u/DNetolitzky

Pseudolaw “law schools” always intrigue me. Why would you trust an "institution" that places itself outside the legal norms?

Awhile ago my favourite, the "Erwin Rommel School of Law" which had run since the 1970s disappeared. Yes, that Rommel.

But it's back! Still run by Michael Halsey Brown, though now he has a number of collaborators. Of course, you want to visit.

Why Rommel? “Rommel accomplished more with less than anybody in the 20th century.”

I often used the ERSOL website when conducting educational sessions, it inevitably sent judges howling with laughter. Thus, I was saddened when the ERSOL disappeared offline something like four or five years ago. At that time you could purchase Brown’s entire library of resources, “The Whole Nine Yards”, for a modest $1,499. Well, the price has dropped to a mere $750, all on a convenient USB Flash Drive and “professionally organized”.

I’ve never purchased the package so I can’t comment on the details. It’s a little surprising how Brown’s key materials never ended up on Scribd or other public sites, at least that I noticed. My quick search today did however locate his 1974 text “Iron Claws: Grip Development and Bench Press Course”. No law stuff that after a quick scan. Here you go, you curious ones.

Brown describes himself as a “modern renaissance man”, and an incomplete list of his publications nails the point with a dagger. Where does one start?

•  “Brown’s Book of Carburetors”
• “The Case for Polygamy” (oh, look what the alpha male has to say)
• “The Erwin Rommel School of Law – How to Defeat an Illegal Legal System” (with macramé – duh)
• “Suppressed Inventions & How They Work” (quietly, they’re suppressed)
• “Sex, Money and Power: The Bible Shows You How”

Anyways, back to Brown’s pseudolaw texts. Is it incongruous that the cover art for “How to Defeat an Illegal Legal System” illustrates some kind of M4 Sherman? Just saying. You’d think Erwin would prefer a Panther.

Or a StuG. More than a little partial to those, myself. Nasty functional looking things.

Pseudolaw and Sovereign Citizens (eds Harry Hobbs & Stephen Young), an academic anthology of articles on pseudolaw phenomena worldwide, is now available in softcover.

Still not cheap, but an interesting and useful resource, recommended to those interested in the subject. The authors bring many different perspectives to the subject from international angles.

Full disclosure: yes, I'm the author of one chapter. No, I'm not getting paid anything from proceeds of sales.

I do it for the sick kicks.

In Canada a new variation on pseudolaw is increasingly common. Being "Indigenous" makes you outside the law in magic ways.

That goes in weird directions, for example in a recent Saskatchewan appeal decision to eliminate a mortgage debt owed by Marlin Marynick.

That's nonsense and simply illogical in many senses. But the Marynick litigation is consistent with the broader pattern that pseudolaw schemes involve a "duel of laws". I have a law, and my law is more powerful than yours. We've seen this duality in many forms. Admiralty Law vs Law of the Land. Contract Law vs Natural Law. Equity versus Common Law.

In the case of Marynick we don’t see the details of his exact pseudolaw scheme, rather pseudolaw came up early on in a procedural context. What is disclosed is:

1. Marynick had a mortgage, he stopped paying.
2. Rather than waiting for foreclosure Marynick preemptively sued his lender, demanding the lender prove the debt was based on a valid mortgage, and that the lender hadn’t sold off and “securitized” his debt to someone else.
3. The trial court called that as bullshit.
4. Marynick appealed, but also demanded he is represented by an “Indigenous Representative”, John Cipolla, who is not a lawyer. 
5. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal rejected Cipolla as a representative because he is a known pseudolaw (“OPCA”) litigant.
6. Marynick Did Not Consent!!!

 And Marynick’s appeal gets punted. And as is illustrated in the quoted passages, the SKCA didn’t think too highly of Cippola’s antics either. The Court ordered Marynick pay the lender $5,150 in enhanced penalty costs, which the lender will almost certainly collect when Marynick’s home is foreclosed and sold.

