CGA-Canada: Accounting Standards for the 21st Century Project

The Client
CGA-Canada is a professional association of approximately 60 000 Certified General Accountants and students. It represents CGAs and their interests on a national basis to government, sets national educational, professional and practice standards, provides services to affiliates and members, and contributes to international accounting standard setting.

The Challenge
Following the accounting scandals associated with Enron and WorldCom, CGA-Canada saw the need for research into the state of accounting standards setting in Canada. A number of key questions were apparent to them: should Canada move to International Accounting Standards? Should it move closer to the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles? How can public trust in the financial community be restored? What will be the future needs of standard setting in Canada?

How KTA Helped
Working closely with CGA-Canada, and thanks to its own extensive network, KTA assembled a working group made up of senior officials from government, industry, and national professional and trade associations, including the Chair of the Accounting Standards Board of Canada and a trustee of the International Accounting Standards Board.

Combining its leading research, analysis and facilitation capacity, KTA worked alongside stakeholders on what were sometimes sensitive issues for the accounting industry, and used our proven collaboration methodologies in developing a report through a series of group sessions and one-on-one interviews.

The Result
A Question of Standards: Accounting in the 21st Century was released in April 2003, and was distributed to some 10 000 decision-makers across Canada.

The paper received significant attention from the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, and was cited a number of times in its report, Navigating Through the “Perfect Storm”: Safeguards to Restore Investor Confidence.

The paper continues to receive attention from the finance and accounting community, and has helped define a base for CGA’s own position on related issues since.