Juno News - Carney CAVES to Trump + new EXCLUSIVE poll shows tight federal race

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Candace Malcolm Show here on Juneau. My name is Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta

00:00:07.120 Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Thank you so much for joining me as I'm filling

00:00:11.620 in for Candace over the summer on Mondays. Now, it's actually a pretty newsy Monday for the day

00:00:18.720 between Sunday and July 1st, Canada Day, for those who celebrate. Now, interestingly, we had

00:00:25.960 this trade war go on again and off again between last night, Sunday night, and today. So here's

00:00:33.860 what happened. U.S. President Donald Trump already had indicated that the digital services tax was a

00:00:40.600 huge burr under his saddle. For those who don't know what that is, it's basically a tax imposed

00:00:46.240 by the Canadian federal government on online and digital services companies emanating from the

00:00:52.940 United States. So if they earned more than $20 million with an M, they would then be taxed on

00:00:59.620 that within Canada. But here's the catch. It was retroactive back a few years, and it was going to

00:01:05.820 cost those companies billions of dollars. So that was not going to fly. And for those who are saying,

00:01:12.580 oh, well, here's Trump at it again, being mercurial. Actually, the Biden administration had a huge problem

00:01:18.780 with this thing as well. They even had a special panel on this thing saying, uh, the digital services

00:01:24.220 tax is unfair on our American companies, and we're not going to stand for it, Canada. So fix it.

00:01:30.300 Here's the thing. Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney could have been the big hero of this story

00:01:36.560 because he could have made the very popular announcement saying, you know what? That was

00:01:41.200 the previous government. That was the previous Prime Minister. I'm not into taxing your Netflix.

00:01:47.000 I don't need to be up in your business taxing Amazon or Uber, because here's the thing. Amazon would

00:01:55.400 not eat this cost. Uber wouldn't eat this cost. Same goes for things like Spotify and Netflix. 0.51

00:02:02.660 Ultimately, that cost would be passed down to us, to Canadian taxpayers. How much money? The federal

00:02:11.060 government in Canada was planning on raking in around $6 billion over the next few years. So a billion-ish

00:02:20.060 dollars per year on this thing. That's nothing to sneeze at. And so ultimately it would be the

00:02:26.440 strapped taxpayers again, who would have to pay extra fees. And before you start thinking, oh, well,

00:02:32.500 this is just for entertainment, you know, isn't Netflix a luxury? Number one, nearly half of what

00:02:39.380 we make is already taken by various levels of government through taxes and fees and what other

00:02:45.920 levies, whatever euphemisms they want to tax on to a tax. It's a tax. So already about half of what

00:02:53.560 you're supposed to be paid is going to various levels of government. So government can back off.

00:02:58.340 Number two, this was very personal for people, right? What you choose to listen to through your

00:03:04.600 streaming services can be something super enlightening. It could make you feel better at

00:03:09.580 the end of the day. It could be Netflix, where you're spending time with your loved ones, all of

00:03:13.580 those things. What you're listening to and consuming for entertainment and news in some cases is a very

00:03:19.720 personal choice. But here goes the government getting right up in your grill and saying, where's mine all

00:03:25.340 the time? But it wasn't just for entertainment and news. This would have affected companies like Uber,

00:03:32.120 which of course provides driving services with an app. There's the digital service part. See what

00:03:37.800 they're doing there? This would affect a lot of people, not just, you know, everyday business commuters,

00:03:43.420 but also seniors that don't drive anymore. So you're going to be taxing grandma for taking an Uber

00:03:49.000 down to her knee appointment. Good job, guys. But here's where it gets ridiculous. Carney, 1.00

00:03:55.880 this is an own goal for Carney. Carney could have seen this mess coming and avoided it earlier.

00:04:01.680 At the end of the day, he had to eat a lot of crow on a Sunday night, okay, and back down to Trump.