 This judgment is noteworthy in a number of senses. One is that the SKCA clearly adopts that pseudolaw is a special category of abusive litigation, and deserves to be addressed in a direct and succinct manner. Note that Meads v Meads doesn’t even get cited. It doesn’t need to be. The OPCA concept is sufficiently known the Court just uses the language and recognizes the relevant category. Pseudolaw is recognized and rejected in Canadian law.

 The Court applied the rule that pseudolaw adherents are not suitable court representatives, ever. In the case of Cippola, what isn’t examined is he is a collaborator with notorious Ontario lawyer Glenn “Spirit Warrior” Bogue, who is the kingpin of this UNDRIP-based claim that Indigenous Law is superior. Bogue was recently disbarred. Cippola, weirdly enough, is apparently a former US judge! Hopefully we get a detailed profile on Cippola at some point – I suspect there’s much more to this story.

But beyond that, here we have a private contract dispute between a person and a financial lender. How is this possibly a matter that even would have an Indigenous element?! Are we going to see traditional practices of ... establishing contracts? Quantifying debt? “Securitization”? The fact that an “Indigenous Representative”, who we will magically presume is expert in Indigenous Law, is being presented as relevant in this context is not just wrong, it’s stupid. But that’s an underlying aspect of pseudolaw. It doesn’t need to make sense in a detailed form, so much as present a drama, a story.

Marynick also has some other unorthodox interests, having written a book about his relationship with Charles Manson. Yes, THAT Charles Manson. Apparently, they shared popcorn among other things. In a CBC news report Marynick reports:

> [Marynick] said the notorious cult leader sought him out because he wanted to make a film, and he heard Marynick had contacts in the film industry.

> "He wanted to dress up like a general and have me dress up like a soldier and command all the armies in the world to stop fighting each other and start fighting pollution," Marynick told CBC Radio's Blue Sky on Monday.

Sure thing Chuck.

Here’s the SKCA court decision: Marynick v Fairstone Financial Inc, 2026 SKCA 72

Marynick and Manson CBC reporting.

And here’s “Charles Manson Now” by Marynick.

New academic paper discussing pseudolaw populations in the Netherlands and Switzerland, examining these phenomena as a reaction by privileged individuals against state interactions.

First review of the Swiss variation I've read.

Full article here.

Another guru website. Apparently former Canadian Muriel Biggs. I remember her back over a decade ago in Alberta.

Obviously she's a devotee of David-Wynn: Miller's Quantum Syntax Grammar.

But check out the cookie permission notices!

They're written in Millerese/Gibberese!

If you want more pain and suffering, the website is here.

It's not written in proper Millerese/Gibberese, but instead a kind of largely readable patois. That too is kind of neat. All the formatting, some of the comprehensibility.

I also enjoy how Muriel explains that money is worthless, but she does earn the value you pay her for the work she puts into your education:

>[The fiction-grammar-paper-money, fractional-currency/money-coupons, stamps, coins, tokens have zero value and are considered worthless in the quantum-grammar-now-space of the CHIEF: Russell-Jay: Gould's performances. Our work earning this money is not worthless.]

Ok! It's "sweat equity" then!

Folks, ready for a fun ride?

A UK pseudolaw outfit, the "Peacekeepers Foundation" solicited donations to contest: Prove UK law is binding. Collected £23,665 from customers/supporters.

Hodder consults LLM, puts together a valid answer. Submits that - gimme the money!

Peacekeepers Foundation welches.

UK court confirms award.

And the decision is here: Hodder v Peacekeepers Foundation, [2026] EWCC 37.

Here’s the text of “The Challenge”:

>"5 figures now for a simple piece of paper produced by parliament where it says parliament can do whatever it wants!!! Show us parliament can impose its will on any individual without a binding obligation entered into by freewill [sic]", followed by a smile emoji.

Yeah, not so literate. But, really, what did you expect?

