Canadians upset Carney caved to Trump over digital services tax
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/06/30/canadians-react-to-cancelling-digital-services-tax/
Duh. No one elected them to go elbows down. Gonna be a short lived minority.
As Canadians we cannot expect Carney to fix the problems on his own. We, as individuals, need to stop buying American to the fullest extent that we can and if we can't buy Canadian either buy other countries or not at all. It's amazing the stuff that you don't actually need but have been manipulated into buying due to American advertising. It is hard to do it overnight but with time, most American products can be resourced.
So does no one here understand the concept of manufactured chaos as a distraction ?
The service tax was put in place ages ago but was never enforced. It’s the same trick with the whole border czar bullshit where Donald needs to feel big about something as a distraction despite its a throw away card and often something that was already agreed upon even without the US.
Carney only kicked it up for Donald’s ego to feel like he made a deal. Why? Cuz Cheeto thrives on drama. Meanwhile Canada stole the wheat export market from right under the nose of trump. As well as a few other things no doubt.
Canada is slowly disempowering US but needs some keys to periodically dangle in Donald’s face while they do it.
Sheinbaum is a pro at this game and has been playing it cleanly for 7 months. Carney’s simply following suit.
I’m gonna need some citations or sources for that.
AFAIK, the service tax was not “put in place ages ago”. It was put in force in June 2024, literally last year, and the first payments were expected literally yesterday, on June 30th, 2025. It’s retroactive, but still only goes back to 2022, which isn’t “ages ago”. Source
And what’s this wheat market steal you’re talking about?
I agree with your skepticism on this one.
Especially given what we can see with regards to US tech companies being complicit with a bunch of the authoritarian stuff going on down south, moves to disrupt their monopolies and try and foster a more local industry makes a ton of sense. Many of Carney's decisions lately align with US interests more so than Canada. It's not overly surprising, he's not pro-Canadian companies / people, but pro-business and international trade (at the expense of locals if need be), in a fairly generic neo-liberal way.
Also, bending over right before Canada day is just such a dick thing to do as PM. He should be trying to lead / inspire national pride, not appeasing foreign interests, for at least like 1 week of his term.
Still prolly better than PP would've been though. With PP we would've had Elon here Musking up the place.
Before we applaud the 5d chess move, we are a bishop down, and no obvious plan to gain back prosperity/material. Flattering the narcisist with a sacrifice to win is indistinguishable from continued full submission and gaslighting us into it.
Rutte did it too with his daddy comment. Stroke the ego of the big baby and prevent more tantrum from said baby
To the simple minded it looks like that.
But I’ve already explained it goes deeper than that.
Is that person a Canadian? Social media posts aren't really indicative of the general feeling of a given populace. It's dangerous to think otherwise.
GTFO out of here with your logic and measured takes. This is Lemmy.
Already sent an email to my MP, at least it’s something.
What sort of thing do you write? I'm always uncertain how to word these types of emails.
I've sent so many emails since all this began. I get no response. Per usual. My MP is indigenous for fuck sakes.
same and it was a nasty one
Always remember who we voted against. We would need special instruments to measure how quickly Polyestre would have caved.
Yeah I know. PP is a Trump fluffer to the ultimate. He would have been an unmitigated catastrophe and it troubles me how close that fuckwhit came. And how he continues to try to remain. But unless Carney shows tangible results (which includes NOT capitulation to fash), his term as PM will be one and done.
Our choice was Nazi’s or standard conservatives disguised as liberals who are still just monarchists and kowtow to strongmen fantasies.
Either way we’re bound to regress.
Yep, I'm slightly upset. Does he actually think something worthwhile is going to come out of the negotiations?
Welp big group, none of us are in it. Time to dig some infrastructure.
I can't believe Carney was a spineless liberal moron all along! Who knew?
I mean.... On the things to cave on... Caving on a tax paid by CANADIANS is not the worst thing in the world.
But the bigger part here is that we finally stopped trade negotiations, and now we can assume this means they are starting again
Y'all are remembering that it's us Canadians that will be paying this tax, right? It's not going to affect any company's bottom line in the slightest.
It only applies to a few enormous corporations, that mostly generate revenue through ad sales.
Would Canadian companies really all have increased their Facebook ad budgets over this? I kinda doubt it, tbh
That’s fine, it allows Canadian companies (that pay tax on money earned in Canada) to compete
Then why would Trump object to it then?
Becuase it maaaaaaybe dissuades SOME people from buying the service so there's maaaaaaybe less revenue for the mega corps.
So yea... It maybe kinda sorta... Hurts mega corps, but it absolutely is a tax paid by Canadians.
