| "HOUSTON V. HOUSTON ET AL." CONTINUED |
CANADA REVENUE AGENCY DECLARES WAR
Like I say, when a million dollars worth of capital in your brokerage accounts is stolen there's going
to be a stack of evidence to report to the authorities. And this happened to me not once, but twice.
The theft started happening in 2002 and didn't let up for years. I'm still sorting through it all and
lodging complaints. The reactions of the regulators are unanimous. They all say the same thing:
Financial services misconduct cannot, does not, happen in Canada.
2006 was a tumultuous year. I was under fire from the Ministry of Attorney General. In addition
to the Houston v. Houston et al. lawsuit, I was facing a bogus criminal dangerous driving charge.
On top of all this, conflict with Canada Revenue Agency and TD Bank Financial Group erupted.
TD Bank Financial Group I've had numerous problems with since 2001 and a chronicle of my
experiences with the financial services industry and its regulators would be incomplete without
including the battle of '06-'07 with CRA and TD.
As well as the company accounts, I had a registered retirement account, an RRSP, at TD
Waterhouse Discount Brokerage. In 2003 TD Waterhouse ceased sending account statements to
the address it held on file for the account. When I noticed statements hadn't arrived for a few
months I called TD Waterhouse and was told the issuing of mailed account statements was ceased
pursuant to an order of the federal taxman, Canada Revenue Agency. The address on my account,
a self-directed account with substantial holdings amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, was
changed to a "classified" (an undefined TD term) TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage address.
TD Waterhouse also attached a message to the account that said: "Withdrawals from RSP required
to pay CRA." TD Waterhouse claimed it was ordered by Canada Revenue Agency to forward any
funds I withdrew from the account to CRA to pay a debt it says I owe.
I took TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage on its word that the reason it provided for holding back
account statements and funds from me was truthful. I accepted their explanation as the truth. I
trusted TD Waterhouse was competently complying with a legal requirement of the government. It
wasn't. As it turns out the explanation I received from TD Waterhouse was completely fabricated.
I'd been dealing with the BC Supreme Court incursions on my wealth since 2001. The Houston v.
Houston et al. lawsuit was my only priority for five years. All I thought about was how to get the
lawyers and PricewaterhouseCoopers off my back for good. TD's freezing of my retirement
account was on my agenda though and was going to be dealt with sooner or later. So when the
lawsuit began to peter out I had a chance to take a closer look at the restrictions placed on the TD
account. Since 2003 a Canada Revenue Agency employee in British Columbia had been sending a
Requirement to Pay notification to TD Waterhouse. When I looked at the CRA document TD was
citing to siphon my funds to the government I realized I'd been outright lied to by TD employees for
years. There was no CRA order that said I was no longer permitted to receive account statements.
There was no CRA order limiting my access to the account. And there was no CRA order directing
TD Waterhouse to divert the funds in the account to the government to pay down a tax debt. There
was no order or paperwork directing TD to take these actions at all.
It was impossible for TD to comply with the Requirement to Pay instructions. The notice didn't
make mention of any account I held at the brokerage. What the Requirement to Pay notice stated
was this: The money TD Waterhouse is required to pay to me must instead be paid to Canada
Revenue Agency. That was all it said. TD couldn't do that because TD didn't owe me anything.
Since TD Waterhouse wasn't my employer, I didn't receive a paycheque from them. I didn't
receive any meaningful payments from TD. The only payments I ever received from TD
Waterhouse came in the form of interest on the cash held in the retirement account. Pennies. If we
were to interpret the tax notice to the letter, TD Waterhouse was obligated to remit the interest it
paid to me to Canada Revenue Agency. The interest payments were not what the taxman wanted
of course. (TD Waterhouse did not remit the interest payments to CRA as required.) And TD
Waterhouse wouldn't be obligated to pay me anything even if I withdrew funds from my account,
the funds were wholly owned by me, not by TD. This was where it got confusing for them.
According to TD Bank Financial Group a withdrawal from my account constituted a payment not to
myself from myself, rather they saw it as a payment to me from TD Waterhouse. The actions TD
undertook displayed that they saw the funds in my account as belonging to them (or to the
government), but not to me. To TD the document meant they were going to pay the government
money from my account no matter what. TD Waterhouse refused to interpret the directions on the
document literally. TD Waterwhose? Mine, not yours.
I decided to start with the account statements.
In July 2006 I contacted TD Waterhouse by telephone and explained to a representative how the
brokerage had no authority or reason to withhold statements from me. TD Waterhouse relented
and agreed to resume mailing account statements to my address.
