Three (smaller) budget stories we’re keeping an eye on

Federal budget 2024 was fairly maximalist, with some big, headline-grabbing initiatives. When a budget has a lot of new pieces to showcase, important and interesting changes can get buried beneath the headlines.

Here are three smaller stories in Budget 2024 that we’ll be watching:

1. There are some promising initiatives to actually make it easier to access programs and services

At Springboard, we’re a bit obsessed with reducing “time taxes” and administrative burdens that stand between people and the services and benefits they need. So we’re keeping an eye on four initiatives that could make a difference:

• The government is going to design a way to automatically open Registered Education Savings Plan accounts for children by the time they turn four to make sure they get the Canada Learning Bond payments they are due. This picks up longstanding work by Jennifer Robson and addresses a big take-up gap.
• The Canada Revenue Agency will be piloting new automatic tax filing services for Canadians who don’t currently file their taxes, starting this summer. They can and should learn from the US Direct File Pilot that ran this tax season and rapidly adjusted and scaled based on user feedback.
• The budget acknowledged the administrative burden of getting a Disability Tax Credit certificate, which will be necessary to access the new Canada Disability Benefit, and many other programs. In addition to committing funding to pay for medical forms, the government promised to work with people with disabilities to address these burdens.
• There’s funding for Employment and Social Development Canada to develop a new single sign-on for government websites — replacing up to 60 (!) different accounts today- and build a new user-friendly platform for accessing Old Age Security and Employment Insurance.

2. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada is the busiest agency you’ve probably never heard of

• The low-profile agency founded in 2001 will be taking the lead on “consumer-driven banking” (open banking) implementation, and on negotiating with banks for new account structures on behalf of consumers. Elsewhere in the financial consumer review, the Department of Finance will be looking at the federal deposit insurance framework, likely prompted by the market jitters after prominent US bank failures (especially Silicon Valley Bank) in 2023.

3. We’re available to serve on the National Space Council

• Most of us don’t have what it takes to become astronauts, but maybe some of us can still be wonks in space (policy): “the new National Space Council will enable the level of collaboration required to secure Canada’s future as a leader in the global space race, addressing cross-cutting issues that span commercial, civil, and defence domains.”