Changeover To IFRS Drives Proposed Changes To Securities Legislation

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) have recently published for comments a series of notices that address proposed changes to securities legislation arising from the upcoming changeover to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The proposed changes are necessitated by the transition in the Handbook of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (the CICA Handbook) from the use of Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Canadian GAAP) for public enterprises to IFRS for publicly accountable enterprises — for financial years beginning on or after January 1, 2011, the mandatory effective date.

As reported in our August 2009 issue, it is expected that the CICA Handbook will contain two versions of Canadian GAAP for public companies for a period of time, with current Canadian GAAP for public enterprises being the standards constituting Canadian GAAP before the mandatory effective date and IFRS being the standards that will constitute