Then I wrote a letter to TD's legal/compliance department explaining there was no order from CRA
to put a partial freeze on my retirement account. I asked that all restrictions be immediately
removed from my access to the account. TD's legal people didn't reply but I got a September 7,
2006 letter from a TD employee called Savitri Ferrie who told me I could still trade in the account if
I wanted but that was all. Ferrie informed me TD had recently contacted Canada Revenue Agency
and was advised that I owe CRA $31,622.76. What? That inquiry was a totally illegal breach of
my privacy. TD Waterhouse had no reason to be talking to CRA about my tax account. My
consent is required for any third party to retrieve confidential information from Canada Revenue
Agency about my account. It goes the other way too, CRA doesn't have the right to give my
information to unauthorized third parties without my consent.
And, Ferrie explained, since I owe that money to CRA any cash I withdraw from the account would
be remitted to the government, not to me. The only justification TD gave for the handout to CRA
was the tax bill. TD no longer saw me as a customer, it saw me as a tax debtor. Because I owed a
debt to the government I now ceased to be a TD Waterhouse client. TD Bank Financial Group put
measures in place to collect a debt on behalf of the government, TD did this on its own without any
formal written direction from the government, no court order, no directive from CRA, nothing. TD
had no paperwork to justify its actions. TD Bank Financial Group might as well be conducting
business out of federal government offices. TD revealed itself as an agent and close business
partner, in spirit and in practice, of the Government of Canada.
On September 18, 2006 I placed an order to purchase shares in the account. The order was filled.
Later that day TD Waterhouse canceled the filled order of equities. When I called TD on the phone
to get the mistake corrected TD said the account had been frozen by order of CRA. The canceling
of the order was no mistake, it was done deliberately. The representative told me a no-buy directive
had been placed on the account. I was permitted only to sell securities in the account, not to
purchase any. The representative claimed this no-buy directive was placed on the account by
Canada Revenue Agency. The rep would not correct the canceled order. "Why the restriction? On
what authority are you acting?" I asked. "You owe money to CRA." That was all the justification
TD needed. Because I'm in arrears to the taxman. The front-line TD telephone reps seemed to be
making up arbitrary rules on whim, their excuses were always shifting, so I never called them again.
I found I could get around the no-buy directive by placing trades electronically on the Internet
instead of by phone.
Like I say, when a million dollars worth of capital in your brokerage accounts is stolen there's going
to be a stack of evidence to report to the authorities. And this happened to me not once, but twice.
The theft started happening in 2002 and didn't let up for years. I'm still sorting through it all and
lodging complaints. The reactions of the regulators are unanimous. They all say the same thing:
Financial services misconduct cannot, does not, happen in Canada.
2006 was a tumultuous year. I was under fire from the Ministry of Attorney General. In addition
to the Houston v. Houston et al. lawsuit, I was facing a bogus criminal dangerous driving charge.
On top of all this, conflict with Canada Revenue Agency and TD Bank Financial Group erupted.
TD Bank Financial Group I've had numerous problems with since 2001 and a chronicle of my
experiences with the financial services industry and its regulators would be incomplete without
including the battle of '06-'07 with CRA and TD.
As well as the company accounts, I had a registered retirement account, an RRSP, at TD
Waterhouse Discount Brokerage. In 2003 TD Waterhouse ceased sending account statements to
the address it held on file for the account. When I noticed statements hadn't arrived for a few
months I called TD Waterhouse and was told the issuing of mailed account statements was ceased
pursuant to an order of the federal taxman, Canada Revenue Agency. The address on my account,
a self-directed account with substantial holdings amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, was
changed to a "classified" (an undefined TD term) TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage address.
TD Waterhouse also attached a message to the account that said: "Withdrawals from RSP required
to pay CRA." TD Waterhouse claimed it was ordered by Canada Revenue Agency to forward any
funds I withdrew from the account to CRA to pay a debt it says I owe.
I took TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage on its word that the reason it provided for holding back
account statements and funds from me was truthful. I accepted their explanation as the truth. I
trusted TD Waterhouse was competently complying with a legal requirement of the government. It
wasn't. As it turns out the explanation I received from TD Waterhouse was completely fabricated.
I'd been dealing with the BC Supreme Court incursions on my wealth since 2001. The Houston v.