Now you might say the tax is good because it funds shit for Canadians, but that's a separate argument.
So yea, this is maybe? good for Canadians, since Canadians are getting absolutely FUCKED by anything digital / mobile / internet related.
If anything I'd love to see the Canadian market forced open for US telecoms, because as shitty as telecom is in the US its far FAR worse in Canada.
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/connect/contact
Write to him
This seems really premature. I dislike Carney's policies for a bunch of reasons, but it's premature to shit on him for this. We don't know what the final trade agreement will be.
The last time Trump threw one of these tantrums, NAFTA morphed into USMCA without much of a hit to our economy (afaiu). If our government can repeat that success while we're diversifying our economy away from the US then that's a win.
I really don't care what the trade deal looks like, letting the US president dictate Canada's internal tax policy is a bridge too far for me.
THIS ^^^
You just said why it's a stupid, stupid thing to do: Trump would have caved anyway. All Carney had to do is wait.
That he would cave so quickly shows how little he values Canadian interests over American profits.
And to that I would just add - people are PISSED. People will literally self-deputize in a second if America rolls in with tanks or drones or whatever (they are already setting the stage for that with their relentless internal and external rhetoric about how “dangerous” Canada is with migrants and terrorists supposedly flooding in to their stupid country from the northern border). This is a very sketchy time. America can 🖕🖕🖕🇨🇦hates you
We don't know what the final trade agreement will be.
It doesn't matter since Trump can reneg on it at any moment as he did with the previous one
What Carney did here is signal trump that he will chicken out even faster than trump does at any tartrum he throws
CACO beats TACO.
Well, there was this thing a couple of weeks ago when international law as well as agreed upon nuclear safeguards and processes were well and truly shredded by a genocidal maniac, then he came out tutting against the guys that got attacked out of the blue just like every other G7 lapdog. So far, unimpressed.
Why would the Conservatives bring this government down, when it's doing everything they want and taking the blame?
the conservatives are a joke and they wouldn't bring the gov down as you suggest, but the Block and the NDP may and either would get my vote at this point... Carney could not have been more backstabby to the people that gave him the PM seat at this point
What’s this about the wheat export market? Can you provide details?
He needs to resign
I always think of this song every time I hear 'elbows up'.
Carney
Always
Chickens
Out
Carney
Often
Cancels
Knowingly
Out of curiousity, how many workers should lose their jobs to appease your sense of righteousness?
A trade negotiation is not the same as bowing to fascism.
Uhhhh in case you didn’t notice - when Amazon in QC unionized, Amazon pulled out of Quebec. We don’t need US digital services, it’s one of the easiest things we can replace. Might be a headache for some workplaces to get off Microsoft, SharePoint, or azure but ultimately - it’s not that hard. IT can do it. We have server farms and digital services in Canada. It’s easy to replace as opposed to say, re-tooling a car factory.
Do you really need Facebook, X, Apple, Netflix, Disney+ shitmaganda!? Or can you grab what you want from Crave or the high Cs. Our newspapers are largely already owned by US hedge fund billionaire massive global corporations - so taxing them at a minuscule rate is nothing to them. And they are free to fuck off doing business in our country if they don’t like the DST. This was a cowardly and weak capitulation on the part of Carney - unless we are infact joining the EU and OECD on a digital service tax as part of a bloc of countries (which could track).
But right now, we don’t know - so am skeptical about what Carney just gave up.
If the reason for doing the wrong thing is “the jobs” then you need to rethink your reasoning.
Trump can’t be trusted. Canada did negotiate a new deal first admin, only for Trump to come screaming again saying it was terrible and demanding a new one. It’s bad policy to concede to the US right now.
I always thought he DST was stupid so to me this is nothing more than placating Trump.
Why is dst stupid?
Canada's implementation is different from other countries':
I don't know if I would call it stupid, but that retroactive thing seems odd. I don't know much about corporate tax law, so maybe that's a thing? I dunno.
The percentage seemed arbitrary and it being retroactive seemed excessive and unnecessary. We depend on US content so much you couldn't possibly function on the internet without it. It'll force the US to limit services so we'll be forced to use Chinese or European services and for what benefit? I use an adblocker and pirate most my stuff so no one is making money off me.
It’s dumb to implement IF we are in fact going in with Europe and the OECD on a digital sales tax. But it doesn’t seem imminent at the moment so I don’t have high hopes.
Otherwise it’s capitulating to fash.
Canadians are great hockey players ... but no matter how good they are, they'll still cave in if they are offered a million dollar contract and throw the game
Books are where it's at!