Inspired by CPA Canada’s Complexity and the professional accountant: Practical guidance for ethical decision-making, we recently mused on what might be some of the characteristics of an “accountant of the public interest.” Let’s return to this now, inspired by a recent consultation paper issued by the Independent Review Committee on Standard Setting in Canada. The…

CPA Ontario has issued the paper You Can’t Touch This: The Intangible Assets Debate. The paper explores the issues we touched on here, along with some comments on opportunities for the CPA profession (disclosure – I talked to the lead author and am briefly quoted in there). Here are some extracts: Intangibles are thought to…

“Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame selects twelve inaugural inductees” reported Canadian Accountant earlier this year Here are the highlights: Twelve accountants and accounting academics from past and present have been named as the inaugural inductees of the Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame (CAHF). The list includes some historic names in Canadian business as well as…

As a special holiday treat, courtesy of my mole at the IFRS Foundation, let’s enjoy now an important and revealing selection of recent correspondence to and from the office of IASB Chair Andreas Barckow. Dear Dr. Barckow – In an interview, you said: “My wife and I are regular concert-goers, and we both sing in…

Let’s look at some of the reaction to IFRIC’s tentative agenda decision, Demand Deposits with Restrictions on Use As we addressed here, the fact pattern concerned an entity that holds a demand deposit whose terms and conditions don’t prevent the entity from accessing the amounts held in it, and that has a contractual obligation with…

The IASB has issued for comment Supplier Finance Arrangements, an exposure draft of proposed amendments to IAS 7 and IFRS 7, with comments to be received by March 28, 2022. The exposure draft describes a supplier finance arrangement as “characterized by one or more finance providers offering to pay amounts an entity owes its suppliers…

Here’s another issue recently discussed by Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group Company A owns a major infrastructure asset under construction. The contract with the construction company, Company B, contains a force majeure clause that provides some relief in the event that Company B is prevented from performing construction work due to an event out of its…

So, as is well-known now, Canada didn’t win the race for the global sustainability standards board… The big prize went to Frankfurt, with Montreal getting what was generally taken to be a kind of consolation prize, a secondary office for “key functions supporting the new board and deeper co-operation with regional stakeholders.” Given that the…

The IASB has issued for comment Non-current Liabilities with Covenants, an exposure draft of proposed amendments to IAS 1, with comments to be received by March 21, 2022. One of the situations in which an entity classifies a liability as current under IAS 1 arises when “it does not have the right at the end…

As we covered previously, the IASB issued an exposure draft of a proposed practice statement on Management Commentary, with comments requested by November 23, 2021. It might be dispiriting to those working on the project that a large volume of the comments (based on my highly incomplete sample of them at least) amount to saying,…