7:30 - 8:30
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Optional Early Bird Session: Employer Brand 2.0: Define and market your organization’s reputation as a great place to work - Room 213-215
Speaker: Virginia Brailey, Vice President, Marketing and Strategy, ADP Canada
Employer Value Proposition is one of the most important products a company has to build. The global talent market is quickly evolving, and to stay competitive an organization must build and go to market with careers and culture – key products and components of an employer value proposition and ultimately the Employer Brand of an organization. Processes that were standard practice for decades are being redefined. In 2016, we looked at the importance of employer brands and how they can help your organization stand out in a competitive hiring environment. This year we will focus on some of the tactics to strengthen your brand to become a workplace that attracts – and retains – top talent. You will gain a better understanding of the formula: culture + leadership + opportunity = employer brand and how best-in-class organizations are doing it right.
Sponsored by ADP
Virginia Brailey
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7:30 - 8:30
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Optional Early Bird Session: Discussing solutions to the business challenges faced when budgeting and forecasting for the enterprise - Room 206-208
Speaker: Alan Whitehouse, Chief Software Architect, True Sky Inc.
As the organization grows, as more people are involved, and as the complexity increases, the challenges faced grow exponentially. This session will discuss some of the common pitfalls experienced when budgeting and forecasting and provide insights into how to avoid them.
Sponsored by True Sky Inc.
Alan Whitehouse
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7:30 - 8:30
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Optional Early Bird Session: Why nobody loves the audit - Room 205-207
Speaker: Pete Myers, CEO, Auvenir
We asked smaller audit firms and their clients across North America what their biggest issues were with financial audit engagements, and the answers might surprise you. Join Pete Myers, CEO of Auvenir, as he explores the key challenges auditors and clients face in the audit process and what might just be the solution to fix it.
Sponsored by Auvenir
Pete Myers
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7:30 - 8:30
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Continental breakfast - Exhibits open
Sponsored by: TD Insurance
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8:30 - 9:30
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Keynote address: The 0 to 100 effect - Room Canada Hall 1
Speaker: Shawn Kanungo, innovation Leader, Deloitte Digital
Since the dawn of civilization, we know that when technologies go from scarcity to ubiquity, the world fundamentally changes. Whether it is from hunting to settled agriculture or from calligraphy to the printing press, we see an explosion in new problems, industries and human behaviours. The only difference is that today, technologies are on an exponential scale. From doctors to AI-assisted health, banks to blockchain, retail to Amazon, we are on the brink of the most chaotic era in commerce.
In this session, you will: - Understand how exponential technologies are disrupting every industry. - Learn why timing is the most critical aspect when it comes to dealing with disruption. - Learn the secrets of how game-changing organizations exploit new problems. - Learn how organizations successfully experiment with technologies and business models at the edges.
Sponsored by: Xero
Shawn Kanungo
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9:30 - 9:50
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Keynote Remarks and Fireside Chat
Speaker: The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
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9:50 - 10:50
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Leadership
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The role accountants play in cyber security risk management - Room 213-215
Speaker: Caroline Cameron, Communications Security Establishment
Cyber security is no longer just an IT issue; it’s a business issue as well. Maintaining secure and resilient systems can build client confidence and improve stakeholder relations, while also mitigating the reputational and financial losses associated with a cyber compromise. Cyber security is everyone’s responsibility and can be a conduit for CPAs to demonstrate their ability to be business partners. This session provides an overview of today’s cyber threat landscape and how CPAs can guide boardroom discussions about cyber risk management and contribute to their organization’s cyber security strategy.
Caroline Cameron
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Financial Reporting and Accounting
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IFRS 16 Leases: An overview of the new standard and the most important implementation strategies - Room 206-208
Speaker: Martin Roy, Partner, Audit Advisory Services, Deloitte LLP
The new lease standard will likely impact most Canadian companies who lease assets under operating leases. In a significant shift from prior accounting, almost all obligations under operating leases (with very few exceptions) will be recognized on the balance sheet as financial liabilities, with a corresponding "right to use" asset being recognized. This session will provide an overview of the standard and explain what implementation strategies should be undertaken prior to the mandatory implementation date of January 1, 2019. Learn what information you will need to record the liability, understand the ongoing accounting requirements and assess the potential impact on financial covenants, lending agreements and financial statement disclosures.
