Reduce the federal civil service by 15% over four years through attrition. Auto-enrol every eligible Canadian in every federal benefit they qualify for. Cut tax credits from 400+ to fewer than 50.
Every rule in the federal tax code started as a response to something real. The caregiver credit exists because unpaid caregiving is genuinely hard and genuinely goes uncompensated. The Canada Workers Benefit exists because working poverty is real. The Disability Tax Credit exists because disability creates costs that most people never have to think about. Each rule, at the moment it was written, was an act of recognition — an acknowledgement that something wasn't working and someone deserved better.
The problem is that rules accumulate. Governments add them because announcing a new benefit is politically visible. Governments almost never remove them because removing a benefit is politically painful — even when the benefit has been superseded, or is so poorly designed that almost nobody claims it. So the code grows. Every budget adds layers. Every layer adds complexity. And complexity, it turns out, is not neutral. Complexity is a tax — and like most taxes, it falls hardest on the people least able to pay it.
The person who can't afford an accountant files a simple return and leaves money on the table. The person who can afford one finds everything they're owed and more. The tax system, designed in theory to redistribute from those with more to those with less, ends up in practice redistributing from the poor and confused to the wealthy and well-advised. Not through malice. Through accumulation. Through the slow, bureaucratic process of good intentions hardening into obstruction.
So ask yourself: does a system with 400 credits, deductions, and benefit programs — a system so complex that the government's own agency acknowledges hundreds of millions of dollars go unclaimed every year by people who are legally entitled to them — does that system represent justice? Or does it reveal the absence of it? We think the answer is obvious. And we think the Canadians who never claimed what they were owed — who worked the 42-step form and gave up, or never knew the form existed — deserve a government honest enough to admit it.
The federal government administers over 400 tax credits, deductions, and benefit programs. Every budget adds more. Few are ever removed. The result is a system so layered that the people it was designed to help — low-income Canadians, caregivers, people with disabilities — can no longer access it without help that costs money they don't have.
In 2017, the government consolidated three separate caregiver credits — the Infirm Dependant Credit, the Caregiver Credit, and the Family Caregiver Tax Credit — into one. They called it simplification. But the new Canada Caregiver Credit still has its own phase-in thresholds, its own phase-out rates, and its own eligibility conditions that vary by whether the dependant lives with the claimant. The complexity didn't shrink. It reorganised.
The Canada Workers Benefit pays up to $1,633 to single low-income workers. Claiming it requires completing Schedule 6 — a 42-step process. Since 2009, consistently only 85% of eligible Canadians have claimed it. In 2017 alone, $175 million went unclaimed by 240,000 eligible workers. Not because they didn't need the money. Because the government made getting it their problem to solve.
This is not incompetence. It is the predictable result of a government that measures success by the number of programs it announces, not by the number of Canadians who actually benefit from them. Every credit that exists on paper but goes unclaimed is a promise the government made and didn't keep.
Enter your profile to see which federal benefits you likely qualify for and how much complexity stands between you and your money.
Amounts are estimates based on 2025 CRA published rates. Actual entitlements depend on individual circumstances. Source: Canada Revenue Agency; Government of Canada Tax Measures: Supplementary Information 2017.
Auto-enrol every eligible Canadian in every benefit they qualify for. The CRA already has the income data, family status, and disability information it needs to determine eligibility for most federal benefits. We would require the CRA to calculate and issue every benefit automatically when a Canadian files their taxes — no separate forms, no Schedule 6, no missed credits. The money arrives because you filed. Full stop.
Reduce the federal public service by 15% over four years through attrition. The federal public service grew by over 40% between 2015 and 2024 with no measurable improvement in service delivery times. We would implement a hiring freeze with exceptions for frontline health, border, and veterans services, and not replace departures in administrative and policy roles until the headcount reaches pre-2015 levels. This is not about firing people — it is about not replacing roles that should not have been created.
Consolidate tax credits from 400+ to fewer than 50. Every existing credit would be reviewed against one question: does this benefit actually reach the people it was designed for? Credits with take-up rates below 70% would be redesigned as automatic payments or folded into the CWB. Credits that exist primarily for lobbying reasons — that benefit specific industries rather than ordinary Canadians — would be eliminated. The goal is a tax return that a Canadian earning under $60,000 can complete in 15 minutes without software.
Publish a full departmental headcount breakdown before every election. Canadians cannot hold government accountable for its size if they cannot see its size. We would legislate annual publication of headcount, salary bands, and program delivery metrics for every federal department — not buried in supplementary estimates, but on a public dashboard anyone can read.
A 15% reduction in the federal public service through attrition — approximately 45,000 positions — saves an estimated $4.5 to $6 billion annually in salary and benefits at current average compensation levels. Auto-enrolment in benefits costs approximately $30 million in one-time CRA systems investment. The net fiscal position improves significantly within three years.
15% public service reduction saves ~$4.5–6B/yr. Auto-enrolment systems: ~$30M one-time. Net fiscal improvement within 3 years.