"Claim your climate action incentive!"

Shortly after I did my taxes this year, I got a flyer in the mail saying "Claim your climate action incentive!"

"Aw, crap!" I thought, "I forgot to do that!"

So I went back and pulled up my tax files in anticipation of having to figure out how to get a do-over . . . and I discovered that the tax software had already claimed it for me and the extra money was already included in my refund!

This makes me think the marketing encouraging you to claim your incentive, as though some action is required on your part, is perhaps not the best marketing strategy. 

Maybe they should say "Look for your climate action incentive rebate on line 449!"  If all you have to do is nothing, that's a good marketing point, and making it sound like some action is required when no action is in fact required makes the whole thing sound less beneficial than it actually is.

If it turns out you actually have do something if you're filling out your taxes by hand on paper, they should enclose a thing with your T1 form (or whatever it's called nowadays - I haven't done my taxes on paper since the 90s) that says "Make sure to fill out Schedule 14 to get your climate action incentive!"  Or just put it on the T1 form where you fill in your name and address and everything.

If I were a government person in charge of promoting this, I'd also instruct CRA to verify every return to make sure everyone has claimed their climate action incentive. (Q: When would they fit this in? A: In the course of whatever magic they do between receiving your return and sending out your Notice of Assessment. A computer algorithm could surely do it.)

That way, anyone who does end up somehow filing their return without claiming their climate action incentive would get some surprise bonus extra money. And that would be way better marketing than instructing people to carry out a task that's difficult to find because it doesn't actually need to be carried out.