Media
Trudeau’s Digital Services Tax threatens taxpayers and the economy
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Jay Goldberg
In other words, Trudeau is imposing a multi-billion-dollar tax on taxpayers – at a time when 50 per cent of Canadians say they’re $200 away from not being able to pay their bills.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau managed to do two terrible things in one fell swoop: raise costs for Canadians at a time they can least afford it and risk a trade war with the United States.
The Trudeau government pushed its new Digital Services Tax through Parliament before quitting for the summer.
The government’s DST targets large foreign companies operating online marketplaces and social media platforms earning revenue from online advertising, such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Airbnb. It is a three per cent tax on all revenue these companies generate in Canada.
Two red flags should pop up immediately for taxpayers. First, these companies won’t just eat the tax without passing costs onto consumers. And second, the United States government is sure to retaliate.
On the first point, there were clear signs that prices for Canadian consumers would increase because of this tax long before it was passed into law.
When the DST was in its proposal stage, the Parliamentary Budget Officer did an estimate of how much the government’s new tax would cost Canadians.
The PBO estimated the government’s DST would lead to an additional $7.2 billion in federal tax revenue over the next five years.
Where is that money coming from?
While major foreign companies will be the ones paying the tax directly, Canadian consumers will be hit with the bill.
It is “expected that businesses in the targeted sectors will adjust their services and prices in response to the new law,” the PBO said.
In other words, Trudeau is imposing a multi-billion-dollar tax on taxpayers – at a time when 50 per cent of Canadians say they’re $200 away from not being able to pay their bills.
Not only is Trudeau’s new DST going to increase costs for consumers, Canada also risks a trade war with the United States over the tax, which would cost Canadians even more.
In the wake of Trudeau’s DST getting through Parliament, the United States Trade Representative warned the U.S. will “do what’s necessary” to respond to the Trudeau’s new tax. USTR Katharine Tai warns she will look at “all available tools” as part of the U.S. response.
Tai’s isn’t the only voice in the U.S. calling for retaliatory action.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents tech companies like Amazon, Apple and Uber that will be targeted by Trudeau’s new tax, is calling on the Biden administration to fight back.
“With Canada’s DST now law, the time has come to announce [retaliatory] action,” said the association’s vice president, Jonathan McHale.
The president and CEO of the Tax Foundation is warning that U.S. retaliation would likely come through hiking tariffs on imports from Canada.
Given that the U.S. is by far Canada’s largest trading partner, making it more expensive to get Canadian goods into the American marketplace could have a detrimental impact on Canada’s economy, costing us both economic growth and jobs.
More than two years ago, the USTR warned against the Trudeau government taking measures that “single out American firms for taxation while effectively excluding national firms engaged in similar lines of business.”
But Trudeau chose to ignore those warnings and do exactly that.
To add insult to injury, the law authorizing the Trudeau government to bring the DST into effect (whenever it so chooses) allows it to do so retroactively, all the way back to 2022. Companies could be on the hook for huge sums for tax years in which the law didn’t even exist.
No wonder the Americans are threatening to fight back.
The bottom line is that Trudeau has put Canada in a terrible position. He is risking higher prices for Canadians and tariffs on our exports to the U.S. market, all in a lust for more cash. And the revenue the government is likely to bring in through the DST, an average of $1.4 billion a year, would be spent by this government in just one day.
It’s not too late for Trudeau to back down. Cabinet could choose not to bring the tax into force and avoid retaliation from the US.
For the good of taxpayers and the Canadian economy, Trudeau must abandon the DST.
Censorship Industrial Complex
Welcome to Britain, Where Critical WhatsApp Messages Are a Police Matter
By Cam Wakefield
“It was just unfathomable to me that things had escalated to this degree,”
“We’d never used abusive or threatening language, even in private.”
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You’d think that in Britain, the worst thing that could happen to you after sending a few critical WhatsApp messages would be a passive-aggressive reply or, at most, a snooty whisper campaign. What you probably wouldn’t expect is to have six police officers show up on your doorstep like they’re hunting down a cartel. But that’s precisely what happened to Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine — two parents whose great offense was asking some mildly inconvenient questions about how their daughter’s school planned to replace its retiring principal.
