加拿大“经济行动计划”成效及其科技创新政策分析

"经济行动计划"是加拿大政府为促进就业和经济增长而采取的紧急行动。随着加拿大经济的不断复苏,加拿大政府将重点放在了通过科技创新实现长期繁荣和追求财政平衡,所采用的政策手段也从直接刺激转变为追求长期效益。加拿大自2009年实施"经济行动计划"以来,已走出经济衰退,呈现出经济发展水平表现良好、人均收入增长迅速、外商直接投资突出等现象。通过分析加拿大政府实施"经济行动计划"以来的经济绩效,重点解析了2011年以来加拿大政府利用创新驱动经济和社会发展的政策措施和成效,以期为我国科技创新驱动发展提供借鉴与启示。     

加拿大对华半导体冷热箱反倾销与反补贴税案述评

加拿大是第一个对我国产品征收反补贴税的国家,在最近的5年里已对我国发起了8起反倾销与反补贴合并调查。加拿大对华半导体冷热箱反倾销与反补贴税案是一起较新的案件,并于2008年末最终裁定对原产于我国的半导体冷热箱征收反倾销税与反补贴税。边境服务署在最终裁定中确定了38项补贴项目。虽然最终只认定了3项补贴项目使合作出口商获得了利益,但对于非合作出口商,边境服务署通过部长指定程序裁定其获得了所有38项补贴项目下的利益①。在本案的最终裁定中,非合作出口商的倾销幅度与补贴量大大高于合作出口商。本案再次证明,面对国外反贸易救济调查,积极应诉肯定能获得比不应诉更有利的裁决。     

Disincentives to exchange customized local GAAP for IFRS

The global adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) resulted in the loss of local Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Some local GAAPs were tailored to capture the adopting jurisdictions' economic nuances, which IFRS may not address. One example is our setting, where, unlike IFRS, Canadian GAAP allowed the recognition of regulatory claims (i.e., assets and liabilities). Given this disparity, Canadian regulators granted rate-regulated entities the choice to opt out of Canada’s mandatory adoption of IFRS. Leveraging this unique setting, we test whether the loss of allowances under local GAAP is costly enough to deter companies from adopting IFRS. We find evidence that utilities with a history of capitalizing regulatory assets under Canadian GAAP are significantly less likely to adopt IFRS. This relation is more pronounced when a company has higher regulatory assets recognized under local GAAP, engages with the US capital markets, and has a high perceived cost of raising future capital. However, we find that the future cost of capital is lower for entities that adopt IFRS after historically capitalizing regulatory assets. Our results identify a new cost of adopting IFRS largely unexplored in the literature: the cost of losing jurisdictionally tailored accounting standards not included within IFRS.     

Enhancing Students' Enabling Competencies: Student Perspectives and Recommendations for Educators*

Employers continue to express concern that accounting graduates lack the necessary competencies when they enter the workplace. These concerns have been addressed in part by periodic revisions to Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada's (CPA Canada) CPA Competency Map, which is used to define competencies for entry into the profession. The CPA Competency Map has recently been revised to include a new set of enabling competencies (often called generic or soft skills). However, the accounting literature highlights a concern that time and resources spent on the expanding set of enabling competencies could take valuable resources away from teaching technical accounting skills. In addition, the education literature indicates that student motivation plays a key role in learning. If students are motivated to learn enabling competencies, then educational efforts could be more efficient and effective. Conversely, a lack of student motivation could reduce student engagement and learning. To address these concerns, we investigated the student's perspective on the importance of enabling competencies as well as on how and where enabling competencies should be learned. We surveyed 380 students enrolled in the CPA Canada Professional Education Program (PEP). We investigated the three new enabling competencies that are most distinct from the previous set of competencies and that may be the most difficult for accounting educators to teach: adaptability and resilience; creativity and innovation; and active listening. We asked students about the importance of these new enabling competencies for their future careers and whether the competencies should be taught in PEP or in the workplace. Our results indicate that students believe that the new enabling competencies are important and should be learned in both the classroom and the workplace. Moreover, student responses to open-ended questions provide educators with suggestions on how to incorporate enabling competencies into the classroom by blending activities that could simultaneously enhance enabling competencies with technical competencies.     

“Ongoing harm under a prettier,brighter umbrella”: A critical analysis of reconciliation talk in Canadian settler philanthropy

Engagement with the concept of reconciliation, broadly understood as the process or goal of transforming relations among Canada's Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, became commonplace in the philanthropic sector after the 2015 release of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Institutional responses to the TRC (e.g., by universities, businesses, healthcare institutions, governments, etc.) have been widely discussed in the academic literature—lauded by some as pivotal to the transformation of Indigenous/settler relations, and critiqued by many as no more than a shift in rhetoric covering over ongoing racialized colonial violence. Through a critical analysis of reconciliation talk as articulated through blog posts, press articles, conference recordings, webinars, and professional development resources produced by and for progressive settler philanthropy from 2012 to 2020, this essay analyses the hearty uptake of reconciliation in the sector. I bring these texts into dialog with the larger body of critiques of reconciliation, with the aim of interrogating settler philanthropy's place and roles in Canada's settler colonial order, past, and present. I focus on common terms and concepts that appear in conjunction with reconciliation talk such as diversity and inclusion; community-engagement and relationship building; learning and listening. I also explore instances of obfuscation and renaming, such as a scarcity of explicit references to race and racism, colonialism and white supremacy and a tendency to relegate colonialism to the past in texts produced by non-Indigenous authors. The themes I identify across these texts resemble those apparent in other institutional contexts. Reconciliation talk has potential to transform how settler philanthropy engages with Indigenous communities. Yet, many of the most urgent critiques raised in other fields apply to this context. Ultimately, I conclude, reconciliation talk may elevate and uphold—and indeed conceal—the white supremacist, colonial status quo in settler philanthropy and in Canada more broadly. Occlusions and renaming common to settler philanthropy's reconciliation talk contribute to what Vimalassery et al. describe as “colonial unknowing” and what Tuck and Yang call “settler moves to innocence.” In these ways, reconciliation serves a mystifying function for settler philanthropy, masking ongoing coloniality, absolving settler guilt, and avoiding more radical, transformative possibilities.     

