On October 18th I was at the Court of Appeals of British Columbia watching what is almost certainly my last Paradigm tax evasion hearing. Until a few days ago I thought I was done with them but Debbie Anderson had to go on one last self-destructive bender. If this was my last Paradigm hearing it was at least a memorable one, very short, only 20 minutes, but packed full of Debbie’s sovereign craziness.
This link shows how Debbie got to this point;
viewtopic.php?f=50&t=10747
A bit of a refresher for any readers who have forgotten about the Paradigm tax evasion scheme. It was massive, with hundreds of participants across Canada who signed on to Russell Porisky’s halcyon vision of a Canada without income tax, or at for his paying clients. He produced videos, held seminars and classes, printed publications, and even held an annual dinner and dance. However the most pertinent aspect of the scheme from Russell’s perspective was the 7% fee he charged clients based on the amount of tax they evaded using his scheme. He claimed that his ‘teachings’ were strictly legal, Paradigm clients could stop paying income tax while remaining completely within the rules of Canadian income tax legislation. It just required an interpretation of the meaning of the word ‘person’ that was somewhat different than the common understanding that had prevailed in the past. Until Porisky came along nobody, not tax lawyers, accountants, the courts, or even Canada Revenue Agency ("CRA") staff had demonstrated the genius and analytical abilities necessary to parse through the Income Tax Act and understand what it really said and what ‘person’ really meant. The fact that he was a carpenter without any income tax or accounting background did not in any way deter his clients from enthusiastically following his instructions when he promised huge tax savings. However all that Porisky was really selling was just old-fashioned income tax evasion. All the Paradigm gibberish was just gloss to justify cheating the taxman. As I wrote in an earlier discussion;
Porisky had created a master file with detailed information on all of his clients’ real tax information, including the amount of tax they’d evaded, in order to calculate his 7% cut. The CRA seized this list and aggressively pursued all of them. Debbie did more than just evade tax using Porisky's scam, she was also actively involved as a Paradigm ‘Instructor’. She spoke at seminars, participated in Porisky’s videos, and gave classroom instruction on Paradigm’s tax evasion methods. This resulted in her being charged with counseling fraud in addition to income tax evasion. It was the counseling offense, more than the tax evasion, that generated her fairly heavy penal sentence of four and a half years.While Keith said that "in the context of the Paradigm provisions we filed accurate returns" this makes no sense. The Paradigm tax evaders did not file any income tax returns, in the context of the Paradigm provisions or otherwise. This is why they were charged and convicted of income tax evasion. Had they filed income tax returns and declared their incomes but refused to pay the applicable taxes because of their belief that Paradigm's interpretation of income tax law exempted them from tax they would have not been charged. The CRA would have gone after them for the taxes but they'd have done nothing criminal. The criminal act was hiding their income, not their claimed belief in the Paradigm system.
Enough background, on to today’s event! The hearing was in front of a three judge bench at the Court of Appeal of British Columbia. Debbie was appealing her 54 month jail sentence and the requirement to give a court-ordered DNA sample.
The hearing started at 10:00 and I had concerns about making it on time because of an unexpected problem getting our grandson to school but I wasn’t too concerned about being a bit late. The hearing was scheduled for two hours and both Michael Millar and Keith Lawson, two fellow Paradigm Educators, had twice that amount of time at their sentencing appeals and had absolutely no difficulty filling it up. So I figured, 10-20 minutes late, so what? Fortunately I made it with 10 minutes to spare because the entire hearing was over in less than 20 minutes and had I arrived late, even by a few minutes, I would have been hopelessly confused.
Debbie drew a reasonable crowd. Apart from myself there were seven spectators, all lawyers or aspiring lawyers. There were six young people sitting together behind me (young being a relative term, I was by far the oldest person in the courtroom). They had badges on lanyards and I took them to be students or trainees. Additionally there was a lawyer sitting by himself in my row. There were two Crown counsels, one of whom had been stuck with the various Greater Vancouver area Paradigm files for at least the past nine years. I recall first meeting her at one of Michael Millar's hearings in October 2014. To complete the roster there was Debbie, attending alone, the three judges, and a few court staff.
