A short history of female Chartered Accountants (CAs) in Canada

As the above chart shows, women in Canada have come a long, long way since their beginnings in the CA profession. To gain a true perspective on how far women have come in the profession, it’s enlightening to look back — way back — to 1922, when Mercy Ellen Crehan and Florence Eulalie Herkins became the first women to be admitted to membership. It seems the welcome was not exactly glorious: in the June 1966 issue of CAmagazine (then called The Canadian Chartered Accountant), FCA and former federal MP Ellen Fairclough wrote that one of the women “found it necessary to ‘defect’ to the United States to earn a living in her chosen profession.”

Over the next decades, the number of women in the profession grew ever so slowly. As Steve Brearton wrote in “A century of CAmagazine” (June/July 2011), “Even the opportunities afforded women during the Second World War to demonstrate their obvious competence barely opened doors.” By 1966, there were still only 125 women members — a situation that Fairclough bemoaned. “[The number] leaves much to be desired, particularly when there is such a demand, even an urgent need, to fill the vacancies which appear to be increasing in number in the profession. The question arises whether the profession is to be deprived of the services of qualified people because of age-old prejudices and inhibitions.”

By the mid-1970s, things were slowly starting to move. In 1976, Pamela Jermey became the first woman to garner top marks on the Uniform Final Examination (UFE). And in 1979, women took all three top spots on the UFE honour role. In a January 1980 CAmagazine editorial, Nelson Luscombe wrote, “There’s every indication that [women’s] presence will continue to increase, both in numbers and significance.” He cited an article in the same issue predicting that females would begin to be appointed to partnership in the early 1980s and that by the end of the first decade of the next century, the proportion “should reach 30%.” That last prediction did not come true. Is it time to make another?

 Find out more by reading the articles in the December 2012 Special Issue of CAmagazine online, in particular, the article “Women at Work” by Rosalind Stefanac.

50 years ago in the October 1962 CAmagazine

The October 1962 edition of CAmagazine discussed the “Need for reform in the Bankruptcy Act.” It stated that: “Bankruptcies and their attendant losses have become a most pressing problem…. A tremendous volume of business is presently conducted in Canada by ‘thin’ corporations — where the shareholders have very little of their own money in the company. [One] might well remark that such a corporation should not be given credit…. Our present Bankruptcy Act … displays no recognition, whatsoever, of the need of a separate set of ‘ground rules’ in dealing with corporations.”

Also, read about the “60th Annual Conference” (from the summary of the CICA annual meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick) and “The new management theories make for poor performance” (a summary of “Executives who can’t manage,” from The Atlantic Monthly, July 1962).

The First Quarter Century of the GASB (1984–2009): A Perspective on Standard Setting

 

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) was established in April 1984 as the authoritative accounting standard-setting body for state and local governmental entities in the United States. There are over 87,000 state and local entities in the country and for the most part these entities are required to comply with the generally accepted accounting principles established by the GASB. Therefore, the standards promulgated by the GASB are significant. On June 30, 2009, the GASB completed its 25th year of standard setting. Because of its influence and the importance of its mission, a better understanding of the GASB and its accomplishments during its first 25 years of existence may be helpful.

 

Two research papers (Part 1 and Part 2) provide a complete sequential treatment of the GASB’s operational history through the end of its first quarter century. The first paper begins with an historical perspective about municipal accounting issues from colonial times to 1934. The origin of professional self-determining standards is the feature of the second paper, identifying standard-setting bodies that contributed to municipal accounting from 1934 to 1984. The early activities of the GASB are then reviewed. Two appendices are provided to detail the composition of the Board during its first quarter century, along with biographical information about the early Board members and later Chair and Vice Chair personnel.

 

The first paper concludes with a review of the relationship of other governmental standard setting bodies at the federal level and the international level. The second paper provides an overview of the future challenges faced by the GASB and supplies a digest of the standards including appendix and a synoptic summary of the standards the Board has promulgated by topic and by standard number.

