August 17, 2021
For 2019 and again for 2020, we monitored the performance of the CVITP against four indicators which the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) reports, more or less, on: people assisted, returns completed, volunteers and host organizations. They are not the areas we think best reveal how well the CVITP is doing in achieving its purpose. But they are the only areas the CRA offers any information on. Therefore, we track the CVITP’s performance on what is publicly available.
So far this year, the CRA has revealed figures on two of the four indicators: people assisted (clients) and volunteers. It has not yet reported on the number of returns completed nor the number of host organizations registered.
Normally, we would wait for the publication of the CRA’s Departmental Results Report for the last fiscal year to get our information on the CVITP. This would usually be posted online around September. But with a federal election being called for September, the publication of the most recent report is likely to be delayed for many months. (Something similar happened when the federal election was held in October 2019.) And when the report is eventually published, it may not tell us any more than what we already know. This is because the CRA is presently committed to reporting only on the number of people assisted (clients) through the CVITP. (More on this below.)
So, what do the numbers that we’ve already got look like?
Previously, we have tracked numbers on these indicators as far back as 2012 where the information is available. But here we only show as far back as the 2018 tax year (2019 tax season). This is because the figures for three out of the four indicators peaked at that time. The exception was the figure for host organizations which peaked for the 2019 tax year (2020 tax season).
What’s happening with the numbers for volunteers registered?
The decline in the number of volunteers registered for the CVITP, for the second year in a row, is worrisome. As volunteers for the 2019 tax year (2020 tax season) likely registered before the COVID pandemic became full blown, the decline from 2018 was already problematic. It may have indicated that the CRA’s efforts to recruit new and retain existing volunteers were no longer as effective and that the volunteer numbers had plateaued.
Given the ongoing public health restrictions during this last tax season, the further decline in the volunteer numbers is perhaps not surprising. But it is still troubling because it suggests that despite having at least half a year to plan for it, the CRA did not take its volunteer recruitment and retention efforts seriously enough.
What’s happening with the numbers for people assisted?
Turning to people assisted (clients), the numbers for the 2019 tax year (2020 tax season) dropped sharply over the previous year. Many of the CVITP clinics had to shut down after only a few weeks of operation. This was due to the newly imposed public health restrictions.
The CRA usually reports the cumulative number for people assisted by the CVITP through to mid-May. Last year, this was well before most host organizations had managed to make the shift from in person to virtual clinics. So, it is perhaps not surprising to see the large decline in the number of people assisted over the previous year.
However, it is surprising to see that the number of people assisted for the 2020 tax year (2021 tax season) was only 83,000 more than around the same time last year. Like the figures on CVITP volunteers, this also suggests that, despite having many months to plan for the operation of virtual clinics, the CRA did not make adequate preparations to improve significantly on the disastrous performance of the CVITP last year.
The plot thickens…
This is puzzling. The federal budget in 2018 announced that the CRA’s administrative budget for the CVITP was being quadrupled, and that recent budget increases would lead to a doubling of the number of people assisted. Yet this year, the CVITP has barely managed to serve two thirds of the clients it served two years ago. We cannot explain what accounts for such a poor performance.
One can only hope that the CVITP will see a significant rebound in its numbers next year, especially if the CVITP is operating under fewer public health restrictions. But it is entirely possible that we will be left guessing as to its performance next year. This is because the CRA has decided to drop making any information public about the performance of the CVITP in its future annual reports to Parliament.
The timing of this decision may be purely coincidental. But one can be forgiven for thinking that the CRA’s recent poor performance on managing the CVITP, despite the large administrative budget increases it has received for the CVITP, might have had something to do with it.