There was no sheriff in attendance. In past hearings I’ve attended there was almost always a sheriff but British Columbia courts are currently facing a very significant province-wide shortage of sheriffs. According to the paper they keep leaving for greener pastures with the regular police forces or the Skytrain police. The net result has been delayed or cancelled court hearings. Apparently the courts are responding by assessing individual hearings to determine if they really require a sheriff and a trivial issue like Debbie’s hearing didn’t make the cut.
Before we really got started Debbie claimed to be confused, said she’d thought her appeal would be in writing and just found out she needed to attend. She said something I didn’t make out about a car accident. A judge asked Crown counsel if Debbie's sentence had been “substantially served” and the Crown indicated that Debbie had completed parole and was on statutory release until her warrant expiry day in April 2024 (actually June). This meant that she’d already finished serving her jail time and she now has to only report once a month to corrections in the community until next June. The judge told Debbie that they’d read her submitted material and all she needed to do was highlight important issues and answer some questions.
As the appellant Debbie got to speak first, presenting her case why her sentence was too severe, then the Crown would respond. Normally in a sentence appeal the appellant tries to convince the court, through past jurisprudence, that she had been more harshly treated than other parties convicted of similar offenses. Ideally she’d have examples of previous court decisions close enough to point to convince the appeals bench that she'd been unfairly treated. The gold standard for sentencing is a conditional discharge after a term of unsupervised probation. This essentially means the convicted individual walks out the court a free man. This is what happened to Alexander Ream, one of the first sovereigns I reported on;
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9388&start=500
At worst Debbie should have argued for a conditional sentence, essentially home arrest where she’d serve out her sentence at home. However, since she’d already served her full jail term and was heading towards the end of her minimal reporting requirements, a retroactive change in her sentence was really of no benefit to her. Just as well because she ignored the purported purpose of the hearing entirely and went off in an entirely different direction, attempting to re-litigate her original criminal convictions. Before starting in on this she first complained that she couldn’t submit everything she’d wanted to file with the court (apparently a mass of material) so her file wasn’t ‘full’. I assumed masses of sovereign and Paradigm garbage irrelevant to a sentencing review that the court refused to accept.
She wanted to go through her entire history, how the CRA had imposed the Income Tax Act on all of her private affairs even though she was a private woman acting in her private capacity (Paradigm taught that if you labeled everything with the word ‘Private’ it could not be used as evidence against you by the CRA or the courts). Nobody has proven that she’s taxable. The Income Tax Act is not valid legislation. The CRA had taken her private property without proving that she was a taxpayer. Nobody said that she was wrong, just that Paradigm’s theories were “bunk”.
The judge stopped her and told her these were conviction matters. “You appealed your conviction and lost, we’re beyond that, this is about your sentencing.” Maybe the judge thought that but Debbie certainly didn’t. She wouldn’t stop “Where is the legislation authority to convict me?”
Judge cut in and said they couldn’t consider her conviction. “We understand this. The fact that you continue to espouse these views was an aggravating circumstance (at the original sentencing hearing).” The judge told her that the fact that she was contesting her conviction now was not helping her sentencing appeal.
“That’s not fair. I haven’t been convicted! Doesn’t the Bill of rights apply to me?”
Judge said yes, that was considered at trial. “In this hearing you must stick to issues regarding sentencing. You argued that your sentence was disproportionate. This is a valid matter. We are not looking at whether you committed the offense. That is no longer open to you”
Apparently Debbie didn’t think that it was up to the court to determine what was open to her. She wouldn’t stop “They didn’t prove that I was a Paradigm instructor. The criminal code is for real crimes and there is no proof I committed a crime, it was just a property issue.” “I want to bring up prior to 2019. There was no evidence to convict.”