Martin Roy
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AI and the evolution of the audit - Room 205-207
Speakers: Kevin Kolliniatis, Partner, Audit, KPMG, Chris Dulny, Partner, Audit and Assurance, PwC
Artificial Intelligence is used in many practical applications today and the transformational impacts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are expected to be pervasive to many industries. As finance leaders and service providers, we need to understand the impact of AI on processes and people. In this session, our expert panel discusses the changes that AI will bring to preparers of information and the Assurance profession – the benefits & opportunities as well as the complexities & challenges that may arise.
Kevin Kolliniatis
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Management Accounting/Finance
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Building resilience: Managing social, economic, environmental risk and opportunities - Room Canada Hall1
Moderator: Craig Alexander, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Conference Board of Canada
Panelists: Pamela Steer, CFO, WSIB; Roy Brooke, Director, Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, Brooke & Associates; Robert Siddall, CFO, Metrolinx
Risks and opportunities faced by business are rapidly changing; increasing frequency of extreme weather events associated with climate change are disrupting businesses, changing political landscapes are causing confusion and social issues are top of mind for the public and consumers in the businesses they support. How can businesses come up with a new approach to these risks and adapt to a changing world? A resilient business will change the way they think about sustainability and risk as an area that has tangible effects on your bottom line. This session will cover the impact these risks will increasingly have on your business and how businesses can change their thinking to anticipate risks that are difficult to plan for to become a resilient and sustainable organization.
Craig Alexander
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Roy Brooke
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Pamela Steer
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Robert Siddall
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Customer acquisition: Costing in a digital age - Room 210
Speaker: Zhen Jiwa, Account Executive, Google Inc
More and more marketing money is being spent online; digital acquisition and general advertising. As accountants, we need to be sure that we’re best capturing the most accurate all-in costs associated with that customer acquisition. With better tracking tools out there today, we can build much more informed costing models for customer acquisition.
Zhen Jiwa
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Tax
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Doing business In the U.S. - Room 214
Speaker: Martha Skeggs, Martha R Skeggs Professional Corporation
The landscape continues to evolve and there is a definite border between Canada and the U.S. This session will shed light on some tips to consider and traps you might face when doing business in the U.S., with a focus on taxation. What do you need to think about, whether you are dealing with US customers, travelling to the U.S., or expanding into the the U.S.?
Martha Skeggs
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11:10-11:30
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Networking break – Exhibits open
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11:30 - 12:30
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Leadership
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The anticipatory CPA: How to get ahead and stay ahead - Room 213-215
Speaker: Tom Hood, Chief Executive Officer, Business Learning Institute
Recent research says that the business environment for CPAs and their clients will be characterized by “unprecedented, massive and highly accelerated change” through 2025. To thrive in this new age of hyper-change and growing uncertainty, it is now an imperative to learn a new competency–how to accurately anticipate the future. This session will show how to anticipate these trends and move from being a crisis manager to an opportunity manager.
The objectives include:
• identify the biggest trends driving change in the business environment and specifically CPAs; • define the missing competency of anticipating and related success skills needed to be successful in the future and why it is important now; and • learn the five steps to be future ready and ride these ‘big waves of change’.
Tom Hood
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Financial Reporting and Accounting
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Great expectations: Adopting and adapting to changing accounting standards under IFRS - Room 210
Moderator: Lucy Durocher, Partner, National Accounting Consulting Services, PwC LLP
Panelists: Paul Feetham, Partner, Accounting Advisory Services, PwC LLP; Claude Boulos, Vice President & Senior Portfolio Manager, Canadian Equity - Opportunities, Fiera Capital; Taso Georgopoulos, Investment Analyst, Veritas Investment Research; Erin Taylor, VP Finance & Chief Accountant, Sun Life Financial
Understanding and implementing significant accounting changes is just the start. Once you’ve figured out the how changing accounting standards affects your numbers you’ll have to explain that to your stakeholders. In this session our expert panel discusses what reporting challenges preparers face and what investors are looking for in financial reporting, when adopting and adapting to the new IFRS standards on revenue, financial instruments and leases.
