Adopt-a-Lawsuit Personalizes the Pain

This is a companion piece to my earlier item about the "Adopt a Grant Program".

As I did with the Adopt-a-Grant program, I think we need some way to help Canadians to more clearly understand what goes on when somebody "sues" the government. It’s easy to see where the money’s going, but where’s the actually money coming from?

Have a car crash in the fog or on a slippery road? Sue the government.

You’ve invested in a company and the board of directors foolishly or neglectfully loses your money? Sue the company – and sue the government.

A class action lawsuit was even launched against government when a bunch of cottagers got bitten by mosquitos. Forget buying a lottery ticket – trip over your own shadow in a publicly owned parking lot, and financial freedom is yours!

And it’s getting easier and easier! There’ve been recent "improvements" in how law firms can collect fees as a share of class action awards. It’s inviting "ambulance chasing" lawyers like we see down in the States.

I’m just worried that we're going to run out of money paying for all these lawsuits. It’s like a grand, multi-level marketing scheme – get in quick while there's still lots of money and before your fellow taxpayers figure it out. And before some government cracks down – eventually they’ll have to given the rising awards and legal costs.

Certainly, some controls are inevitable – be they award limits, tort reform, compensatory damages but no punitive, and so on. The taxpayer’s pockets are only so deep!

But, in the meantime, we have to pay for these lawsuits.

So, as with my "Adopt-a-Grant" program, I would like to suggest that all Canadians select a lawsuit that the "government" has faced, or is facing, and that we each generously volunteer to sponsor or adopt the funding of that lawsuit. Then we might really understand how much money is involved.

Thus, I propose to you: The "Adopt-a-Lawsuit" program.  Pick a past or present lawsuit and call it your own. How many years will you have to work to pay for it.

These lawsuits are limited only by the imagination of "aggrieved parties" and their lawyers – and by politicians in the "Department of Spending" who are only too eager to use the Taxpayers’ Bank of Canada to pay off their sins.

So, adopt that lawsuit!

You have a wide selection from which to choose! Here’s mine.

I am adopting the "Maher Arar" lawsuit. Using my taxes, I will singularly pay off Mr. Arar’s 10 million plus dollar settlement.

Now, I may be biting off more of a "lawsuit" than I can chew, but I’m ambitious. In the Adopt-a-Lawsuit program, you have to have a grand vision or it’s hardly worth it.

Wait a minute: If the world of government spending and priorities can be such an unreal, virtual fantasy world – why can’t I be the same in dealing with my "adopted lawsuit"?

I have 3 Siamese cats. Not always intentionally, they’ve made it into a few of my videos in cameo roles!

My cats are "guard" cats.

They’re also effective sentinels against burglars, home invaders and subscription salesmen – not to mention spider infestations.

Anyway, looking at my cats, each of them have 9 lives, right? So, what if I had 9 lives like the three of them. In those 27 working lives I "might" conceivably be able to pay enough taxes to cover that lawsuit brought by Maher Arar.

"Mommy, I am valuable!"

The concept of the "Adopt-a-Lawsuit Program" is just like other government spending measures. You might want to consider it next time, and every time, politicians come knocking at your door soliciting your vote!

I am very sensitive to Maher Arar’s terrible ordeal in his forced expulsion to be tortured in Syria. Something that’s not talked about as much is his poor family’s loss of his companionship for over a year, and the worry that must have entailed. What comes to mind was my Mom who lost my Dad’s companionship for six years while he went off to war in 1939. Decades later, and years after he died, Ma talked about how that was such a hard thing to get through.

So I don’t deny Maher Arar deserved something. But he did originally sue us for $400 million! Did he and his legal counsel really think that what happened was worth nearly a half a billion dollars? That’s a pretty good hospital built from the ground up right there. If such a claim were legitimate, one could ponder what we owe the underprivileged in this country. Are government policies, actions or inaction, not responsible for their predicament?

Are we really supposed to feel "lucky" that he settled for only $10 million?

I would have authorized giving Arar a couple of million right off the bat. No lawsuit needed. It reminds me of that supposed mother-of-all-meanies, tough guy Mike Harris, Premier of Ontario. Remember when he "gave" the surviving Dionne quintuplets two million dollars – without a court case.

So. Two million. Ten million. It’s a difference of degree, and it’s an important difference. Eight million dollars could do a lot of good for a lot of homeless people, seniors, poor hungry kids and the disabled. We could keep food banks stocked for an awfully long time. I get back to the point I made earlier – I thought that’s what we paid taxes for!

Mr. Arar can’t sue Syria, for reasons stated earlier. He's still trying to sue the Americans, who actually extradited him to the Middle East, but he likely won’t succeed. However, he did sue you and me, through our government, an entity that seems only too quick to hand over your money to solve its political predicaments.

Should they have the power to do that?

Sue government for legislative changes, sure.

Sue to stop a bad law, or create a good law, sure.

Sue where real financial hardship occurred, of course. That would include for fair compensation for historical wrong doings. That’s justice.

But suing as an easy way to become a millionaire, I don’t know.

And if government loses a suit, it’s also reasonable to expect we should cover the court costs of the complainant – with the proviso, as I said earlier, that there might have to be a fixed fee structure if legal fees start to get out of hand. Same thing would apply, of course, if the case were dismissed. Somebody should have to pay the taxpayers’ costs.

Look, in the private sector, sue away! There, shareholders voluntarily invest and risk their contribution. By comparison, in our system of government, taxpayers are involuntary contributors. Tax collection is mandatory and executed by our government, which is a monopoly – most taxpayers don’t even see their paycheques until the Taxman has taken his rather large bite.

Look, I won’t argue that most of these "lawsuits" have merit, but why should the "taxpayer" be punished for any of them? And where the lawsuits are, on occasion, a little flimsy, the government has so much power that they have no reason to vigorously defend such frivolous cases. Always, their prime political imperative is to hush up the lawsuit complainants by just doling out our money to make it go away.

At least until the next lawsuit comes along, brought by people or groups seeing the "easy money" to be made. Accessing taxpayers’ money, through legal challenges, has become a billion-dollar enterprise in this country, and it’s only going to get worse.