 

Gary J. Previts

For more information, read the article “The First Quarter Century of the GASB (1984–2009): A Perspective on Standard Setting” by Helen M. Roybark, Edward N. Coffman and Gary J. Previts.

 

Part 1 of this article was published in ABACUS (Volume 48, Issue 1, pages 1–30, March 2012) and Part 2 was published in ABACUS (Volume 48, Issue 2, pages 147–198, June 2012).

 

 

 

In addition, refer to the article “The GASB Marks 25 Years of Standards-Setting” published in June 2009 on the GASB website.

 

The future of corporate reporting: a review article (2000)

 

In a research article published in 2000, Professor Vivien Beattie noted that: “Significant changes in the corporate external reporting environment have led to proposals for fundamental changes in corporate reporting practices. Recent influential reports by major organisations have suggested that a variety of new information types be reported, in particular forward-looking, non-financial and soft information.”

This paper presents a review and synthesis of these reports and provides a framework for classifying and describing suggested information types. The academic antecedents for certain current proposals are identified and the ambiguous relationship between research and practice is explored. The implications for future academic research are discussed and a research agenda is introduced.

For additional insight, read the article “The future of corporate reporting: a review article” by Vivien Beattie published in the Irish Accounting Review 2000, 7(1), pages 1-36. As well, refer to the 1991 landmark research study called Information to be included in the Annual Report to Shareholders published by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA). This 317-page study was drafted by J. Paul-Emile Roy, CA under the direction of a seven-member Study Group chaired by Gerald Trites, FCA.

Paul Pacter: Profile and Interview

 

Accountancy Age online published an April 2010 article called “Profile: Paul Pacter, international standard setter.” The article states that, although some people may not recognise his name, Paul Pacter is one of the most influential men in the history of international accounting standards."  Since 2000, he has played a variety of roles including director of standards for small and medium-sized entities at the International Accounting Standards Board and director at the global IFRS office for Deloitte in Hong Kong. During the 1990s, he served as staff member at the International Accounting Standards Committee working on projects including financial instruments, interim financial reporting, segment reporting, discontinuing operations, extractive industries, agriculture, and electronic financial reporting. From 1984-1989, he was vice chairman of the advisory council to the US Governmental Accounting Standards Board.

 

On July 12, 2011, an Interview with Paul Pacter was conducted in New York City by James Stocker for the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society’s virtual museum and archive on the history of financial regulation. A 53-page transcript of that interview notes that, during the 2000s, he also set up a very popular website (www.iasplus.com) for accountants involved in international accounting standards. Pacter comments that: “This was done for Deloitte. We just had an idea that there ought to be someplace out on the Internet where all sorts of information about international accounting standards was available. The old IASC didn’t have much of a website, although I did that too, I taught myself the HTML and the graphics and how to do FTP. Deloitte said, “Why don’t you set something up for IASs?” We opened shop as a free site. We opened the door in December 2000. Visitor numbers grew dramatically. When I left Deloitte in June 2010, we were getting 60,000 to 70,000 visitors a week – unique visitors. We had about 1,000 webpages. We had 4,000 downloadable PDF files. It was, and still is, the biggest website in a very narrow area of interest, international accounting standards.”

 

Looking back at a long career, Pacter comments: “...I must just say out of respect for the U.S. SEC, they’ve been a great contributor to accounting standards. They have stayed out of the development of the standards. They’ve encouraged and prodded and commented. They’ve insisted on high quality implementation. For that, I say I have the greatest respect for the commission and for their counterparts around the world. We don’t want politics setting accounting standards. We don’t want politicians setting accounting standards any more than I want them telling my surgeon how to do my surgery. Set the broad principles and let the private sector do the job. The commission has done that, and I thank them for that.”

Setting accounting and auditing standards in Canada - 1978

The article “Setting Accounting and Auditing Standards” was originally published in the September 1978 issue of CAmagazine. At that time, R.D. Thomas, FCA, was the CICA General Director of Research.

