Unfortunately, the solutions are fairly easy but it would be political suicide for anyone who would even dare to actually propose anything that would ruffle the feathers of the vested interests, the powerful or (God forbid /s) the wealthiest 10%, or the "untouchable" 0.1%.
On one side Simplify/Regularize the tax code by eliminating all ambiguity :
- by removing exceptions and loopholes for corporation and individuals (it only helps the wealthy with "top gun" accountants to "legally" avoid/reduce taxes).
- pre-filled tax declaration should be expanded or made automatic for every individuals with simple tax situations (they should not be worrying about taxes and tax credits when their income in lower than a inflation indexed preset treshold)
- make everyone's tax information public or accessible for every citizens similar to Tax transparency in Finland (PDF) it helps prevent/detect/reduce social inequalities and keep every one accountable toward each others
- exclude tax filling softwares and companies whom have vested interest in making tax declarations as complex and as unintelligible as possible by lobbying government
- increase the progressive taxe rate for higher income brackets, add new higher brackets (over 60%) for yearly income over a million, over tens of millions, over hundreds of millions, etc…
- eliminate Religious Tax Exemptions as they have been [abused and misappropriated more often without any real public oversight] (https://centreforinquiry.ca/religious-institutions-and-your-tax-dollars/)
- increase financing and auditing of Canada Revenue Agency to help better pursue, prosecute and recover wealth hidden in tax Havens, or create a new separate branch of the CRA tasked exclusively to handle corporate tax shenanigans/evasion and deep pocketed individuals
On the other side, beyond the well meaning but hastily half-baked (I am unqualified to properly evaluate such plan) Canada’s Housing Action Plan, we should create a long term Strategic Urbanization and Cooperative Housing Fund somewhat akin to the Strategic Innovation Fund whereas :
- local-first sustainability, durability, climate change mitigation/adaptation and energy efficiency are prioritized and audited/inspected for renovations and all new future developments
- refrain housing from switching owners too frequently (control exaggerated speculation) or make public a historical record of all inspections reports, renovations, purchase price, owners and in case of an auction make the bidding process, name and amount of bidder transparent to all participants (better overall)
- limit to let's say 3 to 6 (anything beyond 10 becomes onerous) the numbers of residential building/house/condominium/apartment complex/senior housing/long-term care home a corporation, partnership or a individual can own/manage. 67000 homes owned and managed by a single entity is far beyond reasonable.
- favor and help fund Mass Timber projects instead of concrete construction, by using prefab Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Laminated Strand Lumber (LSL) for multistory residential habitation. By increasing Mass Timber adoption we help sequester more and more carbon into inert materials (although technically still combustible on the outermost layer).
- prioritize housing co-ops projects that aim to offer affordable housing similar to namely in British-Colombia or in Québec - Interloge (PDF)
- (not a immediate priority, but crucial for the future of Canada) help set up a publicly accessible, interoperable, provincially and municipally controlled and constantly evolving : 5 years/10 years/25 years/50 years/100 years/200 years development roadmaps of natural, public, private and industrial lands/sectors/infrastructures/housing. Doing so will ensure everyone is on the same page with what is happening and what are proposed to happen in their neighborhood within their and their childrens lifetime. Everyone, from scientists to farmers, from residents to international students, from local business owners to local homeless, should be able to submit justified concerns/updates/changes/refusals to any future proposals/projects. Likewise, project proponents should be able to convince, demonstrate, allay, include, update, justifiably dismiss or preallocate equitable compensation publicly. By the time the yearly roadmap is on its way, anything without consensus or majority approval should be reported into the future or rejected, thus no surprise should remain (excepting a archeological/historical discovery or unforeseen dangers/accidents during excavation/construction/renovation).
Well that became more of a long winded exasperation on my part...
But thank you for reading my probably pointless TedTalk®©™ 🤣
Henceforth, the building code shall make mandatory that every room be perfectly grounded Faraday cages (/s).
Still, imagine lethal drones integrated with that technology (of course, they already have infrared, maybe even some adequate wavelength of X-rays).
Nevertheless, pretty cool to see how far we can take preexisting technology with the help of some deep learning layers.