A Canadian Response to the Pursuit of Global Sustainability Reporting Standards*

As business, government, and society continue to emphasize the importance of sustainability—both of individual organizations and of the natural world—accounting standard-setting bodies want to be part of the process. In September 2020, in response to “urgent and growing demand” for more “consistent and comparable” sustainability reporting, the IFRS Foundation (the Foundation) released for comment a Consultation Paper on Sustainability Reporting. In the paper, the Foundation proposed the creation of a Sustainability Standards Board (SSB), which it would oversee alongside the IASB. The SSB would become, de facto, the global sustainability reporting standard setter. The Foundation received 577 responses to its proposal. These responses came from around the world and from a wide range of stakeholders. Thirty-eight of the responses came from Canada. This study profiles the Canadian responses, contrasting them with the wider set of worldwide responses. Some uniquely Canadian features include user responses from a large number of pension funds and preparer responses solely from the energy sector. There was also a significant response from the Canadian accounting community, including from the full set of Canadian standard-setting organizations. Five auditors general also responded. Overall, Canadian respondents supported both globalized sustainability reporting standards and the Foundation's creation of the SSB. This support aligns Canada's response with the worldwide response.     

BEYOND THE TRIAGING OF NEGLECTED THINGS: Connecting Place and Participation Across an Urban System

What is the relationship between top-down governance reform and place-based participatory and deliberative spaces? In this article I argue that in Toronto, an urban system of public participation and deliberation is intimately interwoven into partisan scalar restructuring processes, as well as enduring tensions over the ways and means by which the public can have authoritative input on solving local issues. Regardless of top-down political manoeuvring, the public mobilizes in various spaces across the city, but the urban system remains disconnected and geared towards triaging. This means that the public must work autonomously across the city and within the crevices of city processes, prioritizing how to make gains on issues that they feel are important. I discuss how to move beyond this by building on deliberative systems theory and findings from interviews with local city staff and residents, and through an analysis of public deputations at the official Special Committee on Governance. Ultimately, there is a need for spatially integrated opportunities for more people to come together and assemble in different ways. Some of these will align with autonomous activities, some are liminal and woven within institutional partners, and others are more about geographical bridge building.     

Voices from Northern Canada: Integrating stakeholder expectations in telecommunications policy for rural,remote and Northern regions

In Canada, residents of rural, remote and Northern communities generally pay more for slower, less reliable, and more expensive telecommunications services compared to southern and urban residents. This situation is particularly concentrated in small-population, rural Indigenous communities located in the Northern territories. Over the last several decades, many public policy initiatives have attempted to develop telecommunications services, including high-speed broadband, in these underserved areas. However, Northern input into these initiatives and their outcomes has been limited — despite increasing evidence of the benefits of place-based planning, monitoring and evaluation processes. In this context we examine a recent public consultation about telecommunication services in these regions, focusing on expectations submitted by individual Northerners and by intermediary organizations representing their interests. Our analysis reveals distinct but complementary functions expressed by these different kinds of intervenors, which we suggest policymakers could take into consideration when planning consultations involving rural and remote regions.     

Rethinking Accounting,Accountability, and Accounting Regulation: Concerns about the Proposed Canadian Sustainability Standards Board*

This paper expands on a letter recently submitted by a group of Canadian business academics to the Independent Review Committee on Standard Setting in Canada (IRCSSC) in response to the committee's proposed Canadian Sustainability Standards Board. We highlight sections of the IRCSSC's Consultation Paper that we find problematic and draw on accounting and other research to explain why it fails to live up to its potential. Chief among the problems we identify is that the IRCSSC appears to be wedded to the same narrow, investor-based focus promoted by the International Sustainability Standard Board. We also draw attention to the rushed nature of the process, its exclusion of lay experts, the IRCSSC's ambiguous use of the term public interest, and its inattention to alternative understandings of value and the environment (including the people within it). Finally, we problematize the IRCSSC's sidestepping of the issues of power, culture, and conflict; its neglect of monitoring and enforcement; and its surprising disregard of the Global Reporting Initiative. Along with a number of suggestions for improving the process and its outcome, this paper also contributes to ongoing debates on standard setting and the question of whether accounting is currently equipped to provide the necessary tools for sustainability reporting.     

Practice Makes Better: Using Immersive Cases to Improve Student Performance on Day 1 of the Common Final Examination*

In the context of an accredited CPA program, we investigate whether an immersive case delivered over several weeks in a team-based environment in the Performance Management elective module improves student performance on Day 1 examinations and whether all students benefit equally from the immersive case. Results show that using an immersive case prior to Capstone 1 significantly improves student performance on practice Day 1 examinations and Day 1 of the Common Final Examination (CFE). Although high-ability students and non-English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students with co-op experience perform better regardless of whether an immersive case is used, ESL students benefit from using an immersive case when evaluating performance on Day 1 of the CFE. In addition, spending six to eight weeks preparing extensively for the CFE after graduate classes end in July seems to contribute to closing performance gaps between students. This study benefits the education process by identifying a tool that educators can use to improve performance on the CFE. It provides insights that may prove useful to CPA Canada and accredited post-secondary institutions as they revamp their programs to align with Competency Map 2.0.