OTTAWA–The Liberals are proposing a new tax on tech and internet giants that sell online advertising or profit from Canadians’ data, a measure the party expects to bring in more than $2.5 billion over four years.

The Liberals’ re-election platform, released Sunday, includes a new tax on multinational tech giants operating in Canada. Tech giants would be taxed three per cent of their revenue generated in Canada from the sales of online advertising or other profits related to Canadian user data.

“Today’s economy is more digital and international than ever before — so our tax system must keep up,” the proposal reads.

“We will work with international partners to ensure that global technology giants pay corporate taxes in the country where they generate their revenue.”

The tech giant tax is a stopgap measure, the Liberals suggest, until a consensus is reached by the international community on how national governments tax and regulate multinational internet companies.

The tax would apply to companies with at least $1 billion in global revenues per year, and Canadian revenues of at least $40 million annually. The usual suspects like Facebook and Google — which collected 70 per cent of all online advertising revenues in Canada in 2015, according to a recent Public Policy Forum study — would be included.

According to the Liberals’ projections, the tax would bring in $540 million next year. Over the party’s four-year projection, the party expects the tax would generate $2.53 billion in government revenue. However, the independent Parliamentary Budget Office assessed there was a high degree of uncertainty around the projections — and companies may take action to avoid paying more taxes.

Even if the expected revenues do materialize, they would be a drop in the bucket in a platform that proposes almost $57 billion in new spending over the next four years. But it is a significant development in the relationship between the Canadian government and global tech giants.

The Liberals have for years suggested a willingness to bring in new regulations to address tech companies’ operations in Canada. In May, the Liberals released a “digital charter” that fell short of such regulation, but provided a statement of principles for how their government expected tech giants to handle Canadians’ personal information.

“Today, a limited number of very large companies hold an extraordinary amount of personal data about Canadians,” the platform reads.

“This can help to make things like online shopping and connecting with family and friends easier and more convenient, but the lack of regulation for online platforms like Facebook and Google — as well as companies that process large amounts of data, like banks and credit card companies — also means that people have less control over their personal information.”

The platform also commits a re-elected Liberal government with moving forward with “new regulations for large digital companies” — although its silent on what, exactly, those new regulations would entail — along with the creation of a “data commissioner” to oversee that process.

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