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Adopting IFRSs in Canada, the Accounting Standards Board’s Exposure Draft on IFRSs, is now available for download. It can be easily accessed from the Transition to International Standards one-stop IFRS website developed by Canada’s Chartered Accountants at www.cica.ca/IFRS. The AcSB’s Exposure Draft includes: - an electronic version of the 2007 bound volume of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs)
- a Highlights section, as is found in every Exposure Draft, providing background and requesting comments in specific areas
- an Appendix by the AcSB which provides readers with an approach to reviewing the IFRSs.
The AcSB is releasing the Exposure Draft as part of its due process in the 2011 transition to IFRS. Click here to download. Otherwise, you can purchase the 2008 version of IFRSs. If you haven’t already done so, Adopting IFRSs in Canada provides the perfect opportunity for you to begin to familiarize yourself with the new standards and determine their relevance to you and your organization. To help wrestle the 2,400-page Exposure Draft to the ground, we’ve prepared a Reader’s Guide to help you identify what to focus on and which standards you can safely ignore at this point since they will change. Click here for your copy. It is important that CAs and the businesses they work for and with are ready for IFRS. Making the transition requires planning now for those entities that will be required to use the new standards. The IFRSs apply to Canadian publicly accountable enterprises. A definition of Publicly Accountable Enterprises is included in the Highlights section of the Exposure Draft, and comments on it are encouraged. In general, these are profit-oriented enterprises that have responsibilities to a large or diverse group of stakeholders and can include: - Publicly listed companies
- Enterprises with fiduciary responsibilities, such as banks, insurance companies, credit unions, securities firms, mutual funds and investment banks
- Certain government corporations.
The goals of the Exposure Draft are twofold. First, to get comments on the Exposure Draft, specifically on the proposed definition of publicly accountable enterprises, and on whether the application of IFRSs in Canada could create inappropriate results. Remember that the IFRSs contained in the Exposure Draft have already been through the IASB’s thorough due diligence process, and are developed with the global economy in mind. Second, the Exposure Draft provides: - A starting point for members to become engaged in the IFRS learning process
- Valuable insights into the changes that will accompany the implementation of IFRS.
Once the review process is complete, the IFRSs will be used for interim and annual financial statements relating to fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2011. This means that organizations will have to begin collecting data in accordance with IFRS in 2010 to have comparative data for inclusion in their first IFRS financial statements in 2011. Go to the profession’s IFRS website (www.cica.ca/ifrs) to access comprehensive IFRS resources and to keep up to date. |