00:04:09.160 So this is going to cause a lot of tittering going through the Canadian media. Ultimately,

00:04:13.540 this is a good news story because it means taxpayers and people who use these services won't have to

00:04:18.900 pay for this. But going forward, pro tip for Prime Minister Mark Carney, the other thing you announced

00:04:26.260 just before the last election was the carbon tax tariff, meaning a tariff, an import tariff put on

00:04:34.180 things coming in from countries that don't have national carbon taxes. Can you think of a country we

00:04:41.100 trade with that doesn't have a national carbon tax? The United States. So if the digital services tax

00:04:48.340 cost taxpayers or was about to cost taxpayers an arm and a leg and cause a trade war, what does Carney

00:04:56.040 think his carbon tax import tariff on American stuff is going to trigger in US President Donald Trump

00:05:04.240 once he gets wind of this? So pro tip, use this Netflix tax as a teachable moment for yourself.

00:05:11.100 And scrap the carbon tax tariff before this also blows up into a trade war. Got so much to talk

00:05:18.860 about. We've got new polling data that has come out. We've got all sorts of cool stuff. There's also

00:05:24.340 an announcement about the by-election actually happening in Alberta for realsies. So much to

00:05:30.420 talk about. And we've got a great guest for that. Joining me will be Brian Lilly from the Toronto Sun.

00:05:36.080 What does he think about all this? Let's find out. Joining me now from Saskatchewan is Brian Lilly.

00:05:41.640 Brian, of course, is a Toronto Sun columnist, longtime member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery

00:05:47.340 back in the day, good friend of mine, and host of the Full Comment podcast, which I strongly

00:05:52.840 recommend people listen to. Insider Baseball, but it's one of the very few I would describe as

00:05:59.900 mainstream podcasts in Canada that I listen to. It's definitely worth it. Don't miss it. Brian,

00:06:05.320 thank you for taking time at your undisclosed location, compound bunker in Saskatchewan.

00:06:11.240 I'm at the outdoor bunker in Saskatoon, hiding out. Yes.

00:06:15.260 I'm in Lethbridge and there's really like, I can almost see you from my house because, you know,

00:06:19.320 there's nothing in between us right now. Brian, I wanted to get your take on this enormous reversal

00:06:25.080 coming from Ottawa, coming from Prime Minister Mark Carney, on the digital services tax. My,

00:06:31.420 my, how reality has bitten him. What was your take on this?

00:06:35.300 We look like idiots. Carney could have looked like a strong leader if he had done the right thing last 1.00

00:06:44.380 week. Instead, he did the wrong thing. The digital services tax, by the way, it was passed in June 2024,

00:06:53.080 took effect then. And with the rule that it would kick in on June 30th, 2025, but be retroactive to

00:07:02.560 2022. So the Americans have always had problems with this. The Biden administration had started

00:07:08.140 a trade dispute panel over this. They say it violates articles 14.4 and article 15.3 of the

00:07:16.520 Canada, US, Mexico trade agreement. So they say we're in violation. We keep complaining that the

00:07:21.240 tariffs that they're putting in are a violation of the trade agreement. Well, guess what? So is this.

00:07:27.080 And we're in the middle of negotiations to try and get those tariffs lifted. And they said,

00:07:31.820 give us a 30 day pause on implementing your digital services tax. And they said, no,

00:07:37.940 we're going ahead with it. We decide what taxes will be in Canada, not you. And they said, all right,

00:07:43.780 trade talks are off. All they had to do was say, we're suspending this. We're going to put it off

00:07:48.960 while we negotiate in good faith. So the Americans canceled the trade talks. And at

00:07:53.400 10.06 PM Ottawa time on a Sunday night, they announced they're not just going to pause the

00:08:01.100 implementation of the tax. They're going to rescind it. How weak does that make us look?

00:08:08.180 Carney, as I said, could have looked like the big man, like a good negotiator last week.

00:08:12.260 Now he looks like Trump's puppet. Now the elbows up crowd are still going to love it because he can

00:08:18.140 reverse himself on any number of things and they're just going to love it. It's like the elbows up

00:08:22.640 crowd have replaced the true and on crowd. Dear leader can do no wrong. I'm trying to give this

00:08:27.880 guy the benefit of the doubt. He's our prime minister. We're in a trade negotiation. We have

00:08:33.380 to cheer for Canada, but that to do continue to cheer for him. He's got to be doing good things.

