Dominic Cardy, interim leader of Canada’s newest federal party, on Wednesday advocated the biggest revision of the Income Tax Act in 60 years. Cardy’s Canadian Future Party is the 18th federal party registered with Elections Canada, per Blacklock's Reporter.“I promise we are going to be courageous,” Cardy, former New Brunswick education minister, told reporters. “We are coming to be competent and we are going to be evidence based."“This Party was created because Canadians asked for it.”The Party’s Interim Policy Framework promises to “deliver in 18 months a simplified tax code that would close loopholes.” Cardy’s draft platform document did not detail what loopholes the Party proposed to eliminate.“One of the great things about starting a new party is we can be very clear about our principles,” said Cardy. “We don’t have the baggage that some of the old parties have.”“We are going to offer a program that is going to have some fairly new ideas, different from the other parties, to change the country,” said Cardy. “If we are able to meet that, that’s fantastic. If the other parties take our policies, that’s great too. We are here to try and make as loud a noise as we can about sane, evidence-based decisions.”The current Income Tax Act runs to 3,435 pages and is rated so convoluted the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 2019 called it “painfully complex.” Parliament last undertook a comprehensive review of the Tax Act with the 1962 appointment of a Royal Commission on Taxation. The Commission’s 1966 final report concluded the system “needlessly distorts the distribution of productive goods and services” and “fails to compensate where it could.”Groups including the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Senate Banking Committee and Senate National Finance Committee have appealed for a simplified tax code. “Our tax system has become a ponderous, unwieldy monster,” Sen.Elizabeth Marshall, a former provincial auditor, earlier told reporters.“Tax policy is not just about governments’ hands in our pockets,” said Marshall. “It affects countless aspects of our lives.”The National Finance Committee in a 2017 report recommended cabinet review and simplify the Act. “Our committee firmly believes it is time to undertake this difficult task,” said Marshall. The last tax review took four years to complete.Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre on June 11 said any future Conservative cabinet would undertake a review.“Within 60 days of becoming prime minister, my government will name a tax reform task force of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers and workers but no lobbyists,” Poilievre told the Commons.
