Opinion
The Dystopian Future of Canada, Part 2-Corona Virus Testing Cause or Curse?
Pandemic Elements 1: PCR Testing-
During this ‘pandemic,’ world citizens have been subjected to a daily dose of case numbers from provincial or federal health ministers both sides of the border that have the power to paralyze or to set communities and citizens free from constraining governmental measures.
Decreasing ‘numbers’ spread hope that the curve is flattening while increasing ‘positives’ send frightened citizens and companies into a tailspin.
At the heart of the debate is the PCR test which magnifies RNA strands anywhere from 30 to 40 times to create the reaction necessary for a ‘conclusive’ test. Yet according to medical professionals forensic technicians only use a magnification of 17 in their quest for trace compounds during investigations.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted that the chances of a positive result being accurate at 35 cycles are “miniscule,” yet the Alberta Government relies on such testing levels (35) to determine the severity of the Covid 19 infection. Other groups such as the Ontario Government, the FDA, the CDC and the World Health Organization recommend 40 to 45 cycles.
REF: Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The PCR test was developed in 1985 by Dr. Kary Mullis for a primary application in biomedical research and criminal forensics yet it has become the foremost tool for Covid 19 detection. (see end of article for video)
In a 2019 interview, Mullis noted that it was never intended for detecting disease he felt that ‘Scientists are doing an awful lot of damage to the world in the name of helping it.’
Further research into PCR testing has yielded interesting results.
In addition to the inaccuracy of cycles above 17 which provide 100 % accuracy which drops to 20% with 33-34 cycles according to Dr. Mercola, the spectre of exactly what the test is searching for is raised.
With more than one Covid 19 test available, RNA (PCR), rapid (Antigen) or Serology (Antibody) there are also claims from the CDC that they do not have a sample of Covid 19 that they can produce to create a test from!
With numbers in the range that the Province of Alberta is reporting, the ‘pandemic,’ if PCR testing is performed with 17 cycles, would drop to a mere 8500 and across Canada, to 63,000. Looking at deaths, 11, 265 deaths have been attributed to Covid 19, yet according to many statistics 10% of deaths can only be attributed directly TO Covid 19 with the remainder being linked with co-morbidities. A comparison of death rates across Canada shows that from January to September 2018, 2019 and 2020 are nearly identical in total numbers despite our ‘pandemic.’
Another suspicious fact is that Dr. Hinshaw stated recently that there have been NO cases of the Flu reported (Global News November 13, 2020). If this is a flu season, where are the sick people? Could they have been tagged as Covid patients?
On November 18, 2020 Dr. Roger Hodgkinson, Hodkinson, Chairman of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons committee in Ottawa, CEO of a large private medical laboratory in Edmonton, Alberta and Chairman of a Medical Biotechnology company that sells Covid 19 tests addressed Edmonton City Council and passionately chastised the government response to the ‘pandemic.’
The video can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEo3rnU12jw
“There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians. This is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspected public. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus. This is nothing more than a bad flu season. It’s politics playing medicine and that’s a very dangerous game. There is no action needed,” he said. “Masks are utterly useless!”
“Positive testing results do NOT indicate clinical infection. It is simply driving public hysteria and ALL testing should STOP immediately,” he added. “The scale of the response is utterly ridiculous…all kinds of business closures, suicides …. you’re being led down the garden path by the Health Minister of this province.”
There is another side to danger of PCR testing; fraud.
Reports of positive tests results have been reported with NO testing done by labs in Red Deer on patients who registered to test but left before any test could be performed. From anecdotal evidence, there are at least 4 cases the writer has heard of the week of November 15th! I can imagine that there Legally speaking, if 4 false cases have been reported in addition to a 20% accuracy rate, then the government response is incredibly over the top and lockdowns, mask bylaws and cohort regulations are unwarranted.
During an October 24, 2020 rally in Edmonton (a, retired Dr. Lorna Levesque called on provincial and federal politicians to let ‘teachers teach instead of playing doctor,’ and to ‘stop testing and give our rights and freedoms back.’
The video can be found at:
She also represented the Great Barrington Declaration (https://gbdeclaration.org/), signed by close to 50,000 doctors and 640,000 citizens which calls on governments to stop lockdowns and mandatory masks. A short summary of the declaration follows:
“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. “
“Why are my colleagues silent,” she asked. “When we took our Hippocratic Oath we swore to ‘do no harm,’ and yet here we are silent while our government mandate masks which are bacteria factories if not sterile and decrease oxygen into our lungs while increasing carbon dioxide. I am stunned by your silence!”