00:08:39.480 This is like cheering for your favorite hockey team when they score on their own net. You wouldn't do

00:08:44.940 that. That's a great analogy. It's like, oh, well, at least he still scored. What have you done lately

00:08:49.920 on the ice? It's like, come on guys. And to your point, Brian, this was obviously going to be a

00:08:56.820 problem. Like the Biden administration had a problem with this. This wasn't a couple of bucks.

00:09:01.960 This was going to cost major American companies billions of dollars.

00:09:07.300 So the retroactive payment, Chris, depending on who you listened to, was between two and three

00:09:12.180 billion. And then it was going to be a billion dollars a year. In the grand scheme of things,

00:09:16.800 that is not a whole lot of money for the federal government. They spend more than 450 billion. No,

00:09:24.340 actually more than 500 billion a year. So this is not a lot of money for the federal government.

00:09:32.400 They didn't need to do this and they didn't need the cash right now. They could have put this off,

00:09:38.120 but by not putting it off, by throwing the trade talks into disarray, all of those jobs in the auto

00:09:45.220 sector, in manufacturing, in what are the other ones? In steel, in aluminum. So think of where we've

00:09:54.280 got steel plants. We've got them outside Montreal. We've got them in Hamilton, in Sault Ste. Marie,

00:09:59.100 in Regina, in Edmonton. And then there's processors all over the place in smaller capacities. But

00:10:05.400 those are the big steel plants. They're spread across the country. All those jobs, all the aluminum

00:10:09.980 jobs, these are all put at risk and the tariffs remained on. You can't negotiate from a position

00:10:18.100 of strength now. Carney essentially looks like the puppy that rolls over on its back and says,

00:10:23.840 pet my belly. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the thing where it threatens so much more. The whole idea

00:10:30.100 of a digital services tax was already bad, but the fact that they fumbled this at the negotiation table

00:10:35.600 at the last minute so poorly speaks volumes about their planning. Remember back, we were texting about

00:10:42.260 this during the election. I still can't believe that a trade union, a pipe workers union endorsed the

00:10:49.000 conservatives, the blue team federally over this issue of ongoing tariffs and an industrial carbon

00:10:56.340 tax saying that the Americans are going to eat our lunch. And for Carney to be a former central banker

00:11:02.920 on two continents and to have a PhD in economics from Oxford and still kind of make these fumbles at

00:11:09.600 the very last bit at the goal line is pretty surprising. I just wanted to touch on the nature.

00:11:14.840 If I can add to that just quickly, we can't forget he also has private sector experience. He was at

00:11:20.600 Goldman Sachs for more than a dozen years doing deals. He was also at Brookfield Asset Management

00:11:26.920 for the last few years doing deals. And I'm sure that he looks at Donald Trump as some real estate

00:11:33.880 huckster from Queens and looks down his nose at him. And he just got beaten by the real estate

00:11:39.500 huckster from Queens. Yeah, I can see what just happened here. I wanted to touch on just the

00:11:46.300 nature of the tax that we just narrowly avoided. I feel this kind of awkward situation where

00:11:51.000 previously when Trump would, you know, wake up out of bed and start tweeting something, it would just,

00:11:56.200 it would cost us money and it would be a big tariff war and be awful. But here we have something that

00:12:01.000 at the end of the day is going to save taxpayers money because in Canada, Netflix was not just going

00:12:06.740 to eat this cost. Amazon was not going to eat this cost. And it went further than just stuff that

00:12:11.760 you're doing on your laptop. This was going to affect things like Uber. Like there are plenty

00:12:17.180 of seniors who don't drive anymore who now take Uber. They rely on it. So it was all of these so-called 0.98

00:12:23.140 digital services that the parliamentary budget officer was estimating was going to take in close

00:12:28.740 to a billion dollars a year in Canada. Now who's ultimately going to be stuck with the tab?