The UK court decision itself is lengthy and has basically nothing to do about pseudolaw. Instead it’s a question of whether a contract was formed or not between the Peacekeepers Foundation (offeror) and Hodder (acceptor). So it’s classic contract theory. Was there a meeting of minds? What did the parties intend? Attempts by the Peacekeepers to use weasel language get rejected. It’s like a classic law-school exam question.

There’s basically almost no discussion of whether or not UK law is binding without consent because ... well, it’s a UK court. Duh.

As the quoted passage indicates, Judge Blitz of the Court of Bath (the names in this decision are great) doesn’t bother to even address the pseudolaw aspect. He points to Meads v Meads, “complete legal nonsense”, and gets on to the business of contract formation and other technical aspects. Y’know, real law.

One of which is the Peacekeepers Foundation website includes this disclaimer:

>the website provided no goods or services, contained no offers or invitations to treat, and was not intended to create legal relationships

So, in effect, the Peacekeepers make a contract offer, then elsewhere say “these are not the offers you are looking for”. And no, that doesn’t work.

There’s other classic contract law technicalities, intent to bargain and create binding relationships, invocation of the “donate us money for the challenge” and its implications. Fun stuff.

Judge Blitz concludes there isn’t even an issue for trial, and so orders summary judgment. Pay up, Peacekeepers. Right now. Then at the tail end (paragraphs 65 – there’s four of them) basically says that the Peacekeepers pseudolaw stuff is wrong, they’d certainly lose:

>... To the extent that the Defendant suggests that Parliament's inherent ability to legislate is somehow limited due to defects in its constitutional position, this is pseudo-legal nonsense with no prospect whatsoever of succeeding at trial.

>... the Defendant's starting point from which all their arguments in this regard flow is a simple refusal to accept, at least without qualification, the legislative authority of Parliament. The Defendant attempts to explain this wholly unarguable position with reference to a variety of legal principles such as agency, equity, trusts and fiduciary relationships, yet the 'explanation' discloses no actual legal knowledge of the content of such principles. It follows that any opposition to the claim on this basis would have been wholly unarguable and not have any, let alone any real, prospect of success. ...

>Had I been required to decide the matter on this basis, I would have granted summary judgment for these reasons also.

Great fun! Whether Hodder will collect, who is to say? But I can’t think of another instance where someone got a court judgment for money from a pseudolaw promoter.

Something I find extraordinarily neat is how conspiratorial thinking links cause and effect.

See the attached message I received "on some other social media platform" in response to something I wrote. I don't know this individual nor am I exactly certain what he's trying to convey.

But the implications are fun. "Bouvier" and "Black" almost certainly relate to old US-sourced legal dictionaries, "A Law Dictionary" by John Bouvier and "Black's Law Dictionary". Incidentally, there's a broad school of Sovereign Citizen thinking that Black's is the corrupt version, so you should rely on Bouvier's.

According to our friend, some hidden hand in the 1830s allegedly manipulated definitions in two legal dictionaries. That's how you change the law - by changing legal dictionaries. Since, apparently, dictionaries define law.

That, then, supported or created a "judicial monarchy". I'm not confident I understand what a judicial monarchy might be, since the judiciary isn't a hereditary system. Maybe the writer is trying to convey that the judges now operated like kings? Well, in Canada, it's certainly moved in that direction.

Y'know, there's such an intriguing gnostic aspect to all this, to pseudolaw in general. You can twist existence and government structure into something new by altering dictionary definitions. Orwell's "NewSpeak" has nothing on these people.

Dictionaries, man! They're the pillars of reality!

Anyways, I didn't look up the definitions of "administration" and "association" in 200 year old US law dictionaries to see what naughtiness was going on back then. But... if I might be so bold. If the US's two most prominent law dictionaries did change their definitions for two words, that might be because a leading court in the US had made a legal finding that "administration" and "association" meant X but now means Y.

