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BayToday recently reported on a gathering at the waterfront at a so-called Freedom Rally. It was further reported that one of the speakers provided advice to those who might get a $750 ticket to do the following:
"You write 'rescission' on it. 'No contract' in red," she announced, "and you send it back. We have no contract with them, they have no jurisdiction with us. That's the common law. We're not in a contract with them. They work for the Corporation of North Bay. We're here as free people."
The purpose of this brief piece is to confirm that such a defence has no merit in law, has never been successfully advanced, and moreover is idiotic.
This defence falls under the rough description of the “Freeman Upon the Land” defence (there are other descriptors used also). Canadian courts have, for two decades now rejected, with gusto, these fanciful positions.
The seminal case in Canada is the case of Meads v Meads 2012 ABQB 571. In that case, Associate Chief Justice Rooke of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench took it upon himself to issue forth a comprehensive refutation of any legal merit to the defence. In his 176-page decision, he laid in ruins the notion that people could opt out of statutory provisions. He mocked the “bluntly idiotic” positions put forward.
He laid to rest the notion that the relationship between an individual and the state was one which the individual could opt-out of. He rejected the notion that the court has no power over litigants until they surrender to the court.
He decided to put the effort into his work (again -176 pages) it would appear because of his perception of the harm that these increasingly popular schemes were creating. He referred to conferences put on by hucksters (my description) for profit. Associate Chief Justice Rooke described these conferences as events in which the promoters put forward Byzantine schemes which had the earmarks of the plot of a dark fantasy novel.
Meads v. Meads has been universally accepted and used by many common law jurisdictions in many countries as the fountainhead of their own rejection of these ridiculous tenets.
The recommendation to mark up your ticket with the words suggested by the Freedom Rally speaker will therefore get you nowhere
As for simply sending the ticket back (which was also suggested by some of the other legal scholars at the Freedom Rally), it is trite to say that this will not have any effect on the liability of the offender. Unpaid Provincial Offences Act fines are subject to a myriad of collection remedies including but not limited to civil enforcement in the Superior Court of Ontario, adding the debt to a municipal tax roll, denial of driver’s licence renewal, and referring the fine to external collection agencies.
So – any fine is real and will have to be paid.
Is it the case that these speakers have a poor understanding of our laws?
Could it be also that they have a poor understanding of epidemiology?
Gregory J DuCharme
Tax Lawyer
