June 2, 2021
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) recently released its Departmental Plan for the forthcoming fiscal year. Since 2012, the CRA has reported to Parliament on the results obtained by the CVITP. With the introduction of results-based performance reporting across all federal departments and agencies in 2017, the CRA has included the CVITP results within its performance indicators.
However, the new Departmental Plan has dropped any formal reporting on the CVITP; this means no data will be included on CVITP performance targets or results achieved. Therefore, no information will be systematically made available to Parliamentarians, the public or even the CVITP host organizations and their volunteers.
What happened in the past
Each year, every federal government department and agency produces two reports for Parliament.
The first, called the Departmental Plan, is produced at the beginning of the fiscal year. It outlines the department or agency’s objectives (in line with the mandate assigned to it by Parliament). It also indicates what the department or agency expects to accomplish during the fiscal year with the funds that will be approved by Parliament for its use. Key to assessing whether it achieves those objectives are the performance indicators and their targets that are identified in the Departmental Plan.
The second, called the Departmental Results Report, is produced once the fiscal year is over. This report summarizes what the department or agency did during the year to meet its mandate, how much money it spent and, crucially, how it actually performed against the targets set for each of the performance indicators.
Starting in 2012, the CRA published information on the CVITP. Its reports noted the number of returns prepared through the CVITP. Even though the CVITP had been running since 1971, this was the first time that any numbers were being publicly shared with Parliament.
In 2016, the federal government (through the Treasury Board Secretariat) introduced a new policy on results. This requires all departments and agencies to include results which they seek to influence as well as performance indicators.
In creating its first set of performance indicators, the CRA chose to include reporting on the results of the CVITP. In each Departmental Plan since 2017, the CRA has included one performance indicator for the CVITP together with a target for performance that year associated with the indicator. And each CRA Departmental Result Report at the end of the fiscal year has reported on how the CRA has performed against the target it set for itself at the beginning of the fiscal year. (For more detail on how well the CRA’s reporting on CVITP results meets the standards set out in the federal government’s policy on results, see our article entitled “Getting Good Results”.)
This is what the CVITP’s performance, as contained in the CRA’s reports to Parliament, has looked like to date.
As can readily be seen, in the course of the four years since the CRA first started reporting on the CVITP results, it has already changed its performance indicator once. The target for the 2020 tax year was included in the Departmental Plan for the 2020-21 fiscal year. The Departmental Results Report for the same fiscal year will normally be released sometime after the summer. So, we will only learn the results achieved against the CRA’s target of 873,000 individuals helped by the CVITP for the 2020 tax year at that time. (We will report on this number when the CRA’s Departmental Results Report gets released.)
What will happen in the future
During the 2021 tax season, while CVITP host organizations and volunteers were helping people to prepare their returns for the 2020 tax year, the CRA released its Departmental Plan for fiscal year 2021-22.
In looking through it, anyone familiar with the CVITP will be surprised to notice a significant change: the one performance indicator (and associated target) which explicitly tracks the CVITP has been dropped. No explanation is given for this omission. And no alternative performance indicator for the CVITP is proposed. While the Minister’s message in the Departmental Plan highlights the CVITP and the main text defines the CVITP and refers to it, the prior commitment to reporting on CVITP results is gone.
This means the CRA has decided to stop providing Parliament and the public, in the future, with any information on the CVITP’s results. The CRA can do this because each department and agency gets to choose which results it reports on.
The Departmental Plan and the Departmental Results Report are the only reports through which the CRA has provided public information on the results achieved through the CVITP. This means that, in the future, no information will be provided to the public about the CVITP’s results.
Why this is a BIG problem
Here are four reasons why this decision is problematic:
1The federal government’s 2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) identified the CVITP as one of the initiatives in support of the Strategy’s objectives. Without any information on the CVITP, it will be impossible to assess how the CVITP is contributing to the Strategy’s objectives.
2The federal government’s 2018 budget confirmed that the CRA’s budget for the CVITP has been quadrupled in recent years. The stated purpose of this increase was to expand the CVITP’s reach. Yet, removing any results reporting on the CVITP makes it impossible for Parliament to fulfill its oversight role of determining whether the CRA is achieving the results on the basis of which the funds were allocated.
3As we note in another article, the Prime Minister stated in his Supplementary Mandate Letter of January 2021 that one of the Minister of National Revenue’s priorities, going forward, will be the expansion and enhancement of the CVITP. Yet, removing any future reporting requirement on the CVITP only three months later raises the question as to whether the expansion and enhancement of the CVITP really is a priority for this Minister.
4Each year, the CRA relies on the good will of thousands of volunteers and host organizations across Canada who provide free CVITP services to low-income individuals and families, in order to help the CRA deliver on its two core responsibilities: the administration of taxes and benefits. By dropping the reporting of the results achieved by the CVITP, the Minister of National Revenue seems to believe it is acceptable to keep even its CVITP host organizations and their volunteers in the dark about the results they have laboured to achieve on the CRA’s behalf.
This is a strange, disappointing way to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of the CVITP.