May 17, 2022
It has been another eventful year for IFA! I took over as President in November of last year and it has continued to be a busy, but productive time for all of us. Despite continued pandemic restrictions, we managed to continue to bring engaging, interesting events to our members and have more recently been able to connect in-person with some of them.
Our Canadian conference was fully virtual in 2021, with over 400 attendees, and featured speakers from across the country as well as Europe. In addition, just prior to the conference, we also hosted the North American Regional Conference where over 260 people attended online. We received strong positive feedback on the quality of the speakers as well as the format of both conferences. Thanks go to our co-chairs for the Canadian conference, Amanda Heale from Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt and Phil Halvorson from Ernst & Young, as well as Patrick Marley and Michael Kandev for the work they did in organizing the North American conference.
The traditional “Travelling Lectureship” was fully virtual again for the second year in a row. We were very privileged to be able to have Philip Baker, a very well-known QC practicing from Field Court Tax Chambers, discuss trends in international tax jurisprudence. He is an incredibly engaging speaker and we received excellent feedback from this event as well from the nearly 200 members who attended.
On the YIN (Young IFA Network) front, Sarah Chiu was appointed as Chair and Marc-André Gaudreau Duval was appointed as Vice Chair of the YIN Committee effective January 1, 2022. The YIN study groups continued this past year virtually with strong attendance and participation. There was an in-person session in Montreal this past April with plans to have more in-person events in other cities in the near future. The YIN Canada branch will also participate in a joint webinar with the YIN Argentina branch in June on the topic of “Recent Key Case Law on International Tax Concepts”.
For 2022, the YIN Committee plans to focus on increasing membership, providing more opportunities for engagement through virtual and in-person events and continuing to raise the profile of the Canadian YIN branch globally.
Our WIN (Women of IFA Network) committee is in its second full year of operation and continues to be comprised of Alexandra MacLean, Kim Maguire, Anu Nijhawan, and Kim Wood, with Kim Brown of McCarthy Tétrault joining as a new subcommittee member for 2022. WIN organized a very successful virtual seminar in June 2021 entitled “A Perspective from the CRA”, and are planning, along with Laura Gheorghiu and some of our francophone members, a francophone panel on May 27th that will be a hybrid in-person and virtual event. The event, “The Sky is the Limit – A Conversation with Sophie Chatel, MP for the Pontiac constituency (Québec)” will be in French with simultaneous english interpretation available on Zoom.
YIN and WIN were both well represented at the recent IFA North American Region Conference in Mexico City May 4th and 5th. Marc-André Gaudreau Duval represented the YIN Canada branch on the YIN panel on the topic of “Ultimate Beneficial Ownership” in collaboration with members of the YIN Mexico
and YIN US branches. WIN Canada was also represented by Kim Maguire (Bennett Jones LLP) in the opening panel, who was joined by Shannon Connaghan of GlaxoSmithKline and Herminia Diaz of Deloitte Mexico to discuss tax issues related to global mobility.
Our financial position is strong as we continue to maintain a conservative, but growth-oriented portfolio. This will serve us well as we move closer to potentially hosting another IFA Congress. Our committee working on this proposal, led by Patrick Marley (Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt), should have more information to share with us later this year.
You will have also seen, on May 11th, the issuance of the inaugural “International Tax Highlights”, edited by Angelo Nikolakakis. This is a publication that is jointly produced by IFA Canada and the CTF. I would like to thank Michael Kandev, Angelo Nikolakakis and Heather Evans and their teams for their roles in making this newsletter happen. It is and will continue to be a collection of technical articles that will be of great value to all our members and the members of CTF.
Angelo Nikolakakis has also begun his term on the Permanent Scientific Committee for IFA Central. The main task of the Permanent Scientific Committee (PSC) is the development of IFA’s scientific programme, selecting topics and supervising the planning and implementation of the scientific work of IFA. We are very fortunate that Angelo is continuing the long-standing tradition of having Canadians participate on the PSC.
I would like to thank our IFA staff, Robyn Corrigan, Shelly Ali and Rachelle Terte for all of the good work they have done over the past year. They are instrumental in organizing all of our events and have been responsible for them being well organized and professionally run.
I would also like to thank our past chair of the YIN committee, Kim Brown (McCarthy Tétrault) for the great work she did in elevating the profile of YIN and would also like to thank and acknowledge Brian Mustard, who left the executive committee last year after his final position as Past President. Brian’s commitment and dedication to IFA as a member of the IFA executive for the past twelve years has positioned us well for the future and we hope to continue the great work he has done. I look forward to continuing to work with our current executive committee, Patrick Marley, Claire Kennedy, Michael Kandev, Kim Maguire, Laura Gheorghiu and Sarah Chiu, and thank them for all they have done with IFA Canada this year.
Lynn Moen
Enbridge
Calgary
