Dene Moore of the Canadian Press has written an article about the self proclaimed "sovereign citizens" movement in Canada. If you've been following the activities the similarly named groups in the US much of this will sound familiar. Members refuse to pay taxes, obey various sorts of government regulation, and try to support their claims with complicated legal gobbledegook. One Ontario "Freeman" is even apparently trying to recruit his own police force, just as some American believers in such things have tried to do.
Although not mentioned in Moore's article another group with similar ideas and rationalisations in Canada is the Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International, which has been mentioned several times before on this blog. Members reject current Canadian law because it doesn't acknowledge the King James Version of the Bible as a legal text, and do things like claim their vehicles don't need to be licensed because they are Church property being used for Church business. As you might imagine these arguments do not work well when presented to law enforcement and the judicial system.
So far no one has been seriously hurt by members of these and similar groups, unlike some of their American counterparts. Hopefully that remains the case.
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