Feature interviews, partnership announcements, publication releases, and milestones from INCLUSIECON's research on Canada's tax-and-transfer system. Where our work meets public conversation.
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Selvia Arshad, Gillian Petit, and Lindsay M. Tedds introduce a welfare-based way to judge tax administration reform, scoring changes on fiscal efficiency, distributional equity, and legitimacy rather than cost and yield alone. Applied to the Automatic Federal Benefits initiative, the framework shows how much design quality matters: a well-designed rollout delivers social returns far above a dollar per dollar spent, while a poorly designed one turns negative even as cost-per-return metrics call it efficient.
Read the full announcement →Gillian Petit, Lindsay M. Tedds, and Jennifer Robson argue that the personal income tax return has become shared public infrastructure, the gateway through which every order of government verifies eligibility for income-tested programs, with more than 100 programs relying on CRA income verification alone. Nobody is accountable for keeping that gateway working. They propose a tax-filing and benefit access accord covering filing supports, consent-based two-way data protocols, and integrated service design.
Read the full announcement →With about 46,000 Albertans moved from AISH onto the new ADAP program, Gillian Petit joined CBC’s province-wide open-line program on July 2, 2026 to discuss how the transition is landing on people with disabilities. She set out the financial mechanics of the reform, from the $200 benefit reduction that follows the transition period to the earnings a client would need to be no worse off, and connected the on-air stories to INCLUSIECON’s ongoing longitudinal study of economic well-being through the rollout.
Read the full announcement →Authored by Gillian Petit with Lindsay M. Tedds as principal investigator, this first round of a longitudinal panel documents the circumstances of 527 working-age Albertans before the Alberta Disability Assistance Program (ADAP) launches July 2, 2026. Three in four respondents live below the low-income line, the typical respondent cannot afford five or more everyday essentials, and hardship deepens with disability severity and is sharpest among AISH recipients. Because it was fielded before the reform, it sets the reference point against which ADAP’s effects will be measured.
Read the full announcement →The first publication from the two-year Maytree–INCLUSIECON partnership introduces the Marginal Value of Public Funds (MVPF), a tool that measures what public spending is actually worth to the people it serves, not just what it costs. Written by Selvia Arshad, Gillian Petit, and Lindsay M. Tedds, the brief shows how MVPF brings cost and value onto the same footing, makes distribution visible, and gives both governments and advocates a common language for comparing very different programs.
Read the full announcement →Gillian Petit's new Canadian Tax Observatory report documents how Canada's Disability Tax Credit — originally a tax-equity measure — has been retrofitted into the gateway certification for at least 13 federal disability supports, including the Canada Disability Benefit. The report finds that 84 percent of working-age Canadians with disabilities lack DTC certification, identifies four broken links in the certification pipeline, and sets out concrete reforms.
Read the full announcement →Maytree has released an in-depth conversation with Selvia Arshad on the Marginal Value of Public Funds framework — why Canada currently evaluates social programs by their price tag alone, and what a value-based measure of public spending makes visible. The interview situates MVPF in a fiscal moment where social programs are too often framed as costs to cut, and reframes them as investments that strengthen public finances over time.
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