Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Adam Fair, and I am the vice-president of strategy and development at Prosper Canada, a national charity driving bold change that enables more people to prosper. For almost 20 years, I've worked alongside community organizations that are helping people improve their financial security.
We welcome the government's commitment to ensuring that Canadians receive all the benefits they're entitled to. That goal must guide the automatic tax filing design.
Prosper Canada leads Resilient Futures, a federally funded, $60-million initiative working with 97 community-based organizations from coast to coast to coast. In its 15-month initial start, the program reached over 500,000 Canadians with low incomes and helped participants access over $600 million in additional income through tax filings, benefits navigation and financial counselling. It's becoming a Canadian success story of government and community collaboration. Our partners see every day where the system works, where it fails and what those failures cost people.
I want to ground my remarks today in a personal story. My dad trained as an engineer at the University of Toronto and ran a small business. Today, he lives alone in a small Toronto apartment on a low retirement income and faces mental health challenges. Memory difficulties and limited digital literacy make filing taxes very difficult. Questions about his past marital status have made maintaining his benefits a reoccurring struggle. He depends on old age security and the guaranteed income supplement. He worked most of his life, but now he worries about food and housing. Navigating these systems is one of his greatest stresses, and I worry about his health. I've been fighting alongside him. Even with that support, it's exhausting.
Our partners across the country are helping people through the very same struggles every day. These challenges are widespread. One in five Canadians on low income is not filing. According to Statistics Canada, 62% of low-income families have named income supports as their main source of income. Prosper Canada strongly supports SimpleFile, prefilled returns and deemed filing. Some people cannot reliably complete a simplified process or approve a prefilled return, so deemed filing is essential to reaching them. Automatic filing is a critical step forward, but its design and administration will determine whether it removes barriers or unintentionally creates new ones.
We ask the committee to address four priorities.
First, enable ongoing eligibility. Remove the requirement to have missed a return in the preceding three years. People should not lose this service, because it has successfully helped them to file. For someone like my father, predictable annual support is essential.
Second, protect timely access to benefits. The proposed timetable risks payment interruptions. Notices, review periods and filing must happen early enough to protect continuity. Receiving money months later does not undo the hardship of missed groceries or rent today.
Third, make help and correction accessible. Do not assume everyone can access their CRA My Account. Give participants and authorized support like community representatives direct channels to CRA to correct information and resolve problems quickly. Protect accuracy without requiring an active response from anyone, including those least able to respond.
Fourth, expand eligibility and work with provinces and territories. With appropriate consent and privacy protection, use information that governments already collect to identify what people are missing out on, establish eligibility and support filing. This can connect people to both federal and provincial benefits.
Community organizations must be partners through this work. Continued investment in volunteer tax clinics and year-round financial help, such as our financial resilience partners, are critical. Equip frontline staff with training, reliable information and effective routes to resolve problems on behalf of struggling Canadians. There's no single solution. Success requires sustained collaboration among government and community organizations, alongside innovation, monitoring and improvement.
CRA should report on benefits received, payment continuity, errors and who remains excluded, and then work with partners to close that gap. For my father, success means less fear of losing the income he relies on. When the system works together, the difference is profound: food on the table, secure housing, and relief from constant stress. Let us deliver the benefits Canadians are entitled to consistently and with dignity.
Thank you.