Thursday, August 24, 2023

The Coutts 4, and when the Right turns on itself.

Regular CC commenter "ValJ" gifts us the following from an earlier post:
This is a good read about the squabbling supporters of the Coutts 4 charged with conspiracy to kill police officers. 
Also questions about Marco Van Huigenbos, one of the three Coutts blockade leaders who are charged with mischief over $5000.
Ezra appears at the top and especially towards the bottom of the blog post; apparently he funded Marco's legal costs until Marco asked him an inconvenient question. Ezra also allegedly promised to fund the Coutts 4 then decided not to.
They do not name the Democracy Fund but I assume that's what Ezra is using. There have been other fundraising activities raising a million $ for the legal costs of the Coutts 4 but maybe that does not include Ezra's DFund. Anyway, CRA should be watching, also CSIS and RCMP.

It's always fun and games until people allegedly want to kill cops. And, yes, why isn't Canada Revenue Agency interested in this?

BONUS TRACK: For me, the most interesting exchange in that interview can be seen about 3/4 of the way down that page, underneath the text: "Even more interesting is that Marco says that his legal fees were previously being covered by Rebel "News" until recently when he spoke out about Ezra not helping to fund the legal fees for the Coutts 4. Now he has to fund his own costs"

In that clip, Van Huigenbos is explicit that his legal fees were being paid through The Democracy Fund, a CRA-registered charity that is eligible to hand out charitable tax receipts, even though it's not at all clear why Canada Revenue Agency thinks fundraising to defend against criminal charges merits a tax deduction.

DEAR CANADA REVENUE AGENCY: From March of this year:


On what planet is it appropriate to allow someone to issue charitable tax receipts for donations to defend against criminal charges of dangerous driving and assault with a weapon?

ABOUT THAT MANDATE ... As I have posted on numerous occasions, this is the official mandate of The Democracy Fund, which it is required to honour in order to keep its CRA-provided charitable tax status.


I see nothing there that represents defending people accused of simple criminal assault. So why does the CRA tolerate this?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When are we going to see the 2022 CRA filing from The Democracy Fund? It's almost September and they've still only filed up to 2021:

https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/hacc/srch/pub/dsplyRprtngPrd?q.srchNmFltr=the+democracy+fund&q.stts=0007&selectedCharityBn=779176676RR0001&dsrdPg=1

Anonymous said...

If Ezra promised to cover Marco's legal fees, and then reneged, isn't that breach of contract? Even a verbal promise can be considered legally binding, especially if it involves promising a substantial sum of money, then going back on that.

I'm betting there's a lot of that, given that Ezra promised he would pay legal fees for EVERYONE that got lockdown-related fines, and it's pretty clear he didn't do that.

Anonymous said...

I didn't listen to all the videos and my description may have errors, sorry. Sounds like the videos have further revelations.

I had the impression that Ezra was in court for some of the pretrial motions which are under publication ban, and he did say he had read a lot (I dunno what would be available to him, the filed pre-trial motions, maybe? Court transcripts? Whatever the Democracy Fund lawyers got?)

Anyway, he decided against funding the Coutts 4, which suggests he thinks there could be some criminal findings. Maybe he feels the same about Marco's lesser charges?

ValJ