She also noted that ‘we cannot control the virus but Vitamin D helps build immunity just as Zinc does.’
The big question asked by citizens across Alberta is WHY are we using a flawed test procedure to decide the future of our economic, social and spiritual futures? Why do citizens have NO say in how we respond as a society?
In my November 18th piece, I answer that question. (https://www.todayville.com/the-dystopian-future-of-canada-part-i/)
“The pandemic gives us an opportunity to reshape society…” Justin Trudeau said in his UN speech.
Further information from Dr. Mullis is below: (language warning)
A late addition to this piece is the following letter from Dr. Stephen Malthouse to the BC Minister of Health, due to the length of the piece, I include a link but add this short excerpt:
“Why are you still using PCR testing? The Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Health in Ontario has publicly stated that the PCR test yields over 50% false positives. A New York Times investigative report found that PCR testing yields up to 90% false positives due to excessive amplification beyond the recommendations of the manufacturer. The PCR test was never designed, intended or validated to be used as a diagnostic tool. Even the Alberta Health Services COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group has stated “clinical sensitivity and specificity values have not been determined for lab developed RT-PCR testing in Canada”.8 Despite expert consensus, you continue to use this inappropriate and inaccurate test to report so-called “cases” and justify your decisions.9-18“
Footnotes in original letter.
https://www.pandemicdebate.com/post/letter-by-dr-stephen-malthouse-md-to-dr-bonnie-henry-b-c-provincial-health-officer
If you have any comments, please contact me through comments OR via email at [email protected]
Be awake, aware and alert for our enemy the devil seeks to destroy, deceive and create confusion….
Business
The Digital Services Tax Q&A: “It was going to be complicated and messy”

A tax expert on the departed Digital Services Tax, and the fiscal and policy holes it leaves behind
It’s fun, and fair, arguing whether Mark Carney “caved” in suspending the application of Canada’s Digital Services Tax to revive broader negotiations with the Trump administration. But I figure there are other dimensions to this issue besides tactics. So I got in touch with Allison Christians, a tax law professor at McGill University and the founding director of the Canadian Centre for Tax Policy.
In our talk, Christians discusses the policy landscape that led to the introduction of the DST; the pressure that contributed to its demise; and the ways other countries are addressing a central contradiction of the modern policy landscape: without some kind of digital tax, countries risk having to impose costs on their own digital industry that the overwhelmingly US-based multinationals can avoid.
I spoke to Christians on Friday. Her remarks are edited for length and clarity.
Paul Wells: I noticed in your social media that you express inordinate fondness for tax law.
Allison Christians: You will not find a more passionate adherent to the tax cult than me. Yes, I do. I love tax law. Of course I do. How could you not? How could you not love tax law?
PW: What’s to love about tax law?
Christians: Well, tax law is how we create our country. That’s how we build our society. That’s how we create the communities that we want to live in and the lifestyle that we want to share with our neighbours. That’s how: with tax law.
PW: I guess the goal [of tax policy] is to generate the largest amount of revenue with the smallest amount of grief? And to send social signals while you’re at it. Is that right?
Christians: I don’t think so. Tax is not about raising maximum revenue. Tax is about deciding what society you’re trying to build and what portions of that society need to be made public, and what can be left to private interests which then need to profit. So we have decided in Canada, as a country, that basic minimum healthcare cannot be a for-profit enterprise. It has to be a public enterprise in order to make sure that it works for everybody to a certain basic level. So tax is about making those decisions: are we going to privatize everything and everyone pays for their own health care, security, roads, insurance, fire department etc. And if they can’t pay, then too bad? Or are we going to have a certain minimum, and that minimum is going to be provided in a public way that harmonizes across the communities that we have. And that’s what tax is about. It’s not about extracting revenue at all. It’s about creating revenue. It’s about creating a market. It’s about investing in a community. So I just object to the whole idea that tax is about extracting something from me, because what tax is doing is creating a market for me to be able to thrive. Not just me, but all of my neighbours, as well.
PW: Let’s jump forward to the events of the past couple weeks. Were you surprised when the Prime Minister suspended the Digital Services Tax?
