We have been working as CVITP volunteers for a number of years (one of us has extensive experience and the other is relatively new to the program).
During that time, we have learned that the CVITP has many strengths but also possess what we consider to be serious weaknesses. We suspect that we are not alone: there are likely many volunteers and host organizations across the country who feel the same way.
We have also come up with ideas to address some of these limitations. In promoting these ideas, we have encountered very limited interest but also significant resistance. Some of this resistance is understandable, given current institutional constraints. But we feel there is also a fair bit of institutional inertia that needs to be overcome. Again, we suspect there are many CVITP volunteers and host organizations looking to share information and ideas about the CVITP but with limited venues in which to do so.
We want our ideas and those of others to get a broader hearing, starting with the national CVITP community, meaning volunteers, host organizations and the Canada Revenue Agency. This website is intended first and foremost for them.
The CVITP plays a small but very important role in a much larger development: the increasing use of the income tax and benefit return by the federal, provincial and territorial governments as a preferred method of delivering important benefits and credits, many of which are designed specifically to meet the needs of low-income Canadians. We believe there is a much larger audience in Canada outside of the CVITP which is unaware of this development but which needs to learn more about it and how the CVITP helps these governments deliver on their poverty reduction commitments. This website is also intended to help inform this larger audience.
To learn more about the purpose of this website, see Our Mission.
To learn more about us, see Who We Are.