Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his government would rescind the Digital Services Tax. Yes, Carney caved.
Canadians should be relieved.
Within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax.
The Liberal government enjoys inventing new ways to tax both Canadians and anyone doing business in Canada. Canada is the home of the Goods and Services Tax and the Harmonized Sales Tax.
Now it was about to have a DST.
Punitive taxation
Of course, taxation for globalists like Carney has nothing to do with raising money. He can always print more money. Taxation has become punitive — either punishing the poor hapless citizens with an ever-increasing tax burden or using taxation to prevent Canadians from receiving anything not officially sanctioned by the Liberal government.
In this case, it’s about restricting access to unacceptable news.
On June 30, U.S. tech companies operating in Canada were expected to begin paying the DST — a 3% tax on all their Canadian earnings. And it would have been retroactive to 2022. The cost was estimated to be over $2 billion, but the experts were probably lowballing it.
On June 27, President Donald Trump announced that if the DST was not scrapped, trade talks between Canada and the U.S. would be terminated.
We have a great relationship with the people of Canada, but it’s been very difficult, and they put a charge, and they were a little bit early. We found out about it, and we have all the cards. We have every single one.
… So I said, we’re going to stop all negotiations with Canada right now, until they straighten out their act.
Bluff called
Carney’s reaction was initially another example of his cocky, insouciant attitude, as he pretended there was nothing to worry about.
But within 48 hours, the PM was on the mat, again acquiescing to Trump even after his finance minister had categorically rejected abandoning the tax. Just another example of the president’s unique version of realpolitik.
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STEFAN ROUSSEAU/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
The winners in the flip-flop are American tech companies and Canadians who have been given a reprieve from another odious piece of Liberal government censorship legislation.
War on bad thoughts
Under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Canada adopted Bills C-11, the Online Streaming Act, and C-18, the Online News Act, and came very close to passing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which would have jailed people for broadcasting “hate speech” and actually contained a thought crimes component that envisioned house arrest for people accused by neighbors of thinking bad thoughts.
Bill C-11 demands that foreign companies produce an acceptable amount of Canadian content on the internet, just as Canada has always demanded similar rules from television, radio, and print media.
Bill C-18 went a step farther and demanded that U.S. social media companies provide an annual stipend to the Canadian government if they post Canadian news content on their platforms. The result has been the death of Canadian news on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram sites because the companies have refused to submit to this extortion.
Storming Fortress Canada
The net effect is to entrench the influence of the mainstream media in Canada, which receives massive subsidies from the federal government; and to weaken independent media, which tends to depend far more on social media exposure.
The DST would have furthered this government control and passive censorship of the internet, because many U.S. companies would probably simply have refused to pay the tax and told the Carney government to move on.
For more than a decade the Liberals have been trying to create some kind of Fortress Canada in which independent and foreign voices have no power to shape the national narrative. It is a dangerous and toxic authoritarian experiment.
Canadians should thank Donald Trump for at least slowing the process down by getting his way on the DST.
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