Current Status
Status: Not Started More than a year into Mark Carney's tenure as prime minister, his government has yet to take any concrete steps to leverage technology at the Canada Revenue Agency for combating tax evasion, closing loopholes or bolstering enforcement.
Background
Tax evasion has long plagued Canada's fiscal system, draining billions from public coffers and undermining trust in government institutions. During the 2025 federal election campaign, Mark Carney positioned this promise as a cornerstone of his platform to ensure fairness, pledging to harness advanced technology at the Canada Revenue Agency to target evaders more effectively, seal off exploitable gaps in the tax code and ramp up overall enforcement mechanisms. Fulfilling it would require deploying specific tech tools for detection and prosecution, enacting legislative or regulatory changes to address loopholes and implementing measurable improvements in CRA's enforcement capabilities, all under Carney's administration. Previous governments, including Justin Trudeau's Liberals, had initiated some anti-evasion measures, such as enhanced reporting rules and budget allocations for CRA audits, but those efforts stalled amid political transitions and never fully addressed the technological leverage Carney emphasized.
Evidence
As of March 26, 2026, no documented actions by the Carney government appear in available records to advance this promise. Public sources from the pre-election period, such as a May 2025 Globe and Mail report, noted that Carney's administration delayed tabling a 2025 federal budget until the fall, leaving legacy tax proposals from the Trudeau era in limbo [4]. That report highlighted uncertainty around reintroducing draft legislation for trust reporting and alternative minimum tax changes, but no follow-up confirms any Carney-led initiatives on technology integration at the CRA. Earlier departmental reports, like FINTRAC's 2022-23 results, detailed financial intelligence disclosures under the previous government, but these predate Carney's swearing-in and do not reflect his administration's work [1]. Similarly, a 2024 tax law analysis discussed proposed CRA tools for debt avoidance, yet this stemmed from the Trudeau government's Budget 2024 and saw no evident extension or expansion under Carney [7]. A Liberal campaign document from April 2025 projected revenue from increased penalties, tying into plans for CRA technology upgrades, but this was pre-election rhetoric without post-election execution [8]. No official records or media accounts detail Carney government contracts, pilots or deployments of tech for tax evasion detection, loophole fixes or enforcement strengthening since the 2025 election.
Assessment
Mark Carney's government has so far failed to deliver on its campaign commitment to leverage technology at the Canada Revenue Agency, with no tangible progress evident in identifying and prosecuting tax evasion, fixing loopholes or strengthening enforcement. The absence of any concrete actions—such as new tech implementations, regulatory amendments or enforcement programs initiated after Carney took office—leaves the promise untouched, even as the fiscal year advances into 2026. This stagnation contrasts with the urgency Carney expressed during the campaign, and without swift movement, it risks eroding public confidence in his administration's ability to tackle systemic tax issues.