The freeman on the land movement (sometimes spelled freeman-on-the-land or abbreviated as FOTL), also known as the freemen of the land, the freemen movement, or simply freemen, is a loose group of individuals who adhere to pseudolegal concepts and conspiracy theories implying that they are bound by statute laws only if they consent to those laws. Freemen on the land are mostly present in Commonwealth countries. The movement appeared in Canada in the early 2000s, as an offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement which is more prevalent in the United States.
The name "freeman on the land" describes a person who is literally a "free man" on the land where they live. Movement members believe that they can declare themselves independent of the government and the rule of law, holding that the only true law is their own interpretation of "common law". Freemen on the land also advocate schemes to avoid taxes which they consider to be illegitimate. In Canada, courts and scholars use the technical phrase "Organised Pseudolegal Commercial Arguments" (OPCA) as an umbrella term for freemen on the land, the precursor "Detaxer" movement, sovereign citizens, their pseudolegal theories and the vexatious litigation based on them.
Freeman on the land arguments are legally baseless. Besides Canada, freemen on the land's pseudolegal claims have been argued in the courts of Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Ireland but have always been rejected. The movement's influence peaked in Canada during the late 2000s and early 2010s; it has since declined significantly.
History
There is some cross-over between the two groups which call themselves freemen and sovereign citizens (and some others). The freeman on the land movement comes from the encounter of the Canadian and American traditions of pseudolaw theories. Canada developed its own tradition of pseudolaw and tax protesters, which merged over time with ideas from the American sovereign citizen movement.
The sovereign citizen movement originated in the radical anti-government movements in the US in the 1960s and 1970s, though the far right aspects of its ideology were gradually diluted over time. Sovereign citizen ideas garnered more support during the American farm crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s and a financial crisis in both the US and Canada in the same period.
With the advent of the Internet and continuing during the 21st century, people throughout the English-speaking world who share the core beliefs of these movements (which may be loosely defined as "see[ing] the state as a corporation with no authority over free citizens") have been able to connect and share their beliefs.
The pseudolegal ideas originated with the Sovereign Citizen movement in the United States were first imported into Canada through the "Detaxer" movement around the turn of the 21st century. "Detaxer" concepts were adapted by other "gurus" and eventually gave birth to the freeman on the land movement. By the late 2000s they had also started to spread to freeman groups in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, and to various groups in Europe.
Canada Pre-Detaxer movement Canada's tax protester and pseudolaw tradition was influenced by earlier idiosyncratic interpretations of Canadian law and constitution. In 1937, R. Rogers Smith self-published Alberta has the Sovereign Right to Issue and Use Its Own Credit, which argued that the British North America Act and the Statute of Westminster 1931 did not make Canada an independent nation, but left it a British dependency, and that the constitutional division of powers between the Canadian federal government and provincial governments was not defined. In 1945, Walter Frederick Kuhl MP delivered a speech in the House of Commons in which he argued, based on Smith's theories, that the Canadian constitution was defective and needed to be amended. Kuhl's argument formed a basis to refuse to pay income tax, for it alleged that the federal government had no taxation authority and that all other government jurisdictions remained with the provinces. The speech was reprinted and distributed as a booklet titled Canada, a Country Without a Constitution. Smith and Kuhl's texts were later used as references by the "Detaxer" movement.
According to Canadian legal scholar Donald J. Netolitzky, the "patient zero" for Canadian pseudolegal tax protester arguments was Gerrald Hart, an electronics shopkeeper from Winnipeg, who engaged during the 1950s in anti-tax efforts which included submitting tax returns that rejected liability instead of correctly reporting his shop's tax liabilities. In The Queen v. Hart Electronics Limited, Hart was charged with failure to file a tax return. The Manitoba Court of Appeal acquitted Hart, ruling that his unsigned, unusual tax return was still a tax return, and refused to consider whether the tax return was adequate. Hart also claimed that the Supreme Court ruling in Nova Scotia (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General) (1951) SCR 31 meant that income tax acts passed by the Canadian government since 1971 were unconstitutional. He published the Hart System of Effective Tax Avoidance that described his strategies to avoid taxes.
In the early 1990s, Murray Gauvreau worked with social credit group Pilgrims of Saint Michael to promote tax protester strategies based on Hart's System of Effective Tax Avoidance via the organisation's Michael journal. Gauvreau's arguments, based on filing defective tax returns, as well as constitutional arguments based on the division of powers, were rejected by the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta.
In the 1980s and the 1990s, fiscal misconception conspiracy theories similar to those found in American tax protester movements were also adopted by Canadian tax protester groups. In 1999, arguments based on the constitutional division of powers, earlier used by Hart and Gauvreau, were further developed by Robert A. Marquis in his book Fraud, Deception, Manipulation, though Marquis failed to mention that these arguments had already been rejected by Canadian courts.