As a vaguely related aside, I used to work in the same courthouse as Justice Jean Côté, formerly of the Alberta Court of Appeal, who is also the author of "Words That Bind: Words and Phrases Judicially Considered by the Supreme Court of Canada and by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to 1949" off Juribiler, which is literally a book of word definitions according to the Supreme Court of Canada. So ... like legal reality defined by words.

I kinda want to track Jean down and see whether he was approached by agents of The Conspiracy to subtly manipulate his dictionary, and Alter The Law from the Words Out.

Tee hee hee.

He'd look at me like I'm a weirdo. Which I am.

Trial judge says “That's pseudolaw, you're gaming the system.”

Offender (or offender's lawyer) rejects: “You're wrong and biased! Gimmie retrial.”

Appeal judge: “Yup, pseudolaw.”

Who gets to decide that?

An interesting question! Who is the expert about law? Or to go a little deeper, who’s the expert about not-law?

This question plays out in the passage reproduced above. But first here's a summary of the proceeding.

Kyle O’Brien was charged with criminal harassment of an ex-partner. O’Brien is initially represented by a defence lawyer. However, at trial O’Brien fires his lawyer and represents himself. He argues the court has no jurisdiction over him.

Doesn't work.

O’Brien is found guilty. He re-lawyers up and is sentenced to 1 year probation. O’Brien, still represented by his sentencing lawyer, appeals on multiple bases, including that O’Brien was incorrectly identified as using pseudolaw as a “get out jail free” mechanism, and that was an improper “alleged bad character finding”. The basic argument is the trial judge thought O’Brien was a bad person for using pseudolaw, an illegitimate way to deny court authority. That then coloured the trial proceeding to a fatal degree.

The appeal judge says no, it’s not evidence of bias that someone classifies you as a pseudolaw litigant when you are a pseudolaw litigant trying to evade criminal liability.

So who knows what is and is not pseudolaw? O’Brien said he is “a self-governing individual” and the court had no jurisdiction. Sounds like pseudolaw. But did either the trial judge, appeal judge, O’Brien’s lawyer, or O’Brien have any expertise on that? Who evaluates what is and isn’t pseudolaw?

Let’s step back a moment. There are actually rules for this. In a courtroom there is only one expert in law. That’s the judge. Everyone else might have an opinion on what the rules and processes of law are, but in the courtroom only one person has that expertise. The judge.

Incidentally, this is why I usually don’t say what the law is or isn’t. Even when I was a lawyer (which I no longer am), I am not an authority in law. If a judge says the law is X, the law is X. I might think that ruling is foolish, badly grounded, illogical, and so on. Doesn’t matter. What a judge says is the law is the law. Until a judge with higher authority says otherwise. People sometimes ask me whether I think a decision or ruling was right or wrong. Who cares. I’m nobody. If a judge says the world is flat – it’s flat, for all legal purposes.

Yes, this makes the biochemist/microbiologist in me irritated. But that’s law. Law does not have to have anything to do with reality. And it’s not unusual that law has limited relation to reality. Tough.

So, in the O’Brien matter, when the trial and appeal judges each rejected that calling yourself a self-governing individual is a get out of jail free card, that’s the law. End of the story.

But is that pseudolaw? That’s a different question.

A judge is the expert on what is Canadian law. But a Canadian judge isn’t an expert in Turkish law, US law, Japanese law. When a court needs to understand what the law is outside its boundaries, then you need an expert witness in the foreign jurisdiction’s rules. Usually that’s a lawyer who is certified to practice in both Canada and the foreign jurisdiction. That expert then explains the foreign rules to assist the court in coming to a conclusion.

Experts provide evidence and context that the court itself does not itself possess. That’s the only time an expert is permitted in a Canadian court proceeding.

I’ve concluded that pseudolaw is a kind of legal system. It’s badly designed, worse implemented, but pseudolaw does have a suite of fairly consistent and interwoven rules, concepts, and procedures. Pseudolaw has alternative but often much overlapping variants. Who is an expert in pseudolaw? Me, for one. There are others across the globe who are lawyers but who have also studied these subjects in depth. In the US I’d flag Caesar Kalinowski IV and Colin McRoberts as excellent candidate experts for the subject. Some academics probably qualify too, such as Australians Harry Hobbs, Joe McIntrye, and Stephen Young.