Christians: I think “surprise” is probably too strong of a word, because nothing any political leader does to cope with the volatility of the United States would surprise me. We are dealing with a major threat, a threat that is threatening to annex us, to take our resources, to take our sovereignty, to take our communities and rip them apart and turn them into a different way of being. And that’s a serious threat. So nothing would surprise me in response to that. Disappointed, of course. But not disappointed in our Canadian response. More disappointed in the juggernaut that Trump has been allowed to become by his base, and that they’re pulling the rug out from under everyone that’s cooperated with the US agenda for decades, including us.
PW: What’s your best understanding of what the Digital Services Tax was designed to accomplish? And is it unusual as taxes go?
Christians: So to understand this, you really have to be a policy wonk, which isn’t much fun. So I’m gonna give you an example that might make it clear from the perspective of Canada. Why we might have a Digital Service Tax or might want something like it.
I want to preface this by saying that the Digital Service Tax is by no means the only way to do the underlying things we want to accomplish. Certainly other countries have been collecting DSTs and have been collecting billions of dollars, and US companies have had reserves for paying that Digital Service Tax. So we just left money on the table. But let me try to explain why we want to do the thing without getting too “tax nerdy” on you.
So I’m sure you can come up with the one Canadian company that’s streaming content on television or on digital devices.
PW: Crave?
Christians: Yeah, that’s the one. Crave is owned by Bell Media and is a Canadian company. And Crave pays taxes in Canada. Crave has to compete against Netflix, which does not have to pay tax in Canada. Netflix just simply doesn’t have to pay the same way that Crave does unless we force them to pay. Crave has to compete with US and foreign content streamers. We may get to a point where we can get Netflix to collect some sales tax on the GST, for example. But if Netflix itself stays out of Canada, physically, but it’s still getting all those customers that otherwise Crave would have access to, then Crave is at a structural disadvantage.
Now tell me which Canadian provider competes with Google.
PW: I can’t think of one.
Christians: Exactly. There isn’t one. How are we supposed to get a homegrown competitor when our competition simply does not pay taxes, and any one we would grow here in Canada has to pay tax here? So we have to understand the Digital Service Tax as simply our response to the fact that we normally do not tax a company unless they are physically located in Canada. But now we’ve got to go into this digital space and say: you’re still here, even if we can’t see you and talk to you, you’re still here. You’re doing something in our market. And that’s what the Digital Service Tax was trying to deal with.
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PW: Now, how are companies likely to respond to this Digital Services Tax? It seems to me the likeliest outcome would be that they would pass those costs on to their customers.
Christians: Yes, that is what companies have said they would do. Google talked about passing those costs on to the customers. And their customers obviously are advertisers. I want to point out that advertisers in Canada used to advertise in local newspapers and media. Now they advertise on Facebook, owned by an American-headquartered Company, Meta. Right now, they advertise on those foreign platforms, so we don’t have those advertising dollars here. Advertisers might have had to pay the Digital Service Tax if Google, or whoever, had passed it on to them. I think it’s fair to say, that Canadians advertising on those foreign platforms would have faced a gross-up to cover that tax.
PW: So, the net effect is that it just becomes more expensive for Canadian consumers. I’ve seen it argued that all this tax would have succeeded in doing is making Netflix more expensive.
Christians: Okay, that’s possible. I mean, that assumes the supply is totally elastic: you can increase the price of Netflix, and people will still pay it indefinitely. Right? So that’s the assumption in the short term. But the long-term assumption is that Crave becomes more competitive — because its competitors are paying the same tax that it is paying. The Crave subscription price may or may not respond, but if you put pressure on the foreign service providers in the same manner that’s on the Canadian providers, it might cost more, but we’re also getting the tax.
PW: I believe the Prime Minister, in an interview with the CBC said that he was thinking of getting rid of this thing, anyway. [The quote I’m reaching for here is: “Look, what we did this week is something that I think we were going to do anyways, in the end, for the deal.” At 1:07 in this video. — pw] Why do you think he would have been leaning in that direction? And do you think that absent a Truth Social post by President Trump, he actually would have gotten rid of the thing?
Christians: I can’t speculate too much about the politics of this, because I’m not talking to many of the people that make policy, but I know the complaints about the DST, and I don’t dispute them. It was going to be a complicated tax to collect and it was going to be messy in terms of compliance. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the tax and I know there’s always an enormous amount of pressure to reduce all taxes. There’s always going to be that segment of society that sees taxes being thrown down the drain and not as an investment in the society that we want to live in.