The court asked “You’re saying that there was no evidence to show you were involved in Paradigm? Debbie replied “No, I had no intention to commit a crime, there was no private money lost”.
Then Debbie brought up an entirely new argument previously unknown to me. Apparently if a judge dies all of his prior decisions have to be quashed! Her original trial was handled by Judge Brown who had died sometime between her conviction and this hearing. She that his death proved that he didn’t have the mental capacity to convict her.
The court said it wasn’t going to speculate about the health or capacity “We accept his decision”.
As an aside I attended one of Debbie’s hearings where Judge Brown presided and he seemed right on the ball to me. You can read about it here;
http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtop ... 71#p234471
Debbie – “Nobody wants to address the search warrant.”
Court – “You were convicted. We’re not looking into the search warrant.”
Debbie seemed bewildered. “I’m back to my original point that the income tax is not valid and somebody is eventually going to have to address the issue of jurisdiction.” I assumed that she meant that the court had no jurisdiction over her. The court told her over and over that they would not consider any arguments relating to the trial or her guilt. That was a fact. She said that without these arguments she had nothing further to add. The court ordered a recess and we had a break only 15 minutes after starting.
Debbie argued significantly more than I’ve noted, I couldn’t keep up, but it was all similar to what I’ve related. She’s innocent of any offense, the Income Tax Act isn’t valid legislation, nobody showed her a law forcing her to pay income tax, private person acting in private capacity, with the court constantly trying to get her to limit her arguments to her sentencing.
When the court returned it was the Crown’s turn to give arguments but the judge said they didn’t need to hear from the Crown and said they would give their verdict at noon, an hour and a half away. And so, at 10:20 we were done.
I didn’t bother to hang around to hear the court’s decision because I already knew exactly what it was going to be. Not because of any great legal insight on my part but because the court had just told us. How? By telling Crown counsel that the court didn’t need to hear from them. I explained the meaning of that comment in my Keith Lawson discussion so I’ll just quote myself;
And it was exactly the same today. If the court hadn’t made up its mind to totally dismiss Debbie’s appeal they would have allowed the Crown to give arguments. So, for practical purposes, the Crown didn’t even have to show up, Debbie did a brilliant job of demolishing her own appeal without any help at all!. . . . . immediately after the hearing resumed a judge said "We don't have to hear from Crown". Veteran court reporter Burnaby49, who's heard that dire sentence before, knew immediately what it meant, as did the Crown counsels, but I don't think Keith had a clue that he was about to get fed through the grinder. What did the court's comment tell informed observers? The Crown had the right to two hours for arguments and there was only one reason that the court would tell them not to bother; the court had already arrived at its decision and the decision dismissed every argument in Keith's appeal. If the court thought that there was any discernible merit to any part of Lawson's appeal, no matter how trivial, or if they had any disagreement with, or questions about, the Crown's submissions, they would have given the Crown an opportunity to speak. So it was clear that Keith was about to get it with both barrels. If he didn't realize this he wasn't kept in ignorance long.
I think it’s safe to assume that everyone in the courtroom except Debbie knew that her appeal was going to be dismissed and her original sentence upheld. I can even guess at the general wording, the decision pretty much writes itself after Debbie’s self-destructive yammering about her innocence and the injustice of her conviction. The court will note how, even now, she’s showing no remorse for her crimes and is still a true believer totally obsessed with her own crazed certainties.
But, while typing this posting out, I had second thoughts regarding my earlier comments about Debbie arguing the wrong issue during the appeal. What if she didn't care about her sentencing? As I've noted there was really no practical benefit to her in getting her sentence retroactively changed. However she demonstrated that she's still a hard-core true believer obsessed with her Paradigm world view and her belief in her innocence. It’s possible that the purported purpose of the appeal was irrelevant to her, it was just a way for her to get another hearing at a different level of court. Perhaps her intent was to take another shot at fighting her convictions and that's exactly what she did.
At such time as her decision is posted on the court’s website I’ll post it here.
