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.
Already sent an email to my MP, at least it’s something.
Me too - people are pissed. We do not capitulate to fash. Poland and Austria did and Germany still invaded them.
I’m curious to hear Charlie Angus’s response to this capitulation.
Just a sidenote, Austria was as much victim as it was perpetrator under the nazi regime.
Sure, after they were a perpetrator and supported them for literally the entire war, they fell victim. Just like Russia, etc.
You don’t get to side with Nazi’s/fascists even once, and then claim victim-hood.
Austria was annexed before the war.
I would send an email to my MP but he is a do nothing back bencher who will take credit for Carney’s failures.
Mine’s a cabinet minister 🤢
Like I’m emailing anyway but it’s gonna be swiftly ignored.
Maybe I will email mine then if you know nothing is going to happen? Brad Reddicop is a joke and a conservative.
Reddicop is the perfect name for a shitty Reddit mod.
Try sending an actual written letter: maybe it will be a little bit attention because in this day and age of e-mail, it’s actual paper letters that are oddities that get people’s attention.
For anyone who’s not aware, letters to your MP (and certain other members of the federal government) are postage free, so you don’t need a stamp.
Note this doesn’t apply to provincial positions, so you’d have to stamp a letter to an MLA.
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same and it was a nasty one
What sort of thing do you write? I’m always uncertain how to word these types of emails.
My two cents: Imagine you’re writing a polite (or not) note to your neighbour about something they or one of their family members is doing that is causing harm to your neighbourhood.
State what you don’t like, why you don’t like it and implications, preferred paths forward, and outcome you’d like to see. If you know what your ‘neighbour’ campaigned on/the rhetoric they used, particularly if you voted for them, you can reference that (for example, “The Elbows Up movement united Canadians at a time of great uncertainty. It is incredibly discouraging to watch our representatives drop their guard against US interests with no regard for, and active hostility to, the interests of Canadians.” or whatever).
If you want, you can close with the suggestion that should you feel they are not adequately advancing your interests as a constituent, they will not have your support in the next election. Taking from the neighbour analogy, think “If you don’t shape up, we’ll take this to the HOA (your fellow constituents) and kick your ass out.”
How much good does this all ultimately do? Depends on who you ask, really. But as a Canadian you have the right to express your opinions and concerns to those who represent you in government - so say what you want heard. No matter the impact, it’s better than silence.
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.
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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
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.
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
The US wiped its ass with first NAFTA, now CUSMA, it will wipe its ass with whatever comes from this shitshow. The US cannot be trusted. It’s signature is worthless on any documents. I hope this is all lip service and we are doing the real trade negotiation with the EU, Asia, Lat Am.
precisely, which is why I see zero benefit in appeasing or even negotiating with the orange turd
I’m of the opinion that letting Trump think he’s “winning” while playing backdoor politics with friendly nations to defend Canada’s interests is not a bad approach. If they can make it to the American midterms, hopefully he’ll get hamstrung and become a lame duck president. Assuming he doesn’t find some archaic way of overriding them…
is that what we are doing or just wishful thinking?
so far all I have seen from Carney is everything Trump would want. C2 takes Canada a step closer to a police state supposedly to fight fentanyl smuggling. C5 gives oil and gas a free ride and allows the envirioment to go to shit as long as oil and gas are making money
if this is “pretending” to let trump win, I fail to see the difference to capitulating
finally, there will be no midterm nor can we bend over and give trump everything for 2 years hoping what? that the Dems will save us? tüat’s beyond naive
CACO beats TACO.
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 ^^^
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.
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.
Uhh… Did you reply to the right person/comment? I don’t see how your comment connects to mine here. But I’ll reply to your comment anyway.
I don’t disagree with your comment, but I am definitely a bit more hesitant to label Carney as anything (the word “neoliberal” has so many competing definitions it’s essentially a nothing-burger with only some bad flavour attached to it to make it a punching bag by all sides these days). First off, it’s pretty clear that Trump’s moves are done in favour of the US tech oligarchs, that we can agree on.
