Here’s one of the stranger recent entries from the annals of internal control breakdown, as reported by the New York Times: The article provides the following commentary: Indeed, I’m sure not the only one who initially assumed on seeing the headline that the story would be about the creation of fictitious invoices as a vehicle…

Here’s another fact pattern recently discussed by Canada’s IFRS Accounting Standards Discussion Group: The fact pattern lists a series of specific activities for which the company is responsible over the 40-year term. For purposes of the analysis, the group assumed the sales of the carbon credits to be material to the Company and to be…

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) recently published a biennial report on its Continuous Disclosure Review Program, providing an overview of results and highlighting key findings and outcomes over the past two fiscal years. Most of the contents are familiar (some of them, like “issuers not providing issuer-specific details or sufficient contextual information to enable investors to understand…

The IASB recently announced “the start of a research project to review and improve the requirements for the statement of cash flows and related matters in IFRS Accounting Standards.” This is in response to feedback during the IASB’s most recent agenda consultation, with investors, companies and others identifying this area as a high priority. The…

“CPA Canada takes PM to task over remarks on accountants,” announced a recent release. It’s worth reproducing the entire bulletin here: Fair enough, but wealthy and not-so-wealthy Canadians alike do actually “use accountants” to reduce their taxes from what they might otherwise haplessly pay, don’t they? I couldn’t readily find a clip of the Prime…

“IASB review concludes the revenue Standard is working as intended,” announces a recent news release. This announced the publication of the Project Summary and Feedback Statement relating to the Post-Implementation review of IFRS 15. These are the headline conclusions: That doesn’t mean of course that applying and auditing and enforcing the standard is easy (or…

As we addressed here, the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board issued for comment its first two proposed standards. These are proposed Canadian Sustainability Disclosure Standard (CSDS) 1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information  and CSDS 2 Climate-related Disclosures, built on the pre-existing IFRS S1 and S2; the CSSB didn’t propose any major changes to…

CPA Ontario recently issued Trust in New Frontiers: Putting AI Governance into Practice. The foreword states: “The question of trust is at the heart of the debate surrounding artificial intelligence and its impact. And as the use of AI becomes even more commonplace in business and society, that question of trust is also at the…

This is from a recent Globe and Mail opinion piece by Douglas Sarro, a securities law professor at the University of Ottawa: To flesh that out a bit, the case dealt with Lundin’s detection of “pit wall instability, arising from an unstable wedge, in a localized area of its open pit operations,” and a subsequent…

The IASB recently issued the exposure draft Equity Method of Accounting—IAS 28 Investments in Associates and Joint Ventures. This flows from a decision to not to undertake a fundamental review of the equity method. As set out in the basis for conclusions: “The IASB noted that the equity method is well established and fundamental changes would…