September 7, 2025
Summary: The only one of the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) three performance measures for which there is publicly available information – growth in the number of CVITP participating organizations – shows the pilot project has consistently failed to meet its annual 5% performance target in the 2021-2024 period.
And this failure comes at a substantial cost. New information suggests that the pilot project could have spent as much as $14 million in the first three years, well over the initial $10 million budget. Although information on the fourth year has not (yet) been published, the budgeted amount and the grant financing formula suggest that the final amount after four years could exceed $20 million.
The second article in this series looks at the reasons behind this costly failure. As this was known to the CRA in 2023, this article also speculates on the reasons why the project was extended for a fourth year.
This first article in a three-part series looks at the results and cost of the pilot project for providing grant funding to CVITP host organizations after four years of implementation. At the outset, it is useful to examine the context in which the project was launched.
The project was announced at the beginning of 2021, after the disastrous performance of the CVITP in 2020. While some 3,810 community-based organizations registered to deliver CVITP services in 2020, many closed their doors during the COVID lockdown. There is CRA data to suggest that only 427 host organizations subsequently found a way to provide CVITP services in the difficult months that followed. The impact showed up in the final tally for 2020: only 407, 408 clients were served, reflecting a 45% drop over the number of clients previously served in the 2019 season.
To entice community-based organizations to start offering CVITP clinics again in 2021, the CRA needed to do something radical. So, it did what the CRA had never done before: it committed to providing direct grant financing to CVITP host organizations, in a three-year pilot project running from 2021 and 2023.
I have previously looked at the implementation of the pilot project at the end of 2021, 2022 and 2023. Late in November 2023, the CRA announced that it would extend the pilot project to include 2024 as well. This article looks at where things stand with the project now that the 2024 season has finished.
Has the pilot project achieved its aims?
This question is more difficult to answer than it seems. This is because the CRA has given this project many objectives, expected results and performance measures. Some of these have changed over the duration of the project. In any event, the CRA does not make data publicly available on most of them.
Below, I note the original objectives, results and performance measures which were only introduced in the second year of the pilot project’s operation. Elements that were dropped during the fourth-year extension have been struck out.
| objectives | performance measures | results | comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defray some of the administrative costs that organizations incur in hosting tax preparation clinics | |||
| Encourage growth in the number of CVITP participating organizations | An annual 5% increase in the number of organizations that participate in the program | 2021 over 2020: – 8% 2022 over 2021: – 2% 2023 over 2022: 0% 2024 over 2023: 3% | Failed to meet target for any year |
| Increase retention amongst existing CVITP participating organizations | No CRA data publicly available on the retention of existing participating (host) organizations | ||
| Encourage CVITP participating organizations to expand the reach of their clinics (for example, by extending the number of days and/or hours of operation, or offering additional tax clinic locations) | No CRA data publicly available on the expansion of clinic reach | ||
| No CRA data publicly available on expanded access to vulnerable population segments | |||
| An annual increase in the number of volunteers associated with grant recipient organizations | No CRA data publicly available on volunteers associated with grant recipient organizations | ||
| An annual increase in the number of returns filed by grant recipient organizations | No CRA data publicly available on the number of returns filed by grant recipient organizations |
In summary, the only one of the three remaining performance measures for which there is publicly available information shows the CRA has consistently failed to meet its performance target.
Let me briefly address the two remaining performance measures for which there is no publicly available information.
There has been an annual increase in the number of volunteers but there is no information on the number of volunteers associated with grant recipient organizations and no target given for the size of the annual increase.[i]
There has also been an annual increase in the number of returns filed but there is no information on the number of returns filed by grant recipient organizations and no target for the size of the annual increase.[ii]
Although there is no publicly available information on these last two measures, perhaps I am being unduly harsh. Maybe CRA’s internal data shows there have been increases in both measures. Of course, the increases could be trivial – and the CRA could trivially claim success.
But suppose for a moment that these increases were more than just trivial. Increasing the number of volunteers within existing host organizations will not necessarily lead to increased coverage if these volunteers each prepare, on average, fewer returns than was previously the case. Increasing the number of returns filed within existing host organizations also will not necessarily lead to increased coverage if there are more prior year returns filed than was previously the case.
Unlike these two measures, substantially increasing the number of host organizations is the only measure which unquestionably increases the CVITP’s coverage. This makes it the single most important measure. And on this, the CRA has visibly failed to meet the target it set for the pilot project.
What would have happened if this pilot project had not been put in place? It is difficult to know with any certainty what the counterfactual would have been. But one can speculate. Maybe the CVITP would have continued to perform poorly in the post COVID years. Then again, maybe the CVITP’s performance would have rebounded but only very slowly over time from its 2020 numbers.
The most charitable thing that could be said for this project is that it may have succeeded, after the shock of COVID, in returning CVITP operations more rapidly to what they had been prior to 2020 than if there had been no financing available. But that was not the pilot project’s stated aim. In any event, by 2023 when CVITP performance was approaching pre-COVID levels, it would have been hard to justify any extension of the project.
How much has the project cost to date?
This is difficult to say with precision. But it was much more on an annual basis than was originally intended.
The project was initially intended to last three years with a budget of $10 million. This would have amounted to $3.3 million per year, on average. In my last article on this project, I pointed to various CRA press releases which indicated that $8.7 million had been spent in the first three years.
However, I recently came across a data set in the Grants and Contributions page of the federal government’s Open Government portal which lists all of the CVITP grants that the CRA awarded between 2021 and 2023.[iii] Using the information in this data set, I found that:
| YEAR | AMOUNT PAID | AGREEMENTS signed with host organizations |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $3,685,195 | 2,033 |
| 2022 | $5,143,120 | 1,560 |
| 2023 | $6,006,577 | 1,720 |
This amounts to $14,834,892 for the three years. This is substantially more than the $10 million initially announced and the $8.7 million that was subsequently publicly announced.
When the pilot project was extended for a fourth year, the CRA press release indicated that up to $5.9 million would be made available. This is very close to the amount indicated above as spent in 2023; this is not surprising as the grant financing formula was the same for 2024 as it had been in 2023. If this was the amount actually spent in 2024, it is almost double the annual amount originally envisaged for the pilot project.
There is presently no information publicly available on the fourth-year expenditures. (Unlike for 2024, the CRA gave no indication of an amount budgeted for 2025 when announcing the fifth-year extension of the pilot project.) We will probably have to wait until the CRA’s grants and contributions for 2024 are listed on the Open Government portal to find out the answer.
The second article in this three-part series examines why the project failed. In light of the above considerations which were known to the CRA in 2023, this article also speculates on the reasons why the project was extended for a fourth year.
[i] Just looking at the number of volunteers more generally, these declined by 20% in 2021 over 2020, then further declined by 3% in 2022 over 2021 before starting to increase by 8% in 2023 over 2022 and then again by 13% in 2024 over 2023. The 2024 figure of 18,090 was still below the 2020 figure of 18,970.
[ii] If one looks at the number of returns filed more generally, this has increased each year since 2020. However, 2020 was a disastrous year for the CVITP, with a 45% drop in the number of returns filed over 2019. The CVITP only managed to surpass the number of returns filed in 2019 (741,400) by 2023 (758,540).
[iii] In case the reader is interested, start by typing in “Community Volunteer Income Tax Program” in the Search bar. Then use the Filters to identify the Canada Revenue Agency as the Organization and the Calendar Years. One can then download the search results.