26 multinationals shifted $45B in profits out of Canada since 2018, tax fairness group estimates

Twenty-six multinational corporations operating in Canada booked about $45 billion less profit here since 2018 than their Canadian workforces and assets would suggest, according to a new report from Canadians for Tax Fairness. Over the same period they booked roughly $89 billion more than expected in tax havens. The advocacy group estimates that if those companies had reported profits where their real operations are, Canada could have collected close to $12 billion more in corporate income tax.

The report, "What they do in the shadows," was released on Nov. 9. It was written by economist Silas Xuereb of Canadians for Tax Fairness and Émile Brassard of Échec aux paradis fiscaux, a Quebec coalition of labour, student and community groups. It argues that the figures are only a glimpse of a larger problem that Canada's disclosure rules keep hidden.

Why only 26 companies

The European Union and Australia now require large multinationals to publish their revenue, profit, employees and taxes country by country. Canada does not. Companies already give this information to the Canada Revenue Agency confidentially, but the public never sees it.

To get around that, the authors used reports that some multinationals publish voluntarily, often under pressure from shareholders. They kept only companies that listed Canada separately and had at least $10 million in Canadian revenue, which left 115 company-years covering 26 firms between 2018 and 2025. Most are in mining or oil and gas. None is headquartered in the United States, and only one is headquartered in Canada. The authors acknowledge this is "a tiny fraction" of corporate activity in the country.

How the estimate works

The report compares where each company says it earned its profits with where its people and physical assets are. Half the "expected" profit in each country is assigned according to the company's share of employees there and half according to its share of tangible assets. The gap between reported and expected profit is treated as profit shifted in or out.

Canada already uses a similar formula, based on payroll and sales, to divide corporate profits among the provinces. That rule only applies to profit a company chooses to report in Canada in the first place.

By this measure, the 26 companies reported $23.4 billion in Canadian profit against about $68 billion expected. In the 15 jurisdictions the report counts as tax havens, they reported $134.4 billion against about $46 billion expected. The authors put the effective tax rate on profit booked in Canada at 32.2 per cent, compared with 10.5 per cent in the havens.

The authors stress that the estimates do not suggest any illegal behaviour. They also note that the measure is imperfect. A company building a mine that has not yet started producing, for example, will show a loss despite large assets, and the formula will count that as profit shifted out.

Five companies under the microscope

• Rio Tinto, the Australian mining giant that calls itself Canada's largest mining and metals company, has had about 26 per cent of its workforce in Canada but only 8 per cent of its profit there, according to the report. That works out to an estimated $23.8 billion shifted out of Canada over seven years, the largest gap in the sample. About two-thirds of its Canadian subsidiaries' revenue comes from sales to other Rio Tinto companies, and Canadian diamonds are sold on through a Belgian affiliate. The company reported $3.6 billion in profit in Singapore in 2024 and paid 3 per cent tax on it.
• Maersk, the Danish shipping company, paid effective tax rates of 0.4 per cent in Singapore and 1.2 per cent in Hong Kong, where the report says it booked roughly $3 billion more profit than expected in each. The authors attribute this mainly to where its ships are registered. Over three years it reported $14 million in Canadian profit against $65 million expected, and nearly as much profit in Bermuda, where it had one employee.
• Randstad and Adecco, two of the world's largest staffing firms, each reported more profit in tax havens than everywhere else combined. The report links this to group financing and management-service arrangements run through Switzerland, Singapore and Luxembourg.
• Anglo American was the exception, with an estimated $1.2 billion shifted into Canada. Nearly all of that came in 2022, when its Canadian entities reported $1.9 billion in profit on less than $300 million in revenue, and the company says it paid no Canadian tax that year because of past losses. The authors suggest the profit was moved in to use up losses from its Gahcho Kué diamond mine in the Northwest Territories, which has lost money in most years.

Global minimum tax "has not meaningfully changed" behaviour

The report is critical of the OECD's global minimum tax, which Canada adopted through the Global Minimum Tax Act. It notes that the Carney government agreed in 2025 to exempt U.S. corporations from the measure. In its own analysis of 2025 filings, the group says TSX 60 companies paid only $1.5 billion in minimum-tax top-ups. It also says those companies' effective tax rate fell to 21.2 per cent and their reported savings from lower foreign tax rates rose to $9.6 billion.

The authors make three recommendations:

• Require public country-by-country reporting, matching Australia's rules.
• Back the United Nations tax convention now being negotiated, which could allocate taxing rights according to where real economic activity happens.
• Don't wait for that process. Ottawa, or even individual provinces, could use a formula like the interprovincial one to decide how much of a multinational's profit is taxed in Canada.

Canadians for Tax Fairness is a non-profit group that advocates for more progressive taxation. The companies named in the report were not quoted in it.

Source: Silas Xuereb and Émile Brassard, "What they do in the shadows: Why Canada needs corporate tax transparency," Canadians for Tax Fairness and Échec aux paradis fiscaux, Nov. 9, 2026.