Ssssh don’t remind them about the corruption of native leadership. Come on we need reconciliation.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reconciliation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In deliberately RACIST - anti white LIE-beral Canada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is truly absurd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here is an article illustrating the mad hypocrisy of LIE-beral relations with the native population. With NDP doorknob Jagmeet Singh wisely staying clear of the crap- SO FAR! Sadly-if he does ever get the power he craves- his few comments so far suggest he will be WORSE than LIE-berals! See my own comments in brackets):
First Nations cigarette maker suing the feds for billions.
By Mark Bonokoski, Postmedia Network. First posted: Saturday, July 15, 2017 06:11 PM EDT | Updated: Saturday, July 15, 2017 06:18 PM EDT
In an ironic twist, the biggest manufacturer of Native cigarettes in Canada is suing the federal government for $3 billion for failing to stop the proliferation of contraband tobacco producers.
The lawsuit, filed in the Ontario Court of Appeal at the end of June by Grand River Enterprises’ Jerry Montour and three other principals in the company, accuses the Attorney General of Canada of “malfeasance in public office, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of aboriginal rights.”
The foursome, all status Indians, is seeking $1.5 billion in damages for revenues allegedly lost to the approximately 50 unlicensed and therefore illegal cigarette manufacturers in the province competing with their brands, and another $1.5 billion for the government’s failure to close them down.
The feds, in turn, have yet to file a statement of defence.
The irony, of course, is that GRE manufactures millions of cigarettes a day at its processing plants on the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, cigarettes that show up at smoke shacks on reserves across the province, and are then sold illegally to non-aboriginals for almost two-thirds less than smokes sold legally at convenience stores.
A tax-free baggie of 200 loose cigarettes, in fact, can cost as little as $8 at a reserve smoke shack.
The resulting loss in tax revenues from the illegal sale of contraband tobacco to both the Canada Revenue Agency and the province of Ontario represents almost a billion dollars annually.
(Natives of course were the first to discover Tobacco and to smoke it in a pipe on ceremonial occasions. They introduced the weed to Europeans who adapted the stuff for their convenience- creating the cigar and later the cigarette businesses. When native bands began signing their treaties with white govt, they were granted the ongoing right to grow and use Tobacco as part of their cultural heritage. But of course cigarettes and cigars and `sin taxes` on these products are a part of modern life in white society. It is only in recent years-as the sin taxes got ever higher- that natives began bending their cultural heritage to include selling cigarettes to white people while avoiding the sin taxes that make cigarettes so costly in local stores. Natives who defend their right to sell cigarettes without collecting or paying sin taxes are not engaged in any traditional practice- they are simply money grubbing tax cheats.)
The lawsuit is based on two theories of liability – the “forced incorporation” of GRE, and the “failure” of the federal government to “enforce” its agreement to come down hard on First Nation cigarette manufacturers churning out products without a licence.
It was a raid by the RCMP on GRE back in the mid-1990s that resulted in GRE reluctantly agreeing to pay federal excise taxes to avoid being shut down, with the feds then promising to “intensify enforcement against contraband to level the playing field between GRE and other on-reserve tobacco manufacturers.”
GRE argues in the court document that the federal government, namely through the Attorney General’s office, has “failed to implement or administer what has been cited as the 1994 Anti-Smuggling Initiative and, as a result of not enforcing laws against the production of contraband cigarettes by other First Nation profiteers, it has caused Montour and company to “incur substantial losses.”
(I day its hard to argue against the GRE position- if one company has to pay then ALL should be made to pay. And since ALL cigarettes that are sold by natives in Ontari-owe are NOT a part of native tradition since it is white people who invented the product then it is fair that all natives MUST be made to pay the sin taxes on the product they are selling.)
A recent study by the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco shows a full third of cigarettes in Ontario are purchased illegally, with Northern Ontario breaching 60%.
It’s all price point. A carton of 200 professionally-packaged contraband cigarettes, which can be pumped out at a rate of 10,000 cigarettes a minute, can be purchased on a reserve — no questions asked — for as little as $30 while an all-taxes-in carton of legal cigarettes costs upwards of $115 at a typical convenience store.
(Native hypocrites want to have it both ways- they want to make a nice profit-cheating the govt of taxes while selling a highly addictive health hazard while avoiding any need to pay taxes that would cover some of the health care costs their product generates.)
This is not to say, however, that Jerry Montour, or his co-plaintiffs Kenny Hill, Curtis Styres and Gregory Scott Smith, are new to the court system. Far from it.
GRE and its distributors have faced litigation for non-payment of taxes by dozens of attorney generals in the United States, which is the primary destination of the GRE cigarette brands that their licence permits them to produce.
GRE’s consistent argument is that their status as a First Nation company should make them exempt from paying state taxes. The consistent result, however, has been GRE losing its court battles, and having to pay a hefty fine.
In Arkansas, for example, a recent fine was $20 million. That’s a lot of money to be smoked out.
(I say the tax exempt status granted to native a hundred years ago is part of a larger problem- that treaty writers and signers never saw coming. It was always expected that natives would continue living in relative isolation away from white people. Law maker of a hundred years back simply could not envision modern long haul trucking industry nor could the conceive of air freight! Thus the tax exempt status was NEVER expected to be used in the larger white society as native cigarette makers are doing. LIE-beral failure to deal with tax cheats has made this mess. But what else can we expect from wretched LIE-berals who are so craven in the face of anger and defiance?
markbonokoski at gmail
