NEWS UPDATES ... Monday June 30, 2025
1... WHAT IS THE DIGITAL SERVICES TAX (DST) AND WHY IS IT GONE? This tax has been 'in the works' for a few years in Canada and was to come into effect this week. The DST is a 3% tax on revenues made by ' companies that operate online marketplaces, online advertising services and social media platforms, and those that earn revenue from some sales of user data' - if those revenues are above $20 million a year. So smaller companies are exempt.
France and the U.K. also have a similar tax and the OECD which represents about 38 countries has been working on a DST for years but has not yet put anything in place. Canada's Digital Services Tax was also opposed by the Biden Government as well as Trump, and there is opposition to it in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. According to CTV, the tax was put in place 'to overcome what Canada saw as a tax loophole, with big tech companies operating in Canada digitally, making money off Canadian users and data, but not paying tax on it in Canada.' (So to me, that seems like a fair tax. But maybe not as tax policy is always complex and I, like most of us, know little to nothing about the details of this particular tax.
The Digital Services Tax meant that 'companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb, would pay a three-per-cent levy on revenue from Canadian users.' Which again seems fair - although some commentators say it's not really a good tax. But those big American companies have a LOT of political power in Washington and elsewhere. Canada's parliamentary budget officer had estimated the DST would bring in $7.2 billion over five years - which is a significant chunk of money that is now gone. But as the Carney government has said, negotiations with the U.S. continue on a comprehensive trade and security agreement (which we Canadians also seem to know very little about). And in negotiations you have to give things up to get other things we hope.
So we will see where these negotiations end up. The plan is to reach an agreement on tariffs and etc with the United States by July 21. This agreement could be 'a very big thing', and at the moment we Canadians seem to have no idea what is being discussed. Which is not a good thing in my opinion, but we shall see.
2... ARE WE BEING DELIBERATELY MISINFORMED ABOUT ALBERTA SEPARATION? I think the media and the politicians are deliberately misinforming us about Alberta separation, and they are doing it to help Big Oil.
The story we're told is that Canada is clamping down on Alberta and making it SO HARD for the oil industry to succeed there; and so Albertans are losing jobs and money, and because of that anger, Alberta is talking of 'separation'.
But what they never mention is that Alberta has had four straight years of Record Oil Production. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/7940-another-record-year-canadian-crude-oil-crude-oil-year-review-2024 My point is that if Alberta has had four straight record-breaking oil production years, then things CAN'T be that bad, right? Now, maybe I'm missing something, and if I am then I am open to being corrected, but everybody is telling us that 'things are so bad', but nobody is telling us about year after year of record oil production. And record oil industry profits too.
Esso just announced record profits for the first quarter of 2025. And here is a story that says: real incomes and living standards are deteriorating in Alberta despite record oil industry profits. https://www.westernwheel.ca/opinion/column-oil-profits-soar-but-regular-albertans-falling-behind-10726254 So, profits are going up but jobs and living standards are going down. Sounds typical for Canada these days.
So maybe I'm wrong, but I think we are being misled by our governments and media who always put the interests of Big Business over the interests of Canadians (in my opinion). The whole story from our politicians and media about how 'they work for us' is just one more lie; they don't work for us, they work for Big Business. And right now Big Oil is a very big business.
So maybe The Real Story should be .... the oil industry is screwing the people of Alberta. Maybe its' the oil industry (and the banks and etc.) that are the reason that times are tough in Alberta, but that is not allowed to be said. I think that any corporate journalist or senior politician who said anything like that - I think their career would be finished immediately.
I wish Alberta WOULD separate ... .but I'd like to see them separate not from Canada but from the oil industry. I'd like to see Albertans start to get the revenues they are entitled to; like the people of Norway have done. In Norway, the public has hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank, because they charged Big Oil a fair price for their oil, and the governments worked for the people of Norway. But here in Canada our governments gave the oil away, with the full support of the corporate owned media, and to cover things up they tell Albertans to blame the rest of Canada, and Big Oil never gets a mention.
So that's why I think the whole Alberta Separation Story is based on a lot of lies and misinformation and I hope we Canadians start to see what's really being done to us.... (Or maybe I'm wrong and Alberta really is being screwed by Canada, but I don't think so and I hope not.) But whatever the truth is, let's find out the truth and deal with it. Let's not just believe what the media and politicians keep telling us - because that is a road to disaster for us.
3... WHY DO THE MEDIA FOCUS ON CRIME AND BAD NEWS SO MUCH? I think the media focus on crime and bad news because they want us to be divided and they don't want us to trust each other and they want us to be fearful and divided. And so they fill the news always with crime and violence ... (or they tell us phony stories like the one above about Alberta Separation.
The media love to always tell us about bad things that are going on. But I heard something on CBC radio the other week that kind of told a different story. It wasn't 'the news' but just one of the hosts telling a story about what happened to them. They had driven to Calgary from Vancouver and were on their way back when they went through a storm in the mountains and a tree fell on their car. I think there were three people in the car. The car was seriously damaged, one person was cut up a bit, but I think nobody was seriously hurt although they probably could have been killed.
But the story the lady told was about how wonderful all the people around them were. Several other cars stopped immediately and got them to safety. She said the police and ambulance that came were wonderful, as was the tow-truck guy. Some people, complete strangers, drove them to the next town AND paid for their hotel room. And on and on it went, everyone was just great.
And these kinds of stories happen every day, and right across Canada ... but they are usually completely ignored by the media and I think it is quite deliberate. The media don't want us to know how great people really are so often, instead they always focus on the negative and they create a sadness and anger and division and fear in our country. And I think that creation of fear and etc is an important job of the media's job, and they do it 24 / 7 and 365 days a year. And it's very effective.
And all of their 'news' is similar; when they talk about the homeless or the health care mess it's never really 'the truth', it's just the stories that the corporate owners of the media want us to hear. And we really should try to stop them, because they are wrecking our country in a lot of ways... Canada desperately needs a free press, and if we are smart we will put a lot of focus on that issue. But of course the issue of needing a free press in Canada is never mentioned, and instead our media and our politicians always pretend that we already 'have' a great free press. And Canadians tend to believe them because we are told that story (that lie) for our entire lives. It's hard to get past it; I certainly believed we had a completely free press in Canada for most of my life, but I sure don't believe it any more, and the deeper I look into it, the worse it gets. I wish we could build the free press that we think we already have... and good luck to us all on that.