Lucy Durocher, CPA, CA
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Paul Feetham
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Taso Georgopoulos
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Claude Boulos
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Erin Taylor
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Accounting standards update - Canada Hall 1
Speaker: Linda Mezon, Chair, Accounting Standards Board
This session will provide an overview of the current priorities and activities of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board. Regardless of which part of the CPA Canada Handbook — Accounting you apply, you will be reminded of completed standards soon taking effect and early-stage projects in which you may choose to become involved.
Linda Mezon, FCPA, FCA, CPA (MI), CGMA
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Management Accounting/Finance
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Future of finance in a digital world - Room 206-208
Speakers: Grant Abrams, Partner, Finance and Performance Management Services and Tahanie Thabet, Manager, Consulting, Strategy and Operations, Deloitte LLP
When a Sumerian merchant first recorded the sale of livestock on a clay tablet, business technology was born. Today, 5,000 years later, that ancient technology has evolved into a new class of digital tools that are reshaping almost every aspect of business. You don’t have to look far to witness the spectacular chaos of cloud, in-memory computing, robotics, analytics, artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain, and more. These are some of the digital disruptors that are changing how business gets done.
What does all of this mean for the future of finance? Quite a lot. Finance organizations need to move faster to catch up with the change that has occurred and prepare for the change that is about to happen.
During this session, we will explore the impact these digital disruptors have on finance organizations and what the future of finance is in the face of these developments; including the new challenges, business demands, Digital tools and technologies, and most importantly the “People Puzzle” and how Digital transformation needs to be human-centric, going beyond using pieces of technology to changing the culture and imagining new ways of creating value.
Grant Abrams, CPA, CA
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Optimizing your workforce: Effective labour planning - Room 214
Speakers: Rob Torok and Mitch Max, Co-Founders and Partners, BetterVu
Are your planning efforts focused on the right things? Labour represents or drives over 75% of costs for most services organizations and can have the largest impact on the ability to meet organizational goals. Planning for labour - the right level of headcount by role, at the right time and place - is a critical capability for effective performance management. In this session, you will learn how innovative organizations across a range of industries are dynamically planning for labour across a variety of staffing types: retail and customer service, call centres, and operations, with the goal of optimizing costs while meeting customer expectations and service level commitments, under multiple planning scenarios.
Rob Torok
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Mitch Max, CPA, CA
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Tax
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The perils of intercorporate dividends, recent changes - Room 205-207
Speakers: Manu Kakkar, Founder and President, Manu Kakkar CPA Inc. and Nick Moraitis, Partner, FL Fuller Landau LLP
In the past nary a thought was spared when paying a dividend from a wholly owned subsidiary to its parent. Now that simple act is fraught with tax uncertainty. New subsection 55(2) has introduced 2 new purpose tests, as well as curtailed the exceptions for related party dividends and safe income dividends. Through the use of examples, participants will be sensitized on identifying and dealing practically with intercorporate dividends paid for bonafide business reasons given the current uncertainty on the application of new subsection 55(2) to these transactions.
Manu Kakkar CPA, CA, CGA, TEP, MTax
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Nick Moraitis
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12:30 - 1:45
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Networking lunch – Exhibits open
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1:45 - 2:45
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Leadership
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Leading in fraudulent times: Protecting you and your organization - Room 214
Speaker: Corey Bloom, Partner, MNP LLP
Incidents of fraud are rising every year, yet an overwhelming majority of Canadian business owners and C-suite executives say they are confident in their ability to prevent it. Canadian businesses are in the midst of “a dangerous combination of overconfidence and naiveté when it comes to detecting fraud,” according to a Ipsos survey conducted MNP in 2017. Although we know that prevention efforts have increased, the disconnect between perception and prevention of fraud is quite clear. Based on real-life examples of fraud scams, this session will help you to understand fraud challenges faced by leaders today such as social media pitfalls, email communication, more sophisticated scams, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and will provide you with insights on what steps to follow to help leaders reduce their risks regarding fraud.
Corey Anne Bloom
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Financial Reporting and Accounting
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Hot topics in financial reporting - Room Canada Hall 1
Speakers: Lara Iob, Partner, EY; Bailey Church, Partner, Accounting Advisory Services, KPMG
With today’s complex and uncertain world, what are some key financial reporting considerations to look out for? In this session, our speakers discuss business and geopolitical developments affecting Canadian companies, as well as the impacts and considerations on financial reporting.
