Sandbox

The Challenge

Students will inherit the systems that govern their lives—healthcare, education, infrastructure, public safety—without ever learning how those systems actually work.

Civics education tells them what government does. It doesn't show them how decisions get made, or why every choice involves a tradeoff.

When graduates enter the workforce, start families, and become voters, they're asked to evaluate policies they've never had to think through. They inherit a democracy they don't fully understand.

## Overview

The simulation uses a **three-tier configuration system**:

- **Tier 1: World** - Global constraints outside Canada's control

- **Tier 2: Administration** - Multi-year government policy (4-5 year term)

- **Tier 3: Year** - Fiscal year-specific values

Later tiers override earlier ones. Access via `GameConfigService::get('path.to.value')`.

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The Problem We're Solving

Canada's civic and financial infrastructure has single points of failure.

Government payroll systems fail—employees don't get paid. Payment networks go down—commerce stutters. A "focus group" claims to represent public opinion—but who commissioned it, who was sampled, and where's the audit trail?

We're building backup systems. Not because we expect catastrophic failure, but because critical infrastructure should have redundancy.

And we're doing it on Hedera.

The Experiment

What if democracy didn't require political parties?

What if governance focused on problems instead of promises?

What if the four-year electoral cycle—with its predictable pattern of campaigns, compromises, and disappointments—wasn't the only way?

Ducklings is CanuckDUCK's attempt to find out. And it's already running.

What We're Actually Building

Ducklings is a fiscal governance platform for Canadian high school students (Grades 9–12). But calling it a "simulation" undersells it.