Integrity
of Citizens
February 24, 2003
Elinor Caplan
Minister of National Revenue
I felt compelled to respond to your letter dated January 20, 2003
addressed to Mr. Maurice Vellacott, M.P. My name is Andrew McMechan
and it is my position that the integrity of the citizens of Canada is at
stake here. I will respond by referring only to the basic facts and
documents provided by your department and other supporting agencies, one
controlled by Ralph Goodale, of which you are involved. I appreciate
the fact that you personally have come to the aid of Mr. Paul Vienneau,
former manager and also that you are able to respond to your viewing of
this issue on CTV's Canada AM show.
You have stated in your letter that the writer has chosen to refer to
only selective excerpts of the June 1997 meeting. Let me inform you
of other excerpts that you, yourself have obviously missed. You
state your agency's actions were based on extensive consultations with
legal counsel. Your legal counsel, Clyde Bond, was present at this
meeting, being full aware that the section 5 charge was no longer valid,
and that the section 3 charge was added as an afterthought and what constitutes
a report in writing has never been gazetted or specified. Mr. Bond
stated he would discuss with Chris Mainella ways to develop a strategy for
future court cases. Given the fact that your investigators, Paul
Vienneau, George Durston, Myrna Slozka, and others were present at this
meeting, none of them had any knowledge of how to comply.
There are a number of questions regarding Canada Customs' authority in
relation to 170 criminal charges under the Customs Act. You state
"as you know, sections 3 and 5 of the Reporting of Exported Goods Regulations
require exporters to goods to make a report in writing under section 95 of
the Customs Act, and to provide any licences, permits or other documents
relating to those goods." It is an absolute shame that you were
unable to attend this June 1997 meeting so as to inform your investigators
and the Federal Department of Justice of the regulations pertaining to all
of these 170 criminal charges. Just imagine, you might have been
successful in throwing over 100 farmers in jail. Perhaps you are the
only person in all of Canada to have knowledge of the specified manner in
which to report in writing.
You do not stop here. In making mention of the civil penalties,
you state "These penalties are, of course, subject to appeal, and
currently a number of these cases are under review by the Customs Appeals
Directorate, pending my final decision." Once again you are
uninformed of the happenings around you. For your information most
of these cases have been under review for well over six years. You
will never get the opportunity to issue a decision because your managers
are vacating these civil actions. The forceful collection of my
civil penalty was vacated in a letter dated January
15, 2003, five days prior to your response to Mr. Vellacott. It
appears the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
Furthermore, when your manager Larry Woram called me on January 27th, he
stated that every civil action your department had initiated was being
vacated. You will never have the opportunity to comply to the
provision of the Customs Act requiring a decision of the Minister be
rendered, and I am being denied my right to appeal to the Federal Court,
as provided in the same Act.
The next issue is the concerns regarding the existence of availability
of documents. You again reply that "It is unfortunate that our
customs offices did not have a copy of D19-3-2." For your
information, Elinor Caplan, Acting Minister of National Revenue, your
legal counsel relied on the D19-3-1 in the Books of Authorities.
Perhaps this D19-3-2 document was not available to your Customs Managers
and Investigators or anyone until late in 1997.
The above statements can be backed up with reference to the appropriate
documents. Customs policies and Canada's grain export policies are
not at issue here. Justice is t he concern, and the fact that
Canadian Citizens were convicted of alleged offences brought on by this
department, whereby, at the time, your staff could not even have complied.
If these allegations, remarks and comments are so disappointing to you,
why has the respected and long-serving official not defended his own
position. Perhaps it is the wide circulation of this information
that has prompted your "speedy" three-month reply in defense of
Mr. Vienneau, when I personally have been expecting your decision for over
83 months. One might question the background used in preparing your
response dated January 20, 2003. I have
been directly involved for ten years with this issue and believe you are
unaware of the facts. However, you did eventually respond unlike
your predecessors, David Anderson, Jane Stewart, Herb Dahliwal, and Martin
Cauchon.
For your information, this response is being posted on the website www.farmersforjustice.com
in hopes that these matters will be concluded expeditiously.
Sincerely,
Andrew M. McMechan
P.O. Box 87
Pierson, MB R0M 1S0
email - apmc06@mts.net
phone- (204) 649-2308
fax - (204) 649-2320
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