This article provides a detailed review of the existing standard-setting process. It notes that: “While the Research Department makes continual efforts to keep the 27,000 CICA members and over 13,000 other subscribers to the CICA Handbook informed on its projects in process, relatively few people appreciate the wide diversity of experience that those responsible bring to bear in the setting of Accounting and Auditing Recommendations, and the care they take in doing so."

"It’s important that those affected by these Recommendations know this background for at least two reasons:

(1) With the advent of the National Securities Administrators’ National Policy 27 and recent corporate legislation, Handbook Recommendations now have “authority” attached to them by federal and provincial government bodies, in addition to the support that has been given to them through the provincial institutes’ / order’s Rules of Professional Conduct.

(2) With the steady increase in the number and complexity of the subjects being dealt with by our research groups and with the resulting increasing demands on the time of volunteer members of these groups, a major study is now to be undertaken to see how our procedures can be improved. After reviewing the following highlight summary of the issues involved, any comments or suggestions you may have on present or prospective procedures and personnel will be very useful to the in-depth review which will be starting shortly.”

(For more information, refer to the CICA Special Committee on Standard-Setting (SCOSS), Report to the CICA Board of Governors on December 19, 1980.)

Update on the Social Science Research Network

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) has grown substantially during the last 12 months. The SSRN eLibrary currently has 375,000 paper abstracts from over 175,000 authors and has received 60,000 new submissions during the year. The eLibrary recently delivered its 50 millionth full-text paper download. This is a significant milestone.

During the last year, SSRN changed its server architecture to improve the speed of searches, enhance overall stability and provide the infrastructure required to meet the continued growth. In recent tests, the average eLibrary search time has decreased from 4.5 seconds to less than 1 second. In addition, SSRN's Citereader project with ITX Corp. has extracted 7.4 million references, 4.7 million citations, and 7.7 million footnotes from 306,000 full text papers.

In 2012, SSRN plans to continue expanding its interdisciplinary growth in the social sciences and humanities by creating research networks in Sustainability, Innovation, Rhetoric, Anthropology and Hebrew.

The Evolution of US GAAP, Part II: 1973-2004

This article, the second of a two-part commentary about accounting standards setting, chronicles the rising importance of financial accounting standards in different sectors of the US economy, which has led to increasing special-interest lobbying for accounting standards with characteristics compatible with the desired outcomes. Financial accounting standards affect the US economy in many ways, both in the aggregate and in the distribution of income, wealth and risk. This commentary captures many of the key issues that have preoccupied standards setters, and especially identifies the efforts of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to implement an asset-and-liability approach to recognition and a fair-value approach to measurement.

According to the author, “When a highly prescriptive standards setter is coupled with a rigorous enforcement process used by a government regulator to secure compliance with accounting standards, especially in a confrontational society such as the United States, companies and even branches of government will lobby the standards setter not to approve standards that interfere with their business plans and strategies. This is what has happened increasingly in the United States since the 1970s, and there is no sign that, on sensitive and controversial issues, it will diminish in intensity or frequency.”

(Read more in the article “The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (Part II)” by Stephen A. Zeff, PhD, in the February 2005 issue of The CPA Journal online.)

The Evolution of US GAAP, Part 1: 1930-1973

In 2005, The CPA Journal marked its 75th anniversary by publishing an assessment of the path of accounting standards setting over the previous 75 years. This commentary on the evolution of US GAAP was presented in two parts.

The first part covers the years from 1930 to 1973. The second part covers the years from 1973 to 2004. The focus is deliberately on incidents that represented important changes in practice or in the way in which accounting principles and standards were set.



Read about the history of US accounting standards in the article “The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards” by Stephen A. Zeff, PhD, in the January 2005 issue of The CPA Journal online.

