A U.S. senator is calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney to move quickly on repealing the digital services tax.
"You all, to your credit, said you're not going to collect it. I asked that Canada move as quickly as possible to get a law passed in Parliament making sure that it's gone permanently," Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, told media Monday following a meeting between Carney and a bipartisan delegation of four U.S. senators in Ottawa.
"The prime minister was receptive to that," Wyden added. "He said he would get on it in the fall."
Carney said in late June he would eliminate the tax — just before a hefty retroactive payment was due that would have cost big U.S. tech companies an estimated $2 billion.
The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump called a halt to bilateral trade talks over the tax, which would have imposed a three per cent levy on tech giants that generate revenue from Canadian users, such as Google, Amazon and Uber.
While the Canada Revenue Agency is not asking for payments to be made through the tax, it has said it will not issue refunds to those who have already paid until Parliament passes a law formally ending the tax. Google also has said it will wait until that law is passed before refunding customers who paid a surcharge it imposed last year in response to the tax.
The House of Commons is currently on summer break and is set to return on Sept. 15.
The senators were in Ottawa to discuss the ongoing trade conflict between Canada and the U.S.
In addition to Wyden, the delegation included Democratic senators Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, and Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Carney, who did not stop to talk to reporters after the meeting, remarked that it was a "very good" discussion.
A media advisory from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance said the four senators planned to "reaffirm the importance of ties between the United States and Canada" in meetings with Carney and other top government officials.
In a letter to Carney on July 10, Trump threatened to impose 35 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods by Aug. 1, setting a new deadline for trade talks that were supposed to wrap up by now.
Carney told reporters last week that a trade deal with the U.S. will likely include some tariffs, and that he expects talks with the U.S. to “intensify” ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told an American television audience on Sunday that Canada will pay tariffs unless it opens its market to the United States.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
