Self Evident Truths: Continued

Hey there!

We are examining the freeman movement and trying to sift through the huge amount of information out there to come to our own conclusions.  The only way to be sure that you have everything right is to look at it from every angle until you can be certain of your own mind.  Only then can you ever be comfortable with yourself and your decisions.

So what have we learned so far?
1. Freeman means someone who is not a slave and who has rights.
2. Sometimes the freemen manage to win in court, so at least some of what they are saying must have merit.
3. Freemen believe in a cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
4. Freemen come from all walks of life, enjoy many different careers and seem to be just like me - just a little angrier.

Lets examine some of the things they say to find for ourselves whether or not they have a reason to be angry.

Freeman maxim #1:
Laws and legislation do not apply to a natural person.

Well this is silly you'd have to say since we all know that no one is above the law.  I can reject this off-hand, but I am still trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.  They seem passionate so they must have something that makes them believe it.  If I know why they think this way, maybe I can show them where they went wrong.  Let's look up laws and legislation in Canada.  Well let's see...we have the Charter of Rights, that is what lists all of our rights in Canada.  This IS the document the cops read from when reading you your rights, so this is where I'll start.  Looks pretty good until I hit this part right here:

Application of Charter

• 32. (1) This Charter applies
• (a) to the Parliament and government of Canada in respect of all matters within the authority of Parliament including all matters relating to the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories; and
• (b) to the legislature and government of each province in respect of all matters within the authority of the legislature of each province.
• Source: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-15.html

Now this makes it look like only government employees have rights.  I know that isn't true, I have rights, we all have rights!  So maybe this isn't a document that grants me my rights or indicates what my rights are.  Maybe this is just a document telling the government how they are supposed to respect our rights.  Maybe there is more to this law thing.

While on the Canadian Law website you can find all sorts of acts and laws that all read like a glossary of terms.  One act will refer to another which will address an issue with another or amend still another.  Going back and forth I can't seem to find many that don't re-define almost every word.  None of them seem to differentiate between a freeman and a regular man and person is used (and re-defined) differently in many of them.  I wonder if there is something out there that'll help me sift through all the terminology?  Oh, wait, what is this?

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-21/

An act to tell people how to interpret other acts...well that is handy!

According to this:

1. Laws apply differently depending on jurisdiction.  Common law is acknowledged and upheld in Canada as per section 8.2:

                   

Terminology

8.2 Unless otherwise provided by law, when an enactment contains both civil law and common law terminology, or terminology that has a different meaning in the civil law and the common law, the civil law terminology or meaning is to be adopted in the Province of Quebec and the common law terminology or meaning is to be adopted in the other provinces.

So Quebec seems to behave differently than the rest of the country, but haven't they always?  I wonder why they get away with it?  that'll be a discovery for another day.

2. There are some things in law that are suggestions and others that are obligations:

Imperative and Permissive Construction

Marginal note:“Shall” and “may”

11. The expression “shall” is to be construed as imperative and the expression “may” as permissive.

3. If you are going to redefine something, you have to be consistent.  If you define something for one act then all other acts that follow must use the same meaning unless specifically indicated.

Interpretation sections subject to exceptions

(2) Where an enactment contains an interpretation section or provision, it shall be read and construed

• (a) as being applicable only if a contrary intention does not appear; and
• (b) as being applicable to all other enactments relating to the same subject-matter unless a contrary intention appears.

So a car in one act is the same as a car in another act pertaining to cars.  Makes sense.

4. Power to make laws does not allow you to redefine words in those laws.

Words in regulations

16. Where an enactment confers power to make regulations, expressions used in the regulations have the same respective meanings as in the enactment conferring the power.

5. There isn't much room to move when writing laws:

Gender

• 33. (1) Words importing female persons include male persons and corporations and words importing male persons include female persons and corporations.

• Marginal note:Number

  (2) Words in the singular include the plural, and words in the plural include the singular.

• Marginal note:Parts of speech and grammatical forms

  (3) Where a word is defined, other parts of speech and grammatical forms of the same word have corresponding meanings.

Reading acts of legislation isn't fun, but some of the things I am discovering are pretty neat.  It makes it hard to see how people could have gotten things wrong like the freemen say.  I am trying to keep an open mind, but things look legit.

Okay, so just trying to use the Interpretation Act to understand law seems to have confused me more.  I can't assume that Freemen  are all illiterate, but I have yet to see where any of this applies to me, or the average Joe.  Maybe I am still missing something.

Let's look at a law dictionary.  When you have so many regular words being defined and re-defined, it is good to have a book that gives you all the possible meanings so you can pick the right context.  There are several words I believe I already know that I see repeated throughout these acts and regulations, some of those that stand out to me are:

1. Enactment

2. Contains

3. Includes/including

4. Person

5. Applies

These are pretty basic words, but if they are defining almost every word in an act, maybe there are different meanings for things than I now know.  Maybe it is in these simple words that I can find the key to understanding why the freemen are mad or bad...whichever it may be.

We'll talk definitions in our next installment.