Comparing Thoughts on Professional Judgment - 1937 and 1988

“Proficiency in accounting work is largely a matter of experience and judgment; the underlying theory of the science is not particularly profound. The test comes when we attempt to apply the general fundamentals to the infinitely varied and complex situations found in the world of commerce. Factual information and accuracy in its procurement are essential, but its value is submerged unless with it is synchronized the development and training of the judgment...the solution of business problems not only calls for an orderly marshalling of facts, but, what is equally important, careful analysis and logical reasoning from such facts, the formation and establishing of effective conclusions and the exercise of sound judgment.” (This quote is drawn from the article by Kris A. Mapp, FCA, "Educating Our Students - What Is Our Responsibility?" Canadian Chartered Accountant, October 1937, page 258.)

“According to the academic research literature, the exercise of professional judgment by those preparing and auditing financial accounting information is at the core of financial reporting. Without the flexibility and the intelligence provided by professional judgment, the complex system of financial accounting procedures, standards and rules would be ponderous, unresponsive, insensitive: in short, unworkable. Financial reporting, as it operates in Canada and elsewhere, requires professional judgment at many levels, in a host of circumstances, and by a variety of skilled and experienced professionals. In fact, professional judgment is an essential part of financial reporting.” (This quote is drawn from the CICA Research Study, Professional Judgment in Financial Reporting, Michael Gibbins and Alister K. Mason, 1988, page 1.)

Canadian income tax, then and now

It has been almost 40 years since Canada overhauled its tax system, eliminating estate duties and bringing in capital gains tax. Since 1972, we have seen no less than 49 editions of the Income Tax Act. Its length has increased enormously and the complexity exponentially. Changes in technology have aided the Canada Revenue Agency in the selection and audit of taxpayers. Ever-changing legislation, powerful audit tools, information exchange agreements and anti-avoidance rules have made tax planning harder, tax compliance more challenging and tax enforcement easier with key changes over the past 40 years and challenges presented to the accounting profession. (Read the article “Income tax, then and now” in the June-July 2011 issue of CAmagazine online.)

A century of CAmagazine

Small beginnings are no indication of ultimate results,” noted the foreword to the first issue of The Canadian Chartered Accountant in July 1911. Launched from temporary offices in Toronto with the slogan “Of the Profession; by the Profession; for the Profession,” the 32-page quarterly magazine was an effort to knit the far-flung members of the Dominion Association of Chartered Accountants (DACA) into a cohesive fraternity. At the time, there were only seven provincial accounting organizations, with Alberta having formed its institute the previous year. In September 1911 at the national convention in Montreal, the magazine received its first and most important review: “Let it be printed,” members voted. (Read the article “A century of CAmagazine” in the June-July 2011 issue of CAmagazine online.)

CAmagazine - 100-year overview

When The Canadian Chartered Accountant began publishing 100 years ago, editors said its pages would be “open for discussions, for news and for any other purposes tending to bring the members more closely in touch with one another.” Sensibly, they made no claim for how the magazine would strengthen the community and instead focused on reporting and offering insight on events and issues critical to CAs. For a century, the magazine has acted as the profession’s adviser, referee, historian and, occasionally, conscience. The article “100-year overview” in the June-July 2011 issue of CAmagazine celebrates those who built, sustained and helped CAmagazine prosper. Happy birthday!

The Canadian Chartered Accountant – July 1921

On page 1 of this 10^th anniversary issue, a Note by the Publication Committee stated “The Canadian Chartered Accountant enters upon its eleventh year of publication with this issue. Hitherto a quarterly, it becomes, in response to demands from an appreciative constituency, a bi-monthly publication, at however, an increased price, rendered necessary by the steadily advancing costs of everything entering into its make-up, excepting Editorial services and it is felt that the time has arrived when that painstaking and uncomplaining person, the Editor, should be remembered also.”