It's a really interesting question if a pseudolaw guru is themself an expert in pseudolaw. I’ll leave that for another time, but they probably can at least identify their own teachings being applied by others. Freeman-on-the-Land founder Robert Arthur Menard is probably an expert in Freemanism. He invented it.

Most judges are very likely not experts in pseudolaw because they simply do not deal with it often enough, or have studied the subject in depth. I saw no special expertise on the part of the judges in the O’Brien litigation.

Let’s wind back the clock and ask if O’Brien’s defence lawyer could have done better on appeal. What I’d suggest is get a transcript of the trial hearing, copies of any weird documents filed by O’Brien, and the trial judgment. Hand them to a pseudolaw expert – an expert in the foreign legal system in question. Which would very likely be me – no one else in Canada wants this particular “honor”. The expert then prepares a report.

(Going to skip the issue of how to introduce new expert evidence in an appeal.)

The question for the expert report would not be “Is what O’Brien argued as a get out of jail free card Canadian law?” That’s not something a non-judge can decide or even say with any authority. Judges make and set Canadian law. Nobody else.

But what that expert could say is:

>Yes, O’Brien is wrong about Canadian law – the trial judge said so. But the trial judge made a mistake too. She said what O’Brien argued is pseudolaw, as generally defined in the 2012 Meads v Meads decision of Associate Chief Justice John D. Rooke of the Alberta Court of King's Bench. That was wrong. Here are the well-established stereotypic concepts and arguments about law that are recognized as belonging to pseudolaw, a false competitor legal system used to cheat and evade obligations and prohibitions. What O’Brien argued was something else. In classifying O’Brien a pseudolaw adherent, the trial judge made a mistake. That might have or have not coloured her response to O’Brien. That’s not for me to say. That’s the job of the appeal judge. But when she rejected his arguments and labelled them as pseudolaw, the trial judge made a mistake.

You can get law wrong in many, many ways. The person who can say whether or not the error was based in pseudolaw with expertise is an expert in the foreign pseudolaw legal system. So, if O’Brien’s lawyer wanted to win on that argument, he should have hired me. Or someone with a similar expertise.

No, I’m not trying to drum up business for myself with this analysis. But if you’re going to start assigning an illegality to a category, it helps to have someone who can provide more context from a position of authority.

As an aside – because it’s a fun one – once in awhile Canadian legal authorities do actually recognize a non-judge as an expert in law. For example, the Supreme Court of Canada has accepted that books written by a now deceased lawyer / professor named Peter Wardell Hogg are authoritative on the Canadian Constitution and its operation. In effect, the SCC says when it comes to constitutional law, Hogg is an authority, similar to themselves. Unless they choose to override Hogg, of course.

‘Cause judges are always the final voice on what is and is not law.

The O’Brien decision is here: R v O’Brien, 2026 ONSC 3053

It’s otherwise quite unremarkable.

Criminal proceedings against HRM Romana Didulo, the Queen of Canada, were recently discontinued. Why? Uncertain.

But I just read something that suggests another legal avenue for sanctions against HRM Didulo.

Security-related illegalities.

Say what?! Securities?

Not as implausible as that might seem at first. I read a lovely little essay/summary this morning by Ronke Balogun and Solomon Ngoladi, staffers with the Alberta Securities Commission, on how the definition of a security is pretty loosey-goosey and more driven by function than form. The authors explain that securities aren’t limited to the usual things like shares or bonds. The scope of a security is functional, that it creates or captures certain kinds of investment and contribution relationships.

So names don't really matter. That makes sense. You shouldn’t be able to contract out of securities legislation put in place to protect the public. The authors summarize the characteristics of a security this way:

>Investment of Money – Participants must contribute money (or money’s worth) into the scheme.