Houston et al. lawsuit was my only priority for five years. All I thought about was how to get the
lawyers and PricewaterhouseCoopers off my back for good. TD's freezing of my retirement
account was on my agenda though and was going to be dealt with sooner or later. So when the
lawsuit began to peter out I had a chance to take a closer look at the restrictions placed on the TD
account. Since 2003 a Canada Revenue Agency employee in British Columbia had been sending a
Requirement to Pay notification to TD Waterhouse. When I looked at the CRA document TD was
citing to siphon my funds to the government I realized I'd been outright lied to by TD employees for
years. There was no CRA order that said I was no longer permitted to receive account statements.
There was no CRA order limiting my access to the account. And there was no CRA order directing
TD Waterhouse to divert the funds in the account to the government to pay down a tax debt. There
was no order or paperwork directing TD to take these actions at all.
It was impossible for TD to comply with the Requirement to Pay instructions. The notice didn't
make mention of any account I held at the brokerage. What the Requirement to Pay notice stated
was this: The money TD Waterhouse is required to pay to me must instead be paid to Canada
Revenue Agency. That was all it said. TD couldn't do that because TD didn't owe me anything.
Since TD Waterhouse wasn't my employer, I didn't receive a paycheque from them. I didn't
receive any meaningful payments from TD. The only payments I ever received from TD
Waterhouse came in the form of interest on the cash held in the retirement account. Pennies. If we
were to interpret the tax notice to the letter, TD Waterhouse was obligated to remit the interest it
paid to me to Canada Revenue Agency. The interest payments were not what the taxman wanted
of course. (TD Waterhouse did not remit the interest payments to CRA as required.) And TD
Waterhouse wouldn't be obligated to pay me anything even if I withdrew funds from my account,
the funds were wholly owned by me, not by TD. This was where it got confusing for them.
According to TD Bank Financial Group a withdrawal from my account constituted a payment not to
myself from myself, rather they saw it as a payment to me from TD Waterhouse. The actions TD
undertook displayed that they saw the funds in my account as belonging to them (or to the
government), but not to me. To TD the document meant they were going to pay the government
money from my account no matter what. TD Waterhouse refused to interpret the directions on the
document literally. TD Waterwhose? Mine, not yours.
I decided to start with the account statements.
In July 2006 I contacted TD Waterhouse by telephone and explained to a representative how the
brokerage had no authority or reason to withhold statements from me. TD Waterhouse relented
and agreed to resume mailing account statements to my address.
Then I wrote a letter to TD's legal/compliance department explaining there was no order from CRA
to put a partial freeze on my retirement account. I asked that all restrictions be immediately
removed from my access to the account. TD's legal people didn't reply but I got a September 7,
2006 letter from a TD employee called Savitri Ferrie who told me I could still trade in the account if
I wanted but that was all. Ferrie informed me TD had recently contacted Canada Revenue Agency
and was advised that I owe CRA $31,622.76. What? That inquiry was a totally illegal breach of
my privacy. TD Waterhouse had no reason to be talking to CRA about my tax account. My
consent is required for any third party to retrieve confidential information from Canada Revenue
Agency about my account. It goes the other way too, CRA doesn't have the right to give my
information to unauthorized third parties without my consent.
And, Ferrie explained, since I owe that money to CRA any cash I withdraw from the account would
be remitted to the government, not to me. The only justification TD gave for the handout to CRA
was the tax bill. TD no longer saw me as a customer, it saw me as a tax debtor. Because I owed a
debt to the government I now ceased to be a TD Waterhouse client. TD Bank Financial Group put
measures in place to collect a debt on behalf of the government, TD did this on its own without any
formal written direction from the government, no court order, no directive from CRA, nothing. TD
had no paperwork to justify its actions. TD Bank Financial Group might as well be conducting
business out of federal government offices. TD revealed itself as an agent and close business
partner, in spirit and in practice, of the Government of Canada.
On September 18, 2006 I placed an order to purchase shares in the account. The order was filled.
Later that day TD Waterhouse canceled the filled order of equities. When I called TD on the phone
to get the mistake corrected TD said the account had been frozen by order of CRA. The canceling
of the order was no mistake, it was done deliberately. The representative told me a no-buy directive
had been placed on the account. I was permitted only to sell securities in the account, not to
purchase any. The representative claimed this no-buy directive was placed on the account by
Canada Revenue Agency. The rep would not correct the canceled order. "Why the restriction? On
what authority are you acting?" I asked. "You owe money to CRA." That was all the justification
TD needed. Because I'm in arrears to the taxman. The front-line TD telephone reps seemed to be
making up arbitrary rules on whim, their excuses were always shifting, so I never called them again.
I found I could get around the no-buy directive by placing trades electronically on the Internet
instead of by phone.
19 / 45