Once Stephen Harper is sworn in on Monday, he will be in a position to deliver much-needed reform in Ottawa.
Even with only a minority of seats in the House of Commons, Mr. Harper has an opportunity to transform federal-provincial relations, modernize Ottawa's democratic institutions, and change the way tax dollars are spent and collected. As prime minister, he can ensure the priorities of taxpayers are those of the federal government's.
There is much to be done. To track Mr. Harper's progress, my organization, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, has sketched out the following priorities.

• First, Mr. Harper should limit his Cabinet to 24 members and not overload the executive with an excessive number of parliamentary secretaries.
  
• The Cabinet's first task will be determining what to do with Justice John Gomery's accountability recommendations. More transparency is the top issue for Canadians. The Gomery reforms should be quickly passed into law along with the Conservatives' own Federal Accountability Act.
  
• An additional step to undo Ottawa's culture of entitlement is reducing pension and severance entitlements paid to Members of Parliament so they are in line with public expectations.
  
• Next up is the 2006 budget. Enacting a legislated debt repayment schedule, and eliminating the over-taxation fuelling Ottawa's multi-year, multi-billion dollar surpluses will be welcomed by taxpayers.
  
• As promised, the new government should lower the GST. It should also reduce Employment Insurance tax premiums and preserve the Liberal's personal income tax reduction. The Conservatives say they plan to increase the lowest income tax rate from 15% to 16%. Such a change will incur the wrath of taxpayers and peg Mr. Harper as a tax hiker. My advice: Don't do it.
  
• To temper Ottawa's overreach into the provincial jurisdictions of health care and education, federal tax points should be relinquished to the provinces.
  
• On the health care front, the federal government should respect the Supreme Court of Canada's 2005 Chaoulli v. Quebec decision, and permit provinces to experiment with medicare delivery reform - including the use of private health care.
  
• When it comes to spending, the new government must be cautious and limit program spending increases to those correlated with inflation and population growth.
  
• The Liberals' bureaucratic daycare plan, with its misguided focus on warehousing children, must be repealed and replaced with a universal tax credit or payment payable to all families with young children.
  
• To increase accountability and transparency within the aboriginal portfolio, an independent ombudsman for the department of Indian and Northern Affairs should be established that reports directly to Parliament.
  To improve the lives of native Canadians, Ottawa should amend the Indian Act to include matrimonial property rights and the Human Rights Act.
  
• Make gas taxes a user fee and ensure municipalities put these tax revenues into potholes, highways and bridges. Fuel tax revenues not spent on roads and infrastructure ought to be returned to motorists.
  
• Many tax dollars can be saved by cutting off funding for the disastrous federal gun registry and scrapping Ottawa's $10-billion Kyoto Protocol implementation plan. Canadians want a clean environment and proposals that work. No tax dollar should be paid to developing countries for carbon dioxide emission credits - so-called "hot air" - to meet Kyoto targets.
  
• Abolishing corporate welfare programs will save another $2-to-$4-billion each year. These wasteful projects funnel subsidies to businesses and provide handouts to failed regional development projects. Corporate tax relief should be conditional on businesses forgoing subsidies.
  
• Abroad, our values should be reflected by making our foreign aid contingent on a country's willingness to practice and promote democracy, respect for human rights and government accountability. Communist China should not be Canada's largest foreign aid recipient - divert that money elsewhere.
  
• The government's appointment protocols must be overhauled. With a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Mr. Harper must quickly implement a multi-partisan nomination process that ensures MPs have meaningful input. When naming the heads of Crown corporations, agencies and other top government jobs, similar multi-party support must be secured. A citizens' assembly on voting reform should be established, and the Senate should either be elected or abolished.
  Canadians should be empowered to recall promise-breaking politicians from office and petition for the enactment or repeal of laws between elections.
  
• Finally, before the next election, it will be necessary to bring tax credits for political parties in line with what is offered for other charitable organizations, and to do away with the subsidy that pays political parties $1.79 per vote received in the last general election.

The Harper government's success in fulfilling these priorities will determine the level of cheers - or jeers - from many Canadian taxpayers.