This is not an episode of Black Mirror. This is Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, 2025. And the parents in question—Maxie Allen, a Times Radio producer, and Rosalind Levine, 46, a mother of two—had the gall to inquire, via WhatsApp no less, whether Cowley Hill Primary School was being entirely above board in appointing a new principal.
What happened next should make everyone in Britain pause and consider just how overreaching their government has become. Because in the time it takes to send a meme about the school’s bake sale, you too could be staring down the barrel of a “malicious communications” charge.
The trouble started in May, shortly after the school’s principal retired. Instead of the usual round of polite emails, clumsy PowerPoints, and dreary Q&A sessions, there was… silence. Maxie Allen, who had once served as a school governor—so presumably knows his way around a budget meeting—asked the unthinkable: when was the recruitment process going to be opened up?
A fair question, right? Not in Borehamwood, apparently. The school responded not with answers, but with a sort of preemptive nuclear strike.
Jackie Spriggs, the chair of governors, issued a public warning about “inflammatory and defamatory” social media posts and hinted at disciplinary action for those who dared to cause “disharmony.” One imagines this word being uttered in the tone of a Bond villain stroking a white cat.
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Parents Allen and Levine were questioned by police over their WhatsApp messages. |
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For the crime of “casting aspersions,” Allen and Levine were promptly banned from the school premises. That meant no parents’ evening, no Christmas concert, no chance to speak face-to-face about the specific needs of their daughter Sascha, who—just to add to the bleakness of it all—has epilepsy and is registered disabled.
So what do you do when the school shuts its doors in your face? You send emails. Lots of them. You try to get answers. And if that fails, you might—just might—vent a little on WhatsApp.
But apparently, that was enough to earn the label of harassers. Not in the figurative, overly sensitive, “Karen’s upset again” sense. No, this was the actual, legal, possibly-prison kind of harassment.
Then came January 29. Rosalind was at home sorting toys for charity—presumably a heinous act in today’s climate—when she opened the door to what can only be described as a low-budget reboot of Line of Duty. Six officers. Two cars. A van. All to arrest two middle-aged parents whose biggest vice appears to be stubborn curiosity.
“I saw six police officers standing there,” she said. “My first thought was that Sascha was dead.”
Instead, it was the prelude to an 11-hour ordeal in a police cell. Eleven hours. That’s enough time to commit actual crimes, be tried, be sentenced, and still get home in time for MasterChef.
Allen called the experience “dystopian,” and, for once, the word isn’t hyperbole. “It was just unfathomable to me that things had escalated to this degree,” he said. “We’d never used abusive or threatening language, even in private.”
Worse still, they were never even told which communications were being investigated. It’s like being detained by police for “vibes.”
One of the many delightful ironies here is that the school accused them of causing a “nuisance on school property,” despite the fact that neither of them had set foot on said property in six months.
Now, in the school’s defense—such as it is—they claim they went to the police because the sheer volume of correspondence and social media posts had become “upsetting.” Which raises an important question: when did being “upsetting” become a police matter?
What we’re witnessing is not a breakdown in communication, but a full-blown bureaucratic tantrum. Instead of engaging with concerned parents, Cowley Hill’s leadership took the nuclear option: drag them out in cuffs and let the police deal with it.
Hertfordshire Constabulary, apparently mistaking Borehamwood for Basra, decided this was a perfectly normal use of resources. “The number of officers was necessary,” said a spokesman, “to secure electronic devices and care for children at the address.”
Right. Nothing says “childcare” like watching your mom get led away in handcuffs while your toddler hides in the corner, traumatized.
After five weeks—five weeks of real police time, in a country where burglaries are basically a form of inheritance transfer—the whole thing was quietly dropped. Insufficient evidence. No charges. Not even a slap on the wrist.
So here we are. A story about a couple who dared to question how a public school was run, and ended up locked in a cell, banned from the school play, and smeared with criminal accusations for trying to advocate for their disabled child.
This is Britain in 2025. A place where public institutions behave like paranoid cults and the police are deployed like private security firms for anyone with a bruised ego. All while the rest of the population is left wondering how many other WhatsApp groups are one message away from a dawn raid.
Because if this is what happens when you ask a few inconvenient questions, what’s next? Fingerprinting people for liking the wrong Facebook post? Tactical units sent in for sarcastic TripAdvisor reviews?