Carney’s recent moves have basically burnt through his political capital extremely quickly, though I can’t say all of them align with or benefit the US, not even the pipelines he’s been eager to build, especially cause most of the O&G companies in Alberta are mostly owned by foreign companies (source), not necessarily all by the US. And Carney’s government hasn’t done that much with about 2 months in, but none of them have been pro-international trade per se. Cutting the carbon tax is definitely pro-business but it was done more so to appease the right more broadly than just businesses, though I guess if you consider the fact that O&G companies are mostly foreign-owned, then you might say it’s pro-international-trade, but since we’ve barely decarbonized our economy and society by much (doesn’t help that Ontario and Alberta have such strong conservative provincial governments), and the costs are passed onto consumers anyway (though consumers get that rebate), cutting the carbon tax does essentially nothing for businesses at the expense of consumers. Internal trade barriers is, well, internal, and its consequences can be a toss up for businesses in general: those with the resources to operate across provinces may be able to give smaller players a hard time.
All-in-all, I haven’t seen their other moves as being obtusely against Canadian interests, even if we don’t agree with all of them (eg Bill C-5 and Bill C-2), and even if they hurt Canadians in the long run. That said, the earlier border bill is basically an appeasement, given that it was clearly a cop out issue by Trump. This cutting of the Digital Services Tax is another instance of Carney’s government giving up on a policy that is in the country’s interest to try gain what they think is also in the country’s interest with the US, and ostensibly so. So that’s two, but we’ll still need at least a few more of such instances to see if Carney’s gov is pro-US, cause insofar, these were done to get Trump onto the negotiating table by hurting Canadians a little (privacy on the border bill, and putting back on the threat to our media and online entertainment industry). I would hope we’d actually get something given that the sacrifices have been made, and I’d rather we don’t do what Carney did, but we can’t disregard the fact that there’s a potential gain to be made, even if we don’t like how things are going down, and don’t like how we’re negotiating with a wannabe dictator. We haven’t gotten anything out of it though, so patience with Carney is going to run thin.
And let’s not even talk about PP. Just because he’s not elected and we didn’t immediately get Musk-ed, doesn’t necessarily make me feel any better with how most of Carney’s economic moves have been more conservative than what I think is necessary. For example, he said we should have a good energy mix, but he’s yet to announce or even mention any investment or developments in green energy, or anything that would contribute to a good off-ramp for O&G companies (even if we don’t think they deserve it) and making sure we have a healthy amount of green energy generation, and thus only making it more and more necessary to more extreme measures if we want to save our and our children’s future.
The original commentor’s note seemed to imply Carney was playing some sort of ‘4d chess’ bullshit, dangling keys and then ditching something we’d always intended to ditch as a ‘show’ to appease the orange guy. Your response noted that the tax was put in fairly recently, and was set to kick in officially this month – basically questioning the original guys narrative. You add in the question about wheat, which I’m still not sure where he got that.
So yes, I agree with your skepticism related to this being some fancy political footwork that’s actually in our best interests, and the implication from the OP that we were ditching a tax that we’d never intended to bring in.
Your response even supports the comment that the move is objectively against our interests, and pro-US tech giant. Your optimism and “wait and see, mayyybeee”, are naive. We’ve already conceded that tax, without getting anything in return for it, as well as any other area of internal domestic policy as there’s a clear precedent now – if it were part of negotiations, it would be getting discussed as part of negotiations, setting up an exemption for US companies or whatnot. We just handed them that item on ‘good faith’, with a dictator. Heck, during the election, I’m fairly sure I heard a quote from Carney about how he wouldn’t commit to anything publicly prior to negotiations, because it’s a weak approach where you basically give stuff away - but they did just that in this case.
The questionable bills, and general de-regulation / removal of environmental reviews, are in line with US interests at present, which are backed by tech giants wanting to take more control / have more autonomy. The continued (over) reliance on US tech services is also clearly not in Canada’s best interests, given how the US has been leveraging their near monopolistic status in that realm. Many of our newly elected government officials got in on a promise of standing up to America’s authoritarian bullshit, but once in power have basically complied and made similar authoritarian steps.
In that case, okay, I see where you’re coming from with the previous comment. But yeah, it’s always good to question claims of some 4D-chess-like move a government is doing, cause often times, we’d actually know what’s happened, and so would the party on the other side of the table.
I will also say this to clarify, cause I think it seems like we have different definitions: when I said pro-X, I only meant it in the sense that you actively do things that benefit party X. I noticed that it’s used interchangeably with “action benefits party X,” but context doesn’t always make it clear.