American companies are famous for investing their money on lobbying and not in taxes. They spend their money convincing us that it would be bad for us to tax them, and they can spend a much smaller percentage of their money on lobbying and get us to believe that narrative. And the narrative is that somehow, if we tax Google, Google will go away and we won’t be able to use it. That Google won’t innovate. It’s nonsense, but it’s a story that resonates nonetheless. Was Prime Minister Carney pressured to get rid of the DST? Undoubtedly. And maybe he personally thinks there’s a better way to tax these companies than with an excise tax. I don’t fault him for thinking that. I have even written that there are better ways for Canada to collect this tax than the Digital Services Tax.
PW: I’m going to want you to tell me about these other ways. But I assume that if a Canadian government attempts any of these other ways, then the companies we’re talking about know that all they have to do is hit the Trump button and the pressure will be right back on.
Christians: That’s correct. There are a couple of [alternatives to the DST]. We could, like some other countries have done, redefine the types of income that we subject to withholding taxes in Canada. It’s a complicated technical idea, but basically any payments that go from our advertisers to Google, we could impose a withholding tax simply by expanding a couple of definitions in the Income Tax Act that would then carry over into our treaty. Now, people will push back on that, and say that you’re changing a deal, and people will object to that. And we can have an argument about that, but that possibility exists. That withholding tax is the most straightforward way to do this and we should probably already be thinking about it.
Another one that’s kind of fun, which I really enjoyed learning about when I came to Canada, is Section 19 in the Income Tax Act. So, Canadian advertisers are paying Google now, instead of a Canadian newspaper. Well, Section 19 basically says that whenever someone makes a payment for advertising to a foreign, non-Canadian media, that payment’s not deductible.
Now that provision seems to violate Free Trade rules because it changes, depending on who you make the payment to. But it’s a provision in law. The US objected to it when we adopted it by imposing a reciprocal tax on US advertisers paying Canadian outlets, which doesn’t seem to bother anybody.
PW: But the application of that will be very asymmetrical, right?
Christians: Yes, for sure. And I’ll tell you what the Canadian media noticed when we started paying for digital newspapers online: that they’re not subject to Section 19 — only print and traditional media are subject to this denial of deduction — and Canadian media advocated for this denial of deduction for online publications as well.
All you have to do is look at the wording of Section 19 — and you don’t even have to change the words — and all of a sudden all those payments to Google are not deductible. But if the payments were to Crave, they would be deductible, and if they are to the Globe and Mail, or other Canadian companies, they would be deductible. That is a different kind of advantage for the Canadian competitor that’s a little less susceptible to Trump’s understanding, and a little less susceptible to the politics that surround the Digital Services Tax. But it’s technical. You have to explain it to people, and they don’t believe you. It’s hard to understand it.
PW: Theoretically a two-time central-bank governor could wrap his head around it.
Christians: Yes, I think he could fully understand it, for sure. You’re absolutely right. Will he want to do it, though? I just don’t know.
PW: You said that there are other jurisdictions that continue, today, to successfully tax the web giants. Who are you thinking of?
Christians: Well, Austria’s been doing the Digital Service Tax since the beginning. The UK has the Diverted Profits Tax that they’ve been using. Australia has one that’s been enforced. Austria stands out because I think it was 2017, in Trump’s 1st term, and it was part of a group that Trump threatened to retaliate against, but they just quietly kept going and they’re still collecting it. Part of the narrative is that we, Canada, came too late to the DST party. We just weren’t part of that initial negotiation. We came in too late, and then it was too obvious, and people were able to isolate us from the pack.
PW: My understanding is we’re looking at a hypothetical $7.2 billion in revenue over 5 years. And that represents a shortfall that’s going to have to be found either in other revenue sources or in spending cuts, or in greater debt. Aside from the DST, do you think Canada could use a general overhaul of its tax code?
Christians: Always. Yes, absolutely! Taxes are funny, right? Because they come into every single political battle, and what ends up happening is that politicians treat the Tax Act and the tax system as a present-giving machinery, and not as a clear policy deliverance system.
I am, every day, surprised at how complicated the Canadian tax system is. It’s way too complicated. You can’t even fill out your own tax return in this country. You’re going to make mistakes because it’s just too ridiculously written. It’s too confusing. It’s too messy. So it’s time to take another look. But you need a commission [like the 1962 Carter royal commission on taxation]. You need to be bipartisan. You need to spend money on that. You need to think that the things that you do have long-term effects, and this takes political courage. And basically it requires upsetting a bunch of people and resetting things, and we just might not be at the right time politically to be doing that because people feel vulnerable to volatility from abroad. So it may not be the time to push that.
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