00:12:34.900 Taxpayers. Because the companies sure as heck weren't going to eat this. But I wanted to point

00:12:38.840 out, I think this annoyed people too, because it's government getting up in your grill and getting

00:12:44.840 up in your personal life. So they wanted to tax you for things like Spotify, for your Amazon purchases,

00:12:50.840 for your Netflix, your time when you're at home and you're trying to unplug from your job and relax.

00:12:57.560 And this isn't the first time. You and I, we go way back. One of the funnier things I wanted to talk

00:13:02.600 about was stupid taxes that previous governments have done. This goes back into history. I forget 0.99

00:13:08.100 when it was. It was in the 1600s sometime that the UK had a window tax. They would go along and count

00:13:14.820 how many windows were in one building and then tax people for it. And of course, the knock-on effect was

00:13:20.340 that the urban poor in cities were getting things like typhus and rickets because they were lacking

00:13:27.040 sunshine because they were getting taxed on their windows.

00:13:30.340 Well, people would block them up or cover them up. I remember being in Ireland a few years ago

00:13:35.080 and I'm on a tour and our guide is pointing out some of these great stately homes that at one point

00:13:43.380 you can see they used to have windows all over. You know, we're talking big country manors,

00:13:48.320 but they had so many windows. The tax would be so high that they boarded them up and they still

00:13:52.420 look like that hundreds of years later. It's awful. Um, and I remember them telling us a story

00:14:00.000 about the, they put in a door tax. And so what they ended up doing was putting in a hole that you

00:14:06.420 went through rather than a door. That's the term a hole in the wall. And, and people, people would

00:14:12.080 innovate around that and just say, okay, well, a door is so high. And if I don't have a door,

00:14:17.360 then I won't get a tax. And so you would have to get down on your knees and crawl under to get into

00:14:23.100 say a pub. Um, you know, so people always find ways around taxes, but this one was especially

00:14:29.800 insidious because it wasn't on income. You know, I I've seen the defenders say, oh, so these companies

00:14:35.580 shouldn't have to pay income tax. It's not income tax. It's a revenue tax. So they would figure out

00:14:41.780 or estimate what your revenue within Canada is, and then tax that at 3%. And while this is going

00:14:49.620 on, by the way, so this is rescinded for now, but there's a lawsuit from some of these same companies,

00:14:56.040 including, uh, Amazon and, uh, Netflix prime, uh, or sorry, I guess Amazon is, uh, prime. Uh,

00:15:05.540 but the streamers are being told by the CRTC that you have to pay a special fee for,

00:15:13.080 to support local news. I'm all for supporting local news. I happen to work, uh, for a still

00:15:20.940 mainstream publication, the Toronto sun, but I don't want this. This is ridiculous. They, 0.90

00:15:26.680 they believe that, well, this would actually go to the broadcasters, but they're trying to

00:15:30.580 regulate them as if they're broadcasters. And when broadcasting started, the government said to the

00:15:37.940 people setting up radio stations, and then eventually television stations, look, you're

00:15:42.500 using a public good. You are using the public's airwaves. Therefore you must provide some public

00:15:48.480 service in the form of news. That was the bargain, but these things are not using public good.

00:15:56.400 They're setting up their own systems and broadcasting to us through their lines or

00:16:01.980 lines that we pay for elsewhere. They should not be having to pay for this. And the CRTC has no ability

00:16:08.820 to impose a tax, but they're claiming it's not a tax. It's a fee. And therefore they can just make

00:16:13.980 this up. So there's a lawsuit going on. What do you think Donald Trump's going to say when he finds out

00:16:19.640 about that one? There are so many, these are all Trudeau era problems, Trudeau era mistakes of trying

00:16:26.900 to regulate every part of online life that the Carney government could easily walk away from.

00:16:31.960 And they've chosen not to do it. They, thankfully they're walking away from this. Let's hope they

00:16:36.220 stay away from this, but the online side and the regulations, the fees, the taxes that the Trudeau

00:16:43.960 government wanted to impose has been a major irritant for both parties in the United States.

