April 10, 2023
In 2018, two things happened which laid the groundwork for the CRA’s rising ambitions for the CVITP.
First, the federal government published its first-ever Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). This included specific targets for reducing income-based poverty by 2020 and by 2030. One of the two annexes to the strategy listed well over 100 federal government programs that would contribute toward achieving this target. We believe it was no accident that the CVITP was positioned as the fifth program cited in this list, being preceded only by increases to the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), changes in the age of eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and the GIS, and several initiatives designed to improve the uptake of these three benefits (CCB, OAS and GIS) among vulnerable populations.
Second, the CRA’s budget for the CVITP was significantly increased. Although the PRS indicates that the CRA’s budget for the CVITP was doubled in 2018 as part of the government’s effort to reduce poverty, Budget 2018 made clear that this represented a quadrupling of the CRA’s budget for the CVITP in recent years.
What happened to the CVITP as a result of these two important changes? Three things are noteworthy during this period.
1The CRA dramatically increased its ambitions for the CVITP. Specifically, it published targets for its own performance.
Coming out of the 2017 season, the CRA published a target of 800,000 returns to be completed through the CVITP in the 2018 season.[1] Before the 2018 tax season unfolded, the CRA published the same target for the number of returns to be completed in the 2019 season.[2]
Although the CVITP fell somewhat short of the CRA’s target for the 2018 tax season, it exceeded the target for the 2019 tax season.[3]
Before the 2019 tax season unfolded, the CRA decided to change the object of the target for the CVITP from “returns completed” to “individuals assisted”. And it published a target of 802,000 individuals to be assisted though the CVITP in the 2020 season.[4] Before COVID struck and became a major public health emergency, the CRA established its target for the 2021 tax season at 873,000 individuals assisted.[5]
During this period, the CRA was very confident that the CVITP would continue to grow at the same pace that it had in the preceding years. Evidence of this confidence can be found in a revealing footnote in one of its reports published around that time:
“With the announcement of Budget 2018, the CVITP will increase its target to 1,050,000 people helped by 2023 (approximately 1.16M returns completed). To reach this target, the CVITP will significantly increase staffing in the regions, enhance business intelligence to create efficiencies, increase outreach activities, and create a dedicated Partnership team.”
2The second noteworthy point about this period is that the CRA did not share any of its greatly expanded budget for the CVITP with the host organizations in its CVITP network. Instead, it continued to claim it had to maintain an “arms-length” relationship with its community-based partners while, at the same time, directing these organizations and freeriding on their budgets and human resources for the delivery of CVITP services.[6] It seems to have assumed that its CVITP network – and consequently the results that this network could produce – would continue to grow by following the same approach it had employed in the 2013-2017 period of “organic” expansion.
3Despite the important role assigned to the CVITP in support of the PRS objective to reduce poverty across Canada by 2030, during this period the CRA never publicly acknowledged this role in any of its statements or publications. As indicated above, the CRA continued to treat the CVITP as one of its “tax” related services.
See the next article in the series: 2020-2021 COVID COLLAPSE
[1] The CRA’s Departmental Plan (DP) to Parliament for the fiscal year 2017-18 included its first ever target for the CVITP. This set the number of returns to be completed within the CVITP at 800,000 for the period running from May 16, 2017 to May 15, 2018 (i.e. to be achieved largely through the CVITP returns completed in the 2018 tax season). This was one of 11 performance indicators and associated targets the CRA included for the delivery of its tax related services. (The CRA’s treatment of the CVITP as part of its tax program, rather than its benefits program, is reflective of the CVITP’s historical antecedents but is far removed from the current reality.)
[2] The CRA DP for the fiscal year 2018-19 repeated the same target (800,000 returns completed) for the CVITP for the period running from May 16, 2018 to May 15, 2019 (i.e. to be achieved largely through the 2019 tax season). If the CRA`s bet on the target for the 2018 tax season was conservative, this was even more so as the CRA used the identical target for the 2019 tax season. This target was produced around the same time as Budget 2018.
[3] The CRA’s Departmental Results Report (DRR) for fiscal year 2017-18 was published. This was well after the 2018 tax season and some 18 months after it had published its DP with the initial target of 800,000 returns completed by the CVITP. It reported that 786,606 returns had been completed by the CVITP in the period between May 16, 2017 and May 15, 2018 (the 2018 tax season). Although it fell somewhat short of the 800,000 target, it meant that, if growth continued at the same pace as it had in the past, the CRA would exceed the 800,000 target it had repeated for the 2019 tax season.
[4] The CRA DP for the fiscal year 2019-20 changed the object of the target, switching from “returns completed” to “individuals assisted”. It established the target of 802,000 individuals assisted for the May 16, 2019, to May 15, 2020, period (i.e. to be achieved largely through the 2020 tax season). At that point, the most recent figure the CRA had to build on was the 706,463 number of individuals assisted in the 2018 tax season.
[5] The CRA DP for the fiscal year 2020-21 was published at a time when COVID was not yet a major public health emergency. So, the CRA established its target for the May 16, 2020 to May 15, 2021 period (i.e. to be achieved largely through the 2021 tax season) on the basis that growth would continue pretty much as it had up to that point. It set the target for individuals assisted at 873,000. This represented a dramatic increase over its 802,00 target for the 2020 tax season.
[6] For example, in the CRA Ombudsman’s 2020 review of the CVITP entitled “Reaching Out”, the Ombudsman makes frequent reference to the CRA’s concern that it “provide as much support as possible to volunteers and partner organizations, while maintaining the arm’s length relationship that “mitigates liability risks that would be associated with any prescribed involvement in 1) directly funding organizations and their volunteers and/or 2) tax return preparation by CRA employees.””