vision CA, The

I am astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it is hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." - Woody Allen

Looking back, I believe the CICA's 1996 Vision Taskforce report was the most important document to come forward during the five years that I've served on Council. The report established several indicators of success to benchmark our progress in achieving "The Vision CA." These benchmarks included determining the market share of CAs in core areas of assurance and taxation, evaluating the leadership of CAs in the development of emerging services and the market share achieved, and benchmarking the attractiveness of the profession to new entrants.

While all provincial institutes shared a vision of the profession in 1996, they did not share a vision of how to achieve taskforce objectives.

Much of the national debate has hinged on whether all new CAs should be "licensed ready" auditors. Some regions of the country argue that because auditing is one of the cores of the profession, all CAs should be able to sign an audit report upon completion of their CA training. Others argue that as auditing becomes more specialized, we should raise the bar in terms of experience and training before allowing CAs to sign audit reports. They further argue that we are hurting the attractiveness of the profession by forcing all CA students to travel the audit route even when their professional and business interests lie in other areas.

Many of the national firms with growing tax practices would like CA training to be opened up, allowing students to move into their income tax practices without having to pursue the audit route first. However, removing the audit requirement from the training of all CAs could threaten CA preeminence in provinces that currently restrict the practice of public accounting to professionals capable of issuing audit reports. Because we in the West do not face the

same regulatory/licensing pressures as our counterparts in other regions, we've been much more in favour of opening up new areas of practice and removing the requirement for all CAs to be auditors. We believe in a higher standard for CAs who want to move into the audit and assurance areas of public practice, just as we believe in a higher standard for those wishing to specialize in areas such as income tax.

So far, the profession has been unable to achieve a national consensus. It's obviously critical that we do. Discussions with the CICA and the PICAs are ongoing, but our provincially based profession, with its varied legal and regulatory environments, makes this issue a tough nut to crack.

The Institute welcomes your views on the subject. You can expect to hear more about it in the coming months.

Copyright Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia Jun/Jul 2001
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