It’s a warning. Ask the wrong question, speak out of turn, and you too may get a visit from half the local police force.
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NEERA TANDEN: “The military requires accountability. It’s the most accountable organization. You are supposed to be accountable to higher-ups. Politics isn’t supposed to have to do with any of this, and the fact that that’s happening, that they’re just basically saying nothing to do here, is a big problem, I think, for those who believe in accountability.”
@ScottJenningsKY: “I think Republicans aren’t interested in any lectures on accountability in the military after the Biden administration. I mean, the bar for getting rid of a Secretary of Defense is apparently pretty high. You can get 13 people killed and go AWOL and not tell the commander in chief, and that’s not a fireable offense.”
“But these lectures about accountability and national security after letting 10 million people into the country who raped and murdered and committed violent acts and no remorse or accountability.”
NEERA TANDEN: “What are you talking about? They closed the border.”
#4 – Bill Gates says we won’t need humans “for most things.”
During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon asked Gates a pretty direct question: “Will we still need humans?”
Gates responded, “Not for most things. We’ll decide … There will be some things that we reserve for ourselves, but in terms of making things and moving things and growing food, over time those will be basically solved problems.”
VIDEO: @TheChiefNerd
REP JORDAN: “Is NPR biased?”
MAHER: “I have never seen any political bias.”
JORDAN: “In the DC area, editorial positions at NPR have 87 registered Democrats and 0 Republicans.”
MAHER: “We do not track the voter registration, but I find that concerning.”
JORDAN: “87-0 and you’re not biased?”
MAHER: “I think that is concerning if those numbers are accurate.”
JORDAN: “October 2020, the NYPost had the Hunter Biden laptop story, and one of those 87 Democrat editors said, ‘We don’t want to waste our readers and listeners’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.’ Was that story a pure distraction?”
Video + Transcript via @Kanekoathegreat
While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this page for more weekly news roundups.
#2 – Utah becomes the first state to officially BAN fluoride in all public drinking water.
For decades, fluoride was accepted as a safe way to prevent tooth decay. Few questioned it.
But last year, in a dramatic legal twist, a federal judge ruled that fluoride may actually lower children’s IQ—and cited evidence that could upend everything we thought we knew.
That ruling sent shockwaves through the public health world.
Judge Edward Chen pointed to scientific studies showing a “high level of certainty” that fluoride exposure “poses a risk” to developing brains.
He ordered the EPA to reexamine its safety standards, warning that the margin for safety may be far too narrow.
At the center of the case: dozens of peer-reviewed studies linking everyday fluoride exposure—even at levels found in U.S. tap water—to reduced intellectual capacity in children.
It wasn’t just one paper. The National Toxicology Program, a branch of the U.S. government, also concluded that higher fluoride levels were “consistently associated” with lower IQ in kids.
They flagged 1.5 mg/L as a risk threshold. Some communities hover right near it.
In response to the growing evidence, Utah passed HB 81, banning all fluoride additives in public water.
The law takes effect May 7. It doesn’t ban fluoride completely. Anyone who wants it can still get it—like any other prescription.
And that’s the point: Utah’s lawmakers say this is about informed consent and personal choice.
This issue is no longer on the fringe. Across the country, cities and towns are quietly rethinking water fluoridation—and some have already pulled out. Utah is the first state to take bold action. It may not be the last.
The conversation surrounding fluoride has shifted from “Is it helpful?” to “Is it safe?” And for the first time in nearly a century, that question is being taken seriously.
VIDEO: @TheChiefNerd
#1 – RFK Jr. Drops Stunning Vaccine Announcement
Kennedy revealed that the CDC is creating a new sub-agency focused entirely on vaccine injuries—a long-overdue shift for patients who’ve spent years searching for answers without any support from the government.
“We’re incorporating an agency within CDC that is going to specialize in vaccine injuries,” Kennedy announced.
“These are priorities for the American people. More and more people are suffering from these injuries, and we are committed to having gold-standard science make sure that we can figure out what the treatments are and that we can deliver the best treatments possible to the American people.”
For years, the vaccine-injured have felt ignored or dismissed, as public health agencies refused to even acknowledge the problem. Now, there’s finally an initiative underway to investigate their injuries and to provide support.
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