>Common Enterprise – The fortunes of investors must be interwoven with those of the promoter or other investors. This can include pooling of funds or a functional interdependence between investor and promoter.

>Expectation of Profit – Investors must enter the arrangement with the expectation of profit.
Profit to Come Significantly from the Efforts of Others – The expected profit must depend primarily on the efforts, skill, or expertise of the promoter or a third party, not the investor.

>Substance Over Form – Courts look at the economic reality of the arrangement, not its label or formal structure.

If you’re scratching your head and asking ... Well, I don’t remember HRM Didulo issuing shares or structuring the Kingdom of Canada as some kind of investment apparatus, let me remind you of something. HRM Didulo is continually seeking contributions from her followers. What do they get? In a lot of ways, it’s the long con. She promises big stuff, ranging from debt elimination, to “Med Beds”, to orbital laser strikes and invisible commandos against oppressive factors and agents, most likely including me.

But she has done something else. She’s issued something she calls “Loyalty Money”. Loyalty Money, pictured above, has usually been given to her followers in one-on-one meetings, Didulo’s “Meet and Greet” sessions. I suspect that was also presented to those who attended the Kingdom of Canada’s purple fortress in Richmound, at the swearing in ceremonies Didulo conducted there.

Now, I’m not sure if anyone knew exactly what you could do with Loyalty Money. It looks fancy. It has a denomination on it. She apparently has said this is backed by gold and silver, under natural law. Ok – so it has value independent of usual modern currency systems, and instead under the old non-fiat currency model where paper money stands in place for gold.

Is Loyalty Money a security?

Let’s go through the criteria:

1. Investment of Money? If Loyalty Money is linked to donations/contributions to HRM Didulo, then yes.
2. Common Enterprise? Yes. One becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of Canada, subject to HRM Didulo. Citizens/followers/serfs are promised benefits from that membership, ranging from free utilities, debt elimination, quantum computers, Med Beds, lots of stuff. HRM Didulo is the provider, on behalf of her followers, thanks to the Galactic Federation or whatever. Or King Carlson. It varies.
3. Expectation of Profit? Yes – at a minimum you’re getting your Loyalty Money, which can be exchanged for gold and silver, unlike that worthless fiat currency.
4. Profit to Come Significantly from the Efforts of Others? Yes. HRM Didulo, her inner cadres, and the various terrestrial and off-world actors take care of everything. You build the Kingdom of Canada by donating and believing real hard.
5. Substance Over Form? If HRM Didulo is promising real value of some kind for her Loyalty Money, then the answer is yes.

So... it’s a little weird, but I think there’s an argument here! The leading case is Canada, Pacific Coast Coin Exchange v Ontario Securities Commission, [1978] 2 SCR 112, which even has the flavour of HRM Didulo’s scheme. Pacific Coast Coin offered you the right to put money down now to buy a partial interest in bags of silver coins. Not actual currency, but bags of silver. (Oh, settle down Judas.) The SCC concluded this was a kind of investment arrangement. Hmm – interesting – though the Court doesn’t formally call that a security, as it didn’t have to decide that issue.

The best way to test out whether HRM Didulo has been issuing securities without a licence would be if someone who has already received Loyalty Money from HRM Didulo went to a Canadian security regulator and submitted a complaint. Now, I know very little about those processes, but if nothing else, it’d be interesting. The folks at the regulatory agency would be gossiping about it for years!

Of course, finding someone with a few million in Loyalty Money to head this might be a challenge. Orbital laser bombardment strikes, and all that. Do you really want to take the risk?

If you study pseudolaw for as long as I have it’s easy to forget that pseudolaw really is law, beyond the red ink fingerprint and all capitals STRAWMAN bullshit.

A recent Alberta tribunal decision illustrates that. The Alberta Land & Property Rights Tribunal deals with disagreements in relation to land use. That usually means between landowners and mineral, oil, and gas producers. You see, land interests above and below ground are usually separate. When gas company X purchases rights to extract natural gas from parcel A, that’s probably not a contract with the farmer/rancher Y who owns the surface rights to parcel A. When company X enters parcel A (on the surface) it will pay money to Y for that activity. It’s a kind of easement. Y doesn’t get a say, really.