The Note goes on to say that “Concurrently, it has been decided that no further advertising will be accepted by the Magazine, excepting from the Institutes or affiliated sources, the intention being to preserve its character and limit its use to matters of purely professional and technical interest. Our advertisers during the past ten years are extended our best thanks for the patronage and encouragement they have given us, and we trust that the publicity that the Magazine has given them may not have been wholly without benefit to them. We bespeak the goodwill and assistance of our readers, with the objects of making the Magazine more valuable and interesting, and of enlarging its list of subscribers to the point of being self-sustaining. Nothing beyond that is desired.”

Pages 4-11 of this issue of The Canadian Chartered Accountant include the Dominion Association of Chartered Accountants (DACA, now the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants) Act of Incorporation (assented to May 15, 1902), bylaws, List of Past Presidents and Secretaries (1902-1920) and the officers and council for 1920-1921.

(Read The Canadian Chartered Accountant, July 1921. Also, refer to the first edition of The Canadian Chartered Accountant, July1911.)

Welcome to the AAA Digital Library!

The mission of the American Accounting Association (AAA) is to promote worldwide excellence in accounting education, research and practice. Founded in 1916 as the American Association of University Instructors in Accounting, its present name was adopted in 1936. The Association is a voluntary organization of persons interested in accounting education and research. The AAA Digital Library includes the following publications: The Accounting Review; Issues in Accounting Education; Accounting Horizons; Accounting and the Public Interest; The ATA Journal of Legal Tax Research; AUDITING: A Journal of Practice & Theory; Behavioral Research in Accounting; Current Issues in Auditing; Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting; Journal of Information Systems; Journal of International Accounting Research; Journal of Management Accounting Research; and Journal of the American Taxation Association. All full-text papers are provided in PDF format and are searchable using the Find utility in Adobe Acrobat Reader. All full-text papers provide links to references, as available. The AAA Newsletter, Accounting Education News, as well as the AAA Section Newsletters are also available online, some dating back to 1995.

That's Summa Story! The History of Accounting

"Accountants are generally recognized as making a valuable contribution to society, by providing the information that allows entrepreneurship to flourish, business to operate efficiently, stakeholders’ interests to be protected, shares to be fairly priced, and taxation and audit requirements to be satisfied. Accounting, however, has not always enjoyed such an established position, and today there is often a tendency to take our profession’s status for granted. It is interesting, therefore, to examine the factors that have brought accounting to the preeminent place that it occupies today." To learn more about the history of accounting, read the article "That's Summa Story! From the Caves to Café Pacioli" by Derry Cotter, FCA. To access the full text of this article, see the Digital Edition of Accountancy Ireland, February 2011, (pages 50-53). Also, visit the magazine's digital archives from 2007 and other archives dating back to 1998.

Journal of Accountancy - archives from 1997

The Journal of Accountancy archives are available online dating from January 1997. Back issues can be selected using the "Browse By Cover" link or the "Select from Menu" link in the ISSUE ARCHIVE section of the homepage. A search feature is also available that allows users to "SEARCH - 1997 to Present."

Tax blast from the past

The total tax bill of the average Canadian family has increased by 1,624% since 1961 — a faster increase than any other single household expenditure — according to a study by the Fraser Institute. In contrast, expenditures on housing increased by 1,198%, food by 559% and clothing by 526% from 1961 to 2009. (See "Tax blast from the past" in CAmagazine online.

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of research and comprises a number of specialized research networks. Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by publishing submitted abstracts and by soliciting abstracts of top quality research papers around the world. Academic and other Cooperating Institutions provide working papers for distribution through SSRN's Electronic Library and abstracts for publication in SSRN's electronic journals. The SSRN Electronic Library consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 28,400 scholarly working papers; and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 13,400 downloadable electronic documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Digital CPA Journal and archives (1989-2011)

The CPA Journal is now available online in digital format (with digital archives from January 2009). The full text of the CPA Journal is also online going back to 1989. Readers can lick on one of the years in the archive to browse the issues by month or use the search engine. In addition, article indexes for 2001 to 2011 are accessible by clicking on the appropriate year. Browse the CPA Journal Archives by year.