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There are, perhaps, some analogs in this story with Harper, who went on Twitter Wednesday night and told Canadians that he was opposed to any efforts to tax Netflix.

“Some politicians want to tax digital streaming services like Netflix and YouTube. Some have even called on us to introduce a Netflix tax,” he said in a video, and note the cagey transition here, “Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair have left the door wide open to doing just that. I’m 100 per cent against a Netflix tax, always have been, always will be.”

I love movies and TV shows. I'm 100% against a #Netflix tax. Always have been, always will be #NoNetflixTax #elxn42 https://t.co/oUYgTkXH3q — Stephen Harper (@pmharper) August 5, 2015

Yet only one federal political party has seriously trial ballooned the idea of a tax on Netflix and it wasn’t Justin Trudeau’s Liberals or Thomas Mulcair’s NDP.

Back in 2014, the federal budget quietly sought consultations on whether to levy sales taxes on digital downloads. Currently, Canadian enterprises that run streaming services, such as Shomi, have to charge consumers sales tax, while larger multinational firms, like Netflix, do not. Some have argued that this practice gives Netflix an unfair advantage over home-grown alternatives.

And they’re correct. The problem is that, as a Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) submission to the CRTC pointed out at the time, multinational firms that operate online have the luxury of re-locating — making tax compliance difficult, if not impossible, in the long run. In the end, the whole idea was kiboshed. Shomi is subject to sales taxes; Netflix is not.

So it could be argued that it was actually the Conservatives themselves who floated the idea of a Netflix tax. Yet they’re unlikely to concede that point. Most proponents of a “Netflix Tax” argue that the proceeds should go to fund Canadian content, much as the levies charged to traditional media companies do. Some provinces — notably, Ontario — have seriously considered doing just that.