And let’s just observe there’s a lot of disagreements on these processes, since Farmer Y often complains that Corporation X is sloppy or excessive on the surface, causing harm, or just that this kind of forced easement should result in more money. Enter the AL&PRT. Its function is to determine whether the surface rights owner should receive more or less when amounts get in dispute. Now, I’m simplifying this a lot, but that’s the gist of this dispute.

Rally Canada Resources obtained the rights to develop the minerals under property owned by Etty Farms. Rally unilaterally set terms for reduced payment. Etty complained, but took the money anyways because it’s the Vader kind of thing: “I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

But Etty went to the AL&PRT, which pulled out Alberta pseudolaw case law – including Meads v Meads of course - to tell Rally to stop being dinks.

And that led to the passage reproduced below.

And it turns out that not only had Rally foisted a reduced payment on Etty, it also then stopped paying entirely. Really being dinks.

So this is a helpful reminder. Pseudolaw is often about magical stuff that has little to no relation to real rights or, for that matter, reality. But sometimes there are actually principles of law involved. One of the benefits I had of studying pseudolaw all those years is every so often I had to pause, step back, and start digging through real law, often foundational principles, to understand where the pseudolaw adherent went off track. In that way studying pseudolaw is a very powerful educational tool, since it helps build a broader context of the overall integration and operation of law as a whole.

(I also think that Chairman McRory was having some fun jabbing the resource company for operating in a questionable way, not really any different from the pseudolaw guy who declares he doesn’t have to pay his mortgage because money doesn't exist – prove that otherwise, bank!)

(To be fair, Rally didn’t try to pay up its expenses with an ounce of silver. So there’s that tick mark in its credit column.)

Full decision is here: Etty Farms Ltd v Rally Canada Resources Ltd, 2026 ABLPRT 349 - https://canlii.ca/t/kl371

Nice clean piece of work.

“The appellant’s letter is nonsense.” Tax Court of Canada Justice Derksen might be accused of understatement. Go on. Read it.

But it's magic nonsense. That letter includes something so rare, so precious, that I curled up in a ball and giggled. It's pseudolaw that is new.

Well, not necessarily without antecedent. But I'd never thought of this combination. Sure, most of the letter is ancient and boring Strawman Theory, names in capitals or with magic spelling. I am not "a PERSON", but a living man. Yawn. Bleh.

Then there's this:

>... what you are doing is committing copyright infringement, Norman Traversy owns the copyrights to the Canada Income Tax Act.

Errr... wut?

Now, it’s an ancient pseudolaw tactic that you claim copyright or trademark in your own name, and then when a government or bank writes you, you demand payment of $100,000 or so on for each instance of your name for copyright infringement. Same if someone sues you. The Statement of Claim is a breach of copyright.

But ... copyright in legislation? How does that work? Copyright belongs to an author/creator, or to whomever the author/creator sold copyright. And who is Norman Traversy? Maybe he was some government official or minister?

Nope. He’s a pseudolaw personality (for example see MacKinnon v Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 201) who is hooked in with the fake Indigenous groups and courts that have been expanding in Canada (for example see R v Pickton, 2020 BCSC 1200) with COVID-19 pandemic mitigation resistance angles.

So, we have someone who arbitrarily seems to have claimed copyright in legislation, and - presumably - that then means no one can make reference to or use legislation in some way, so poof! There goes the Income Tax Act.

Naturally I was intrigued. That led down two paths. First, what is the copyright status of things created/written by the Canadian government. Why, that’s specifically covered in the Copyright Act, RSC 1985, c C-42, Part -1, section 12:

>12 Without prejudice to any rights or privileges of the Crown, where any work is, or has been, prepared or published by or under the direction or control of Her Majesty or any government department, the copyright in the work shall, subject to any agreement with the author, belong to Her Majesty and in that case shall continue for the remainder of the calendar year of the first publication of the work and for a period of fifty years following the end of that calendar year.

