Canadian companies will be able to elect early IFRS adoption

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02 Jul 2008

The Canadian Securities Administrators (representing Canada's 13 provincial and territorial securities regulators) have issued a Staff Notice setting out CSA staff views on possible changes to securities rules relating to Canada's transition to IFRSs for publicly accountable entities in 2011.

The CSA Staff Notice is No. 52-321 titled Early Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, Use of US GAAP, and Reference to IFRS-IASB (PDF 46k). The CSA staff's three principal conclusions are:
  1. CSA staff are prepared to permit, on a case by case basis, a domestic issuer to prepare its financial statements in accordance with IFRS-IASB for financial periods beginning before 1 January 2011. Permission would depend on the regulator's assessment of how well prepared the company is to deal with the change.
  2. CSA staff propose retaining the existing option for a domestic issuer that is also a US SEC issuer to use US GAAP.
  3. It is preferable for securities rules to require a domestic issuer to prepare its financial statements in accordance with IFRS-IASB after the mandatory changeover date, rather than Canadian GAAP, and require an audit report on such annual financial statements to refer to IFRSs as issued by the IASB.

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