Bailey J. Church, CPA, CA
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Lara Iob, CPA, CA
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Technology trends - Room 206-208
Moderator: Ben Gibbons, Partner, Deal Advisory, Collins Barrow
Panelists: Grant Furlane, President and CEO, LocoMobi; Paul Yakutchik, Chief Product Officer at LocoMobi and Chief Technology Officer with ANAi Global
Technology is all around us – and it is getting smarter. From the internet of things (IoT), to AI and automation’ technology can provide incredible opportunities for business, however, those that do not adapt risk long term sustainability in their industries. This session will help prepare your business for what tomorrow might look like as we explore technology trends that are emerging, those that are becoming more mainstream and what we can likely expect to see in the not-so distant future.
Paul Yakutchik
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Grant Furlane
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Ben Gibbons
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Management Accounting/Finance
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Supply chain as a strategic business unit - Room 210
Speaker: Tim Herrod, vice-president, Procurement, PotashCorp
Traditional linear supply chains have transformed into complex supply networks, underpinning the business’s ability to create and sustain differential value and competitive advantage. Building a strong, resilient supply network starts with positioning the function as a forward thinking strategic business partner, establishing strong partnerships with business units and suppliers as the foundation. Join Tim Herrod, vice-president, Procurement at PotashCorp as he discusses real world examples drawing from his experience transforming his own business unit into a strategic partner.
Tim Herrod
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Fireside chat: Issues facing today’s CFO - Room 213-215
Moderator: Edward Lane, Special Advisor to the ADM Finance, Department of National Defence
Panelists: Benita Warmbold, Former Senior Managing Director & Chief Financial Officer, CPP Investment Board; Fred Burke, CFO, Hamilton Specialty Bar (2007), Inc.; Pauline Port, Vice-President, Corporate Services, Chief Financial Officer, Canadian Blood Services
What is keeping you up at night? From navigating sustainability issues in political, economic and environmental avenues where the public is more aware and holding business accountable, to keeping up with technology and innovation, today’s CFO is faced with navigating a dynamic and ever changing environment. This session features prominent CFO’s that will speak to some of the key issues facing today’s financial leaders and provide insight on how to navigate these issues. This session will also highlight emerging trends to watch out for in the finance function.
Edward Lane
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Fred Burke
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Pauline Port
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Benita Warmbold
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Tax
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Using new tools to make life easier: Artificial intelligence and the future of tax - Room 205-207
Speaker: Benjamin Alarie, CEO, Blue J Legal
Tax research is always evolving. The past twenty years has seen its an evolution from a world of paper-based tax research (the “analog” method) to online tax research (the “digital” method). The next evolution of tax research is to move from digital research to computational tax research. In this session, Professor Alarie introduces computational tax research and demonstrates its practical application for the resolution of difficult tax problems (e.g., income vs. capital, employee vs. independent contractor, carrying on business, penalties, etc).
Benjamin Alarie
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2:45 - 3:05
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Networking break – Exhibits open
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3:05 - 4:05
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Keynote address: Everything is connected: Environment, economy, foreign policy, sustainability, human rights and leadership in the 21st Century
Speaker: Sheila Watt Cloutier, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Environmental, Cultural and Human Rights Advocate
In this truly globe-spanning talk, Watt-Cloutier provides a clear, meaningful, and comprehensive understanding of the way these issues are interconnected, and what it means for the future of our planet. Speaking on leadership, she shows how your organization fits into the grand scheme of things, and organizations can fulfill their mandate by understanding how the local connects to the global, and vice versa. With a focus on solutions, Watt-Cloutier brings the realities of the Arctic―where Inuit today face profound challenges to their environment, their economy, their health and their cultural well-being―to light. The challenges they face are clearly connected to the industries we support, the disposable world we have become, and the non-sustaining policies we create. Because her Inuit culture faces the most extreme challenges of globalization, Watt-Cloutier speaks from firsthand experience, and couples that with her extensive experiences as a global leader. Drawing upon her ancient culture, and speaking from a position of strength, not victimhood, she helps audiences find common ground. Her Arctic voice–not as far away as we might imagine–enlightens and inspires. With inclusive good will, it bridges some extremely divided gaps around the world.
Sponsored by: Appraisal Institute of Canada
Sheila Watt-Cloutier
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4:05
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