in his life, the first while on a trip to the Caribbean with university classmates and most recently three years ago with friends over for a dinner party while his children were staying overnight with their grandmother.

The admission was made in an interview with the news website, which was conducting a survey of Canadian lawmakers' drug habits.

"One of our friends lit a joint and passed it around. I had a puff," he said.

On previous occasions, "when the joint went around the room, I usually passed it around to the next person," he added. But "sometimes throughout my life, I've had a pull on it."

"Sometimes, I guess, I have gotten a buzz, but other times no. I'm not really crazy about it."

Trudeau was elected to parliament in 2008.

Earlier this year he was picked to lead and resurrect a party that held power for most of the last century but was relegated to the margins as the country's number three political force in the last election.

Polls now put Trudeau ahead of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and if the numbers hold until the next election, expected in 2015, the young Trudeau and his Liberals could form Canada's next government.

A self-described teetotaller, Trudeau has reportedly never smoked cigarettes and doesn't drink coffee.

He told the Huffington Post that he also once tried to smoke hashish at an Amsterdam caf?? but called it a "total disaster," and suspects friends may have slipped hallucinogenic mushrooms into his spaghetti once.

Trudeau also revealed in the interview that his late brother, Michel, was facing marijuana possession charges for a "tiny amount" of pot before his death in an avalanche in 1998 and that the experience influenced his decision to call for legalizing and regulating cannabis in hopes of eliminating criminal control of the pot trade and limiting teenagers' access to it.

"I'm not someone who is particularly interested in altered states, but I certainly won't judge someone else for it," Trudeau said. "I think that the prohibition that is currently on marijuana is unjustified."

Main opposition New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair told the Huffington Post that he also has smoked pot but refused to say when. The prime minister's office said Harper's asthma prevented him from ever trying cannabis.

Canadian police chiefs earlier this week urged a legislative change that would allow them to hand out fines for small amounts of pot possession instead of laying criminal charges, in order to reduce policing and court costs, and to do away with such convictions affecting Canadians' travel, employment and citizenship.

An estimated one million Canadians regularly smoke marijuana, according to the latest surveys.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/22/canada-trudeau-smoked-pot-while-mp/#ixzz2cvXEGrY1

Canada’s spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians: watchdog

Lee Berthiaume & Jason Fekete, Postmedia News 
OTTAWA — Canada’s super-secret electronic spy agency may have illegally targeted Canadians over the past year, a government watchdog has concluded.

The findings, contained in a report tabled by retired judge Robert Decary in Parliament Wednesday, are particularly explosive now given revelations prompted by whistleblower Edward Snowden about the U.S. government conducting widespread snooping of its citizens.

Decary, who has served as independent watchdog for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) since 2010, said he discovered the potentially illicit spying during a routine review of the electronic surveillance agency’s activities over the past year.

“A small number of records suggested the possibility that some activities may have been directed at Canadians, contrary to the law,” Decary wrote in his report.

But Decary said he was unable to determine conclusively whether the snooping was legal or not because “a number of CSEC records relating to these activities were unclear or incomplete.”

“After [an] in-depth and lengthy review, I was unable to reach a definitive conclusion about compliance or non-compliance with the law.”

CSEC is forbidden from spying on Canadians no matter where they are in the world. It is also prohibited from eavesdropping on individuals within Canada.

More on National Post >>

Canada: Former head of high profile "Muslim Association of Canada was senior adviser to Mohammed Morsi

Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Wael Haddara/
twitter.com

From Tundra Tabloids:

On his Twitter account, Wael Haddara introduces himself as an “ICU physician (and other things).” In recent months, one of these “other things” done by Haddara has been advising ousted Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. In an interview to Canadian network Global TV on August 15, 2013, Wael Haddara was introduced as a “former advisor to Mohammed Morsi.” According to his own professional profile, Haddara was born in Egypt. 

Haddara’s mandate for Morsi likely started after he resigned for “personal reasons” his position as president of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) on December 12, 2012. Besides his involvement with MAC, Wael Haddara has also been associated with the following Islamist organizations in the past: Muslim World League, CAIR-CAN, London Moslem Mosque, IRFAN-Canada and the Muslim Students Association (National). 

Appropriate references about Haddara’s leadership roles with these organizations are available in our previous article announcing Haddara’s resignation from MAC’s Board. This may not be a complete list of Islamist organizations with which Haddara has been involved in North America. 

So far, the oldest official mention of Wael Haddara’s role as an advisor to President Morsi that we found is dated December 28, 2012. On an official United Nations document, Wael Mahmoud Haddara is listed as a member of the Egyptian delegation at the UN.

More here >>