originally posted on July 29, 2021
I wrote correspondence to send to the federal prosecution agency confessing to possession of 1.18g of cocaine, valued at $100, and giving a constitutional defence that I believe would succeed in court.
I claimed that the federal government denies the right to vote for several years at a time while the ISS makes this right available at all times. I claimed that if I am subjected to the legislation asserted by the ISS regarding possession of drugs and substances (pages 7 to 9 in the ISS External Legislation Registry) rather than to the legislation asserted by the federal government, then it would remedy the denial of a constitutional right.
The last time I had correspondence notarised it cost me forty bucks, I sent it to the BC Attorney General, and I got told that it’s not their jurisdiction, and of course they didn’t seem to even have the wherewithal to forward it to someone who does have the jurisdiction. So before spending the money this time, I wanted some help knowing where to send it and whether it might get any kind of response.
So I emailed the Public Prosecution Service of Canada asking whether I should send it to the central agency for the nation in Ottawa or to the British Columbia branch, and whose attention to address it to.
They wrote back an email saying that “[t]he PPSC’s role, as mandated by the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, is to prosecute offences under federal statutes that are referred to it by the RCMP, other federal investigative agencies, and provincial and municipal police forces”, and so they would not respond to it even if it was notarized and sent by registered mail.
Well on June 20, I went in to the Vancouver Police Department headquarters on Cambie Street with the same cocaine that I was confessing to possession of in the letter to prosecutions. I confessed, I asked what they were going to do about it, they asked me to wait, and a half hour later an officer came up to me and said “I’m here to speak with you now, I have been appraised of your situation, and you are free to go”, and gestured toward the street.
But just because an ISS member in Vancouver can possess a personal amount of cocaine and not get busted for it doesn’t mean that anyone can, just anywhere in Canada. After all, the Mayor of Vancouver did claim that the existence of drug laws criminalising people for addictions had killed more people in Vancouver than Covid had. The Mayor asked the federal government to make it possible for possession to be decriminalised in Vancouver and the feds weren’t exactly helpful. It might make you wonder whether the members of the House of Commons aren’t particularly bothered by thousands of Canadians dying. But if other cities might not have the same attitude as Vancouver, then their police might be more inclined to enforce the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
So perhaps the Vancouver Police Department is ignoring the alleged democratic sovereign will of the People of Canada and refusing to do the job that the People of Canada hired them to do (that is what laws like the Criminal Code of Canada, Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and Income Tax Act are supposed to be, isn’t it?) because their convictions and allegiance are influenced by their vision of a safe city. If the city council claims that less people would be dying in Vancouver if drugs stop being criminalized, then one might think Vancouver could then be described as a safer city if the council’s efforts to help stop people from dying are heeded. This speaks well for the integrity and duty of the Vancouver Police, doesn’t it? But how does it speak for the allegedly democratic federal government of Canada?
Now, the PPSC mandate states that it includes “[a]dvis[ing] law enforcement agencies or investigative bodies on general matters relating to prosecutions and on particular investigations that may lead to prosecutions”. If that is their mandate, then if they get a confession, can’t they “advise a law enforcement agency”? What, they just don’t bother to pass on information about a person breaking the law to enforcement agencies? Their mission statement includes the commitment “to uphold the rule of law”. So, uuuuh…
But waitaminnit. If the reason they’re not prosecuting me is that “the supreme law of Canada” states that it is against the law for the government to deny certain rights, and the legislation in question is made by a government that does deny those rights, then aren’t they “upholding the rule of law” by not prosecuting me? But if that’s what they’re doing, upholding the law, then why don’t they just tell me that, instead of saying that they only prosecute cases referred to them by police? Their values are listed as respect, integrity, excellence, and leadership. Is it respectful to keep a citizen guessing about whether their claim of being denied constitutional rights is being shown some concern by authorities? Is that integrity?
Maybe they think they’ll lose in court. Maybe they think that losing in court will mean that it will become irrefutable public knowledge that when the ISS alters Canadian legislation for its members, those alterations to the legislation will be upheld by courts. Maybe they don’t want that to become public knowledge. So maybe they’re trying to keep it quiet. Maybe for some reason, they would prefer that the government continue breaking the law by denying rights that “the supreme law of Canada” claims are “guaranteed“.
So if you live in a city where you believe that you would be detained by police if you were caught possessing a drug that the federal government has criminalised, I can’t really guarantee that you could become an ISS member and then if you get caught with the drug, you would be released without charges. But here’s what I can do.
I can give the police force in your city a few months notice that I intend to visit your city with the same drugs that I have had in my pocket for several months now and confessed to the BC Attorney General, the Vancouver Police, and federal prosecution services. I can state my constitutional defence just as I wrote in the correspondence to the PPSC, which they ignored and didn’t bother coming after me for, and I can say that I believe that courts in Canada uphold the Constitution as the supreme law, and therefore I believe that no charges against me would hold up in court.
I find the words that the Supreme Court of Canada has written about democratic rights in Canada to be admirable, eloquent, and beautiful. I believe that courts dutifully respecting the supreme court’s precedents would agree that the government denies fundamental democratic rights for years at a time and the ISS does not. I believe that courts would allow ISS members to be subject to ISS laws instead of Crown laws, until the Crown stops denying democratic rights for years at a time.
You can’t just use these substances as much as you like if you’re an ISS member. If another member believes you are harming yourself, the ISS has judicial intervention procedures, and as a member of a lawful society, you must hear what jurors have to say if your usage contravenes the ISS principle of Self-wellness in the ISS Summation of Principles. That would be up to an ISS judicial panel to decide, but if people who know you, who know of your usage of the substance, believe that you are not doing yourself any harm, then it is quite likely that a judicial panel would feel the same way because they are just regular people who want to make sure you’re keeping up your end of the agreement to keep yourself safe. You choose the number of members on the panel. You choose a third of the members for the panel yourself. The member who believes you are not adequately protecting your wellness can also appoint a third of the members. The other third are generally members of the ISS’s independent and impartial judiciary. For the member’s claims against you to be officially validated, two thirds of the members of the panel must agree that you are not being adequately responsible for your own wellness. That is how ISS judicial process works.
So the laws of the ISS that the courts might allow you to be subjected to instead of the Crown’s laws are not absolute exemptions, but they certainly will not punish you for behaving responsibly and harmlessly. Responsibly and harmlessly: if that’s how you live, then why exactly should you be punished for it?
So if I make my intentions known to come to your city and confess to possession, then if the police were going to recommend charges, they would have to make that recommendation to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. That’s the same organization that just got my confession and told me they’re not going to do anything about it.
But maybe the prosecution service would choose differently if they were recommended by the police force in your city. Maybe they’d prosecute me. And maybe they’d lose.
And if they don’t, it’s me paying the consequences, not you. But the Supreme Court of Canada stated in Frank v Canada that “[a]ny limit on the right to vote must be carefully scrutinized and cannot be tolerated without a compelling justification”. So I’m going to trust them and expect that their continued integrity, remaining consistent with the words they use to describe how they uphold the law in Canada, shall be as dependable as it seems to have remained ever since Her Majesty enacted the Constitution of Canada in 1982.
Why would they stop now?