00:16:51.120 This would have been handled different if Kamala Harris had won instead of Donald Trump, 0.99

00:16:55.960 but they would still have been telling us, you do that and you're going to have trade problems with

00:17:00.220 us. Yeah, big time. Ultimately it's going to cost consumers money or it would have cost consumers a

00:17:05.260 bit, a lot of money here in Canada, and it would irritate and stoke a trade war, which hopefully

00:17:10.540 this element has been neutralized. I will touch on very quickly what you mentioned there with the

00:17:15.920 CRTC and regulations. And yeah, anytime the government makes something you need cost more,

00:17:21.400 that's a tax. It doesn't matter if they call it a levy or a fee or a fruit plot.

00:17:25.220 And it needs to go through parliament.

00:17:26.980 Yeah, exactly. Thank you. I wanted to quickly get your thoughts. We did have a poll that was

00:17:33.640 exclusive to Juneau News by One Persuades. That is Hamish Marshall's outfit. For folks who don't know

00:17:38.900 Hamish Marshall, who's a friend of the program, of course, he's very good at analyzing data down to

00:17:43.980 like the ground level riding, like granular level. Interesting. I don't see much movement. Just

00:17:49.880 generally speaking, when you take a look at national numbers, Liberal Party right now is at 43%,

00:17:55.080 down from 44%. Conservative Party at 39%, down slightly from 41%. NDP has resurrected itself by 1%.

00:18:04.820 They're at 7%, up from 6%. I can't believe I'm saying 6% for the NDP. Any quick thoughts, Brian, on what I

00:18:12.600 kind of see as kind of placeholder numbers in the middle of a honeymoon with a new prime minister?

00:18:16.000 Yeah, there's not much going on. I know Nanos has tried to say that the Conservatives are down at 33% and

00:18:23.540 Carney's holding his own. And some people try and read too much into that. Hamish's numbers from One Persuades,

00:18:30.580 they're very similar to Abacus data and David Colletto. So anyone that wants to discount and say,

00:18:35.680 well, you know, Hamish helped run Andrew Scheer's campaign. He's a conservative. You know, Abacus and

00:18:41.400 Hamish have essentially very similar numbers. You know, I think the public is giving Mark Carney the

00:18:49.040 benefit of the doubt so far. How he's handled this between Friday and today may change that,

00:18:55.680 but people have been willing to be like me and say, okay, the election's over. He won. You got to

00:19:00.980 hope for the best and hope he can fix things like he's promising. But I, you know, I don't think that

00:19:07.000 that means the bottom's falling out for Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives.

00:19:11.560 Speaking of which, it is now official. There is going to be a by-election in Alberta in Battle River

00:19:16.440 Crowfoot on August 18th. So the prime minister did keep his promise and called it very soon.

00:19:21.560 You'll be able to see that from your compound there in Saskatchewan because there's nothing in

00:19:25.520 between you. Well, I'll be heading out to Calgary soon for Stampede and hope to see a lot of good

00:19:31.760 Conservatives out there and get a sense of what's going on in Alberta. All right. They're coming

00:19:36.080 for you, Brian. They're coming for me. Thanks for joining us. So definitely a busy Monday sandwich

00:19:42.200 between Sunday and Canada Day. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure that you have a great time

00:19:49.020 with your friends and loved ones tomorrow on Canada Day if you're able to take some time out

00:19:53.040 of your busy work schedule. Please enjoy yourself. We get so little sunshine in Canada. I hope you

00:19:59.340 have good weather wherever you are in this country. And for more on what we just talked about with

00:20:03.860 Brian, because there's quite a bit going on, head on over to JunoNews.com and even better,

00:20:10.180 subscribe because then you're going to be getting the real deal. Once again, thank you so much

00:20:15.140 for watching. We'll be back next time. You're watching Juno News, Canada's fastest growing

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Juno News - June 30, 2025

Carney CAVES to Trump + new EXCLUSIVE poll shows tight federal race

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