Jean-Serge Brisson - Tea Party of One - Tours Western Canada
Front Cover
On June 28, 2014, Jean-Serge Brisson celebrated his 60th birthday with the launch of his new book titled: Tea Party of One - All Governments Invited. Now he is getting ready for his book-tour to Western Canada in September 2014.
Who Is Jean-Serge Brisson?
1. From Jean-Serge Brisson's website:
"Jean-Serge Brisson was born in 1954 in Embrun, Ontario. He was raised on a dairy farm, attended high school and ultimately opened his own radiator repair business in 1974 in the same small Ontario town. He first became involved in politics in 1980, enticed by the compulsory metrification issue, joined the Libertarian Party in 1986 and ran for the party in the 1988 federal election. He was elected to the boards of both federal and provincial libertarian parties in the early 90’s and has remained active on both boards ever since.
In October 1990, Jean-Serge initiated a “Tax Collection Protest” levied against the Provincial Sales Tax of Ontario, as well as the GST with the federal government. The accusation levied against both levels of government was that “slavery” was being used against private business in the collection of these taxes for governments. To this day, there has been no action to contest this accusation in court, and Jean-Serge's business, "Independent Radiator", has legally "not" collected any taxes since October 1991.
Jean-Serge first became leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada during the 2000 party convention and was re-elected as leader in 2005. Prior to becoming leader, he ran as a candidate in the 1988 and 1993 federal elections, and in 1990 and 1995 in the Ontario provincial elections. He did not run in the 2004 federal election feeling that having just been elected a councilor, it would not have been right to run for another seat at a different level of government even though there was little chance of getting elected. He took his position as councilor seriously and wanted to concentrate on his new position.
He did not run in the 2005 federal election either because of his protest to the Adscam scandal that the Liberals were involved with and he challenged the validity of the election. In doing so, he could not validate his running in an election he did not feel was valid. He remained the National Leader till the convention of May 2008 which was held in Edmonton and did not run for re-election as Leader feeling that the time was appropriate for someone else to take the reins of the party. (snip) ...
Back Cover
2. From the Forward (pages ix and x) of the book “Tea Party of One” Dave Brown, Ottawa columnist (1965-2003) - now retired - writes:
NOTE: This Forward is also posted at Jean-Serge Brisson's website:
"What would happen if you held a revolution and nobody showed up? It’s a gag question that has been hanging around for generations, and Jean-Serge Brisson is the only man I’ve met who is in a position to answer it.
Our first meeting happened in 1991 when he appeared in my office at the Ottawa Citizen. He was thirty-seven, president of the Libertarian Party of Canada, who punctuated much of what he said with a hearty laugh-and what he said included delightful one-liners.
I was a daily columnist mining material in the dark forest-that area where reporters seldom go. The forest has no roads, few trails, zero signposts, and it takes up most of the time and space we live in. It’s heavily populated by average people, and many of them are strange critters. For the most part they’re powerless, so of little interest to the news-chasers who focus on power and high profiles.
Here was a middle-aged operator of a struggling radiator repair shop in Embrun, a satellite community about thirty kilometres east of Parliament Hill, who likened humans to lemmings, but at the same time was proud to be one of them. His only difference, he claimed, was that he stopped to ask: “Where are we going?”
“There’s a precipice out there, someplace,” he said, and he knew it because when lawmakers make laws, governments get more power. When that happens, we forest creatures lose freedom. The balance point is the cliff.
Mr. Brisson wanted to use column space to announce the start of his revolution against “slavery” in present day Canada. He tied it to the GST (goods and service tax), saying that he, as a businessman, had been ordered to start collecting it. He figured he was being ordered to work without pay. That’s slavery. He figured the extra work would take four hours a week, and wanted to be paid at the going rate of a tax collector.
The bureaucratic answer boiled down to this: Everybody else is doing it. Get back in the pack, and keep your head down.
Lemming Brisson broke ranks.
Over the next twenty-three years-and as many columns-I was the one-man press corps covering this one-man war. Both the rebel and the reporter kept it light. Brisson started as an irritant, but wouldn’t bend, instead finding new ways to harass The Man. He earned a verbal promotion, from thorn-in-the-side to full fledged haemorrhoid. Just when his opponents started to get comfortable, he would flare up again.
He tossed around lines like: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys.” Here’s how he once described his duties as vice-president of the Libertarian Party of Canada: “To step in when the president gets assassinated.” His resistance to lemming behaviour earned him trips to jail for attitude adjustment. Instead, he appointed himself the prison system’s food critic.
His revolution got him enough attention to send him on cross-country speaking tours. He could hold audiences and make them laugh at the bureaucratic stupidity that surrounds us, and the way we so easily fall into step. We’re Canadians, eh. He also earned enough credibility to get elected to municipal council.
One of the details that made it possible for him to launch his one-man war was that he has never married. If he had family responsibilities, his quixotic lifestyle wouldn’t have been supportable.
By giving Brisson so much ink over the years, critics have condemned me as frivolous. My response is that anybody willing to stand up for his principles, to the point this man has, is a story-with-legs. He’s worth running with.
Readers of this book can form their own opinions, and it’s a safe bet that in the reading they’ll find more than a few laughs, and some personal attitude adjustment. I know I have." (snip)
Dave Brown, Ottawa columnist, 1965-2003
Retired
Ottawa, 2014
Jean-Serge signed my book :)
4. We Are Change Victoria and CLEAR are co-sponsoring various events for Jean-Serge Brisson's Western Canada Tour. (see links below for complete details)
posted by usuryfree @ 12:07 PM
1 Comments:
Another relevant article:
Evading Usury, Avoiding Taxes
http://usuryfree.blogspot.ca/2012/07/evading-usury-avoiding-taxes.html
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