A few days ago, I had a meeting with one of my Trustee companies that I use in the Cook Islands to set up Offshore Asset Protection Trusts for my clients, and they asked me why they were getting such a huge increase in business from Canadians. Apparently more and more Canadians are establishing Offshore Asset Protection Trusts in the Cook Islands than ever before.
The most commons reason I get from prospective clients as to why they are looking to move their assets out of Canada and into a Cook Islands Asset Protection Trust is that they do not trust the Justin Trudeau government. We all remember how the Trudeau Government imposed the Emergency Measures Act, giving the police and the Government extraordinary powers to arrest and hold without bail, peaceful protestors who were protesting against his Government’s mandates, and to freeze their bank accounts and the bank accounts of anyone who gave financial support to the protestors.
Imagine being arrested for peacefully protesting, being incarcerated without trial until your trial date, (which could be years down the road) and then having your assets frozen so that you do not even have the funds to hire a lawyer to defend yourself, against the unlimited financial resources of the Government. That is supposed to only happen in tin-pot dictatorships. Indeed, Justin Trudeau was called out by European parliamentarians as a “dictator of the worst kind” when he addressed the European parliament.
Since then we’ve seen the Trudeau Government label anyone who protests against its policies as “extremists” or labels it as hate speech. And just recently, the Trudeau Government announced that it is expanding the regulation of online speech with the Online Harms Act.
And these were not wealthy Canadians who had their bank accounts frozen. These were ordinary Canadians.
Apart from the distrust of the Trudeau Government, Canadians are moving their assets to the Cook Islands because it offers the best Asset Protection Trust laws against creditors and lawsuits, including the Canadian government.
The post Why So Many Canadians Are Establishing Offshore Trusts in the Cook Islands first appeared on MacDonald's Tax Law.