And I’m only saying that calling what we see right now a bend of the knee might still be a bit early given that this is a situation that’s still ongoing. If the events are to stop right now, and we essentially get nothing else on top of getting Trump on the negotiating table, then heck ya it’s a capitulation. You call it optimism, I call it seeing it for what it is putting aside my pessimistic view on it. But yes, I agree that we shouldn’t need to do what Carney did.
The questionable bills, and general de-regulation / removal of environmental reviews, are in line with US interests at present, which are backed by tech giants wanting to take more control / have more autonomy. The continued (over) reliance on US tech services is also clearly not in Canada’s best interests, given how the US has been leveraging their near monopolistic status in that realm. Many of our newly elected government officials got in on a promise of standing up to America’s authoritarian bullshit, but once in power have basically complied and made similar authoritarian steps.
This is a very charged take of Bill C-5 and it makes it hard to agree or disagree. Might just be a me-thing, but anytime people use very charged words or takes, I just have the tendency to retort, because while they aren’t possibilities you can disprove, there’s also nothing to prove them. We can entertain the possibility, but I do wonder if we’d just be focusing on the wrong problem and make constructive conversations impossible to make.
Bill C-5 is a lot of nodding and ‘trust me’ type arguments that get made by a liberal party that’s designed the legislation to be ‘reviewed’ after 5 years, meaning its highly likely that it’ll get used by another party - which could happen quite quickly even, given the minority govt status. Also, for its nation building projects clauses, ask yourself whose rights/interests are getting suppressed, and which nation owns the businesses that will be building those projects. It’s generally American owned / head quartered companies, getting assurances that the pesky locals rights won’t get in the way, from our own government. It is quite explicitly selling us out to foreign business interests.
Like even the reactors that Ontario (in partnership with a couple other provinces, I think) is building, are American made from GE and rely on Uranium that we ship down to the USA, they then enrich it and ship it back to us to power those plants. Or the Avro Arrow that Ford trumpets all the time, which was always a concept car / “platform” to sell component contracts to foreign companies. They put cheaper EV’s for everyone in Canada on hold, because Ford wanted to try and appease American car dealers. They’re aggressively pushing things like OpenBanking, even though practically every Canadian financial institution is outsourcing that functionality outside the country (even most “local” CUs now have their websites hosted by an Indian company) – some even “disclose” all their member information to India/US-based AI companies, because I guess there’s a low risk of it being regulated by the Carney govt: he’s very bullish on trusting big tech to be country agnostic, despite countless examples to the contrary. Suppressing privacy rights would be an easy way to green light large government AI integration, particularly with foreign company involvement/control. These things are not nation building, nor are pipelines owned by US interests. But those are the sorts of ‘projects’ that this kind of legislation will most likely target.
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.
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.
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
Yep, I’m slightly upset. Does he actually think something worthwhile is going to come out of the negotiations?
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
Then why would Trump object to it then?
Because it targets his buddies Zuck and Besos.
Does it target the billionaire tech bros or will Canadians pay it? Which one is it?? If Canadians are gonna pay it - why would Trump care? If it targets billionaire bros - big whoop! It’s so small it doesn’t even register.
Canadians pay it and are hopefully turned to other options, smaller companies, and hopefully Canadian ones. That would drive Amazon’s business down, and that hurts the billionaires more than the tax.
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.
That’s fine, it allows Canadian companies (that pay tax on money earned in Canada) to compete
You can stop copy and pasting this, it’s not true
The digital services tax applies at a rate of 3% on revenue earned from:
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Certain digital services that rely on engagement, data, and content contributions of Canadian users
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Certain sales or licensing of Canadian user data
Canadian digital services revenue is calculated on a calendar year basis and is earned from:
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Online marketplace services
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Online advertising services
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Social media services
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Certain sales of user data
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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.
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.
Welp big group, none of us are in it. Time to dig some infrastructure.
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/connect/contact
Write to him
If you let the tantruming baby have his way all the time, he’ll continue expecting to get his way all the time when he’s older
I always think of this song every time I hear ‘elbows up’.
Carney
Always
Chickens
OutCarney
Often
Cancels
Knowingly