So, copyright in all legislation automatically vests with Canada. Norman is an interloper! Or, since the first Canadian Income Tax Act (then the Income Tax War Act) dates to 1917, then the ITA is public domain. But that’s no basis for Norman to claim copyright.

But it gets better.

I mused ... what if Norman had gone to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and started registering copyright in legislation. You see, there isn’t much screening of filing a copyright registration, unlike trademarks and patents which are an involved process. Quick search on the CIPO copyright engine and ... oh dear. There are a set of copyright registrations for Norman Traversy:

• 1173152 - Justice for Canada
• 1194165 - Freedom Convoy, The Freedom Convoy
• 1221632 - Dreadnaught
• 1230302 - Bill C-15: An Act Respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

No Income Tax Act. But Traversy does seem to have seized copyright (on paper) of the legislation that implements the often-discussed UNDRIP Treaty.

In reality this is meaningless, because that legislation dates to 2021, so within the 50-year absolute copyright period. Still - comical and neat!

What does it mean, though, pseudolegally, that Traversy has copyright? No idea.

Back to the Justice Derksen decision. This relates to tax matters that date to the mid 2000s. The taxpayer, Jeffrey Curran, claimed tax credits relating to mining and mineral development expenses. Until 2025 that litigation inched along in the Tax Court of Canada as a group of appeals with a lead case to decide the matter. Pretty typical of how the TCC works. It is cost and resource effective to run a small subset or single lead case then apply the result to a cluster of largely identical tax disputes.

But the test cases were discontinued. Ultimately almost all were settled in some manner. Curran is an exception. Curran had a lawyer who withdrew in 2025, and afterwards Curran represented himself.

I’ll let Justice Derkman continue the narrative:

>... Now on his own, the appellant had choices to make. And the appellant made bad ones. Instead of attending the examination for discovery that the Crown had scheduled for December 3, 2025, to be held virtually and on a date that the appellant had confirmed was suitable, the appellant adopted a pseudo-legal stance.

>... The appellant fails to appreciate that he commenced this proceeding, not the Crown. It was his appeal to prosecute. He has not done so. Although this Court should be slow to dismiss an appeal for want of prosecution, or for failing to attend an examination for discovery—and especially where there are extenuating circumstances—a slow pace is not warranted here. Sometimes pseudo-legal theorists require a swift and decisive response. For this reason, and as discussed further below, the appellant’s appeal will be dismissed.

Curran sent the attached letter, with a fingerprint in red ink.

But Canadian courts are not exactly enthused about these ideas:

>... As Associate Chief Justice Rooke stated in Meads v. Meads, 2012 ABQB 571, Courts will not tolerate pseudo-legal arguments, misconduct, or tactics. Such behaviour is an abuse of process ...

>... Too much ink has been spilled on pseudo-legal arguments, or what are commonly referred to as “organized pseudo-legal commercial arguments.”

>... The appellant made a calculated decision by sending his letter dated November 24, 2025, to counsel for the Crown. He even made the effort to send it by registered mail and then followed up to confirm delivery. I have no reason to believe—and especially now that at least five months have since passed—that the appellant intends to correct course. Instead, the appellant has disengaged from his appeal. His actions amount to a deliberate abuse of the Court’s process. And this is not a time for second or third chances.

>... In the circumstances, I am exercising my discretion and will dismiss the appellant’s appeal. Costs are awarded to the Crown, and payable by the appellant, in the fixed amount of $1,500.

FAFO.

And that, my friends, is how you deal with pseudolaw litigation. Though I do disagree in a small way. I like spilling ink about pseudolaw. Somebody has to here in Canada. But I quite understand how courts are thoroughly sick of it.

Here’s the judgment: Curran v The King, 2026 TCC 79.

It's classy.