Posts falsely claim Canada implemented executive's 'exit tax' suggestion

Published on April 24, 2026 at 23:11
2 min read
By AFP Canada

Social media posts are claiming Canada is going to begin charging large sums of money to people leaving the country for work in the United States, after the idea was proposed during the ruling Liberal Party's April 2026 convention. There is no evidence for this; the notion was merely floated by a panelist who is not a member of the government, and the prime minister's office said no such fee was in place.

"Canada is going to charge a half a million dollar exit tax," says the speaker in an April 14, 2026 Facebook video, whose account promotes his lifestyle as a Canadian living abroad.

Similar claims on TikTok, X and Facebook warned that a fee for Canadian citizens leaving the country to work in the United States was being imminently imposed, or had already been.

One post featured Canadian anti-vaccine activist Chris Saccoccia, who is also known as Chris Sky and has previously spread health misinformation. Others shared an AI-generated clip depicting a worker getting stopped at the border for not paying a steep fee.

Screenshot to a Facebook post taken April 24, 2026

Screenshot of an X post taken April 23, 2026

But a spokesperson for Prime Minister Mark Carney's office told AFP in an April 21 email that no such tax was in place.

The "exit tax" claims appear to trace to an April 10 Canadian economy panel at the Liberal Party Convention in Montreal. Some of the misleading posts included a clip from the event of Patrick Pichette, former chief financial officer at Google (archived here and here).

In the footage, Pichette, who is from Montreal, discussed how he moved to the United States to work for Microsoft after studying in Canada. He proposed enticing Canadian talent to stay in the country by closing the professional visa program he used, or by asking exiting workers to pay back the cost of their government-funded education (archived here and here).

"Make them pay their half a million if they leave, I'm okay with that," he said, noting that he estimated his studies cost CA $500,000 (US $365,789).

"You want to go to the US, give me back my money," he argued.

The other three members of the panel were ministers in the Liberal government. After Pichette's comments, the speakers returned to discussing how to attract workers to Canada, and the suggestion of an exit fee was not brought up again.

Several editorials, as well as the leader of the opposition Conservatives, Pierre Poilievre, denounced Pichette's proposal at the time (archived here).

AFP found no evidence that the Canadian government was working to implement an exit tax after it was discussed at the Liberal convention.

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.

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