Add one more file to Tim Louis’s activist credentials. Starting this tax season, the former Vancouver councillor and left-wing lawyer won’t be paying his full income tax in protest of Canada’s military spending and the country’s military presence in Afghanistan.

“I’m very inspired by this movement that I’ve recently become aware of, whereby people are withholding a certain percentage of their income taxes and placing that money instead to an organization that holds that money in trust,” Louis told the Straight.

Louis, a fan of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the late Argentine-born international revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, was referring to Conscience Canada, a group that advocates conscientious objection to what it calls “forced military tax conscription”.

Conscience Canada suggests withholding about eight percent of an individual’s income tax, which is roughly the same percentage Canada spends from the national budget on the military. The monies are deposited in a “peace tax trust fund” administered by the group. This practice isn’t recognized by the Canada Revenue Agency.

“It would be an honour,” Louis said when told that he may be courting action from the CRA. He added that he plans to help popularize this form of protest by putting a link to Conscience Canada on his law firm’s Web site.

Conscience Canada started in 1978, and it currently counts 197 members across the country, according to board director Jan Slakov.

The Salt Spring Island, B.C.–based Slakov explained to the Straight that the peace-tax trust fund will hold unpaid income taxes until the government recognizes objection to military taxation as a legal right and creates a special account that will allocate these funds for nonmilitary purposes.