Canadian pseudolegal anti-tax activism initially had little resonance outside marginal right-wing communities. This changed in the late 1990s, when the "Detaxer" movement became influential in Canada.
Detaxer movement (1998)
Around 1998, Canadian pilot Eldon Gerald Warman, who had been exposed to American pseudolegal concepts while residing in the United States, promoted ideas adapted from the sovereign citizen movement through his website Detax Canada and the organization of seminars. Warman claimed to be subject only to "common law", referring not to modern case law, but to historical English case law. He credited as his mentor American activist Roger Elvick, who had founded the redemption movement in the United States; the redemption movement notably promoted the strawman theory, which is based on the assertion that state legislative authority only extends to an individual's legal person and not to their natural person.
Warman claimed that whereas in the United States, an individual's Social Security Number was used to attach this "strawman" to a natural person, in Canada, this was done using a birth certificate. Around 2000, Warman also worked with Ernst Friedrich Kyburz and Sikander Abdulali "Alex" Muljiani to promote anti-tax ideas based on the sovereign citizen movement's beliefs, at joint seminars across Canada. He also used misinterpretations of Canadian case law to justify unrestricted automobile use.
Warman asserted that government authority over an individual arises from a contract, that statute law cannot be used to impose on a person a contract that deprives the individual of property rights and freedom to travel, and that individual rights and liberties derived from Anglo-Saxon common law, as well as Magna Carta. He instructed his followers to use disclaimers in income tax returns, to reject correspondence from the Canada Revenue Agency and to refrain from citing the Constitution of Canada in court, to avoid entering into an assumpsit contract.
He asked them instead to deny the "strawman", claim "common law" jurisdiction, and otherwise claim the right to silence. Warman also used pre-Detaxer arguments to assert that the Canadian constitution was defective, and proposed a new constitutional document, the Magna Carta Kanata. However, he criticised other pre-Detaxer strategies and suggested that they were secretly sponsored by the Canada Revenue Agency itself.
In 1999, after he was charged with assaulting a police officer, Warman attempted to use these pseudo-legal arguments to assert that the Provincial Court of British Columbia did not have jurisdiction over him in R v Warman (2000) BCPC 0022.R v Warman (2000) BCPC 0022 On denying Warman's appeal, the British Columbia Court of Appeal noted that his arguments were based on a rejection of state and judicial authority.
Warman, who died in 2017, was emulated by several other "gurus". Some Detaxer methods relied, with occasional success, on technical loopholes, while others attacked the taxation authority itself. One "guru" who enjoyed particular notoriety was Russell Porisky, who operated an organization known as the Paradigm Education Group. Porisky promoted Detaxer theories via multilevel marketing strategies, making them more broadly accessible to the public. Porisky's concept was that people could avoid paying taxes by declaring themselves a "natural person" rather than taxpayers. His method relied on combining the definition of a "person" in section 248(1) of the Canadian income tax Act with the strawman theory. Porisky was first convicted of tax evasion in 2012. In 2016, he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and ordered to pay C$259,482 in fines for tax evasion and for having counselled others to commit fraud.
The Detaxer movement went through a decline after 2008, due to the repeated failure of its concepts in courts. As of 2016, the last "guru" actively teaching Detaxer theories is David Kevin Lindsay, a serial litigant who participated in hundreds of court cases as a plaintiff or as an "agent" acting on behalf of others. In 2010, Lindsay unsuccessfully argued before the Supreme Court of British Columbia that he should not be paying taxes because he was not a "person" as defined by the Income Tax Act but "a full liability free will flesh and blood living man". Linsday's own failure in court eroded his status as a pseudolaw guru. In 2016, Lindsay complained that Canadian pseudolaw affiliates and gurus had become too influenced by US concepts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lindsay re-emerged as a leader of anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests in British Columbia.
Origin of freeman on the land movement (from 2000)
The freeman on the land movement in Canada originated with one single key "guru", Robert Arthur Menard. A former construction worker and stand-up comic, Menard entered pseudolaw as a student of Detaxer theories, which he later promoted on the Internet through online forums such as "Cannabis culture", videos and freely distributed ebooks. He became more invested in pseudolaw around 2000 in relation to his dispute with child welfare authorities over access to and custody of the child of a teenaged partner.
Menard's guru activity initially focused on how birth documentation allegedly allows the state to control children. He later expanded his claims, asserting that he could immunize people from Canadian law in general. Menard first used the phrase "Freeloader-on-the-Land" to describe how people could ignore their social and legal obligations while still benefiting from Canadian services and infrastructures. He coined the name "freeman on the land" around 2005.