How do international financial reporting standards affect the quality of Canadian accounting information? INTRODUCTION Globalization has a great impact on today's economy. Differences in accounting regulations and practices across countries have become a significant obstacle to globalization and economic development. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mitigate global trade barriers. To adapt to the increasingly global business environment, Canadian public companies will transition to IFRS by 2011. This movement will have a significant influence on Canadian businesses such as capital markets, financial statement preparers, the accounting profession and even students of accounting. Investors are eager to understand the differences between IFRS and Canadian GAAP. Public companies should be ready to follow IFRS in January 2011. Private companies should also adapt their operations to the new environment. Therefore, most Canadian companies are concerned with the issues addressed by IFRS. In our report, we will focus only on how IFRS affects the four qualitative characteristics of Canadian accounting information: relevance, reliability, comparability and consistency. The discussion will help investors better understand accounting information. In general, IFRS and Canadian GAAP have the same goal: to provide useful information for decision making. Both are principle-based and have the same conceptual frameworks. However, there are still some significant changes from Canadian GAAP to IFRS: the implementation of fair value, going concern exposure, revenue recognition, disclosure of “extraordinary items”, costing techniques and l sector information. (See Appendix) This change from IFRS to Canadia...... middle of document ......ia.ca/Knowledge/View/Document.aspx?bookID=200803805&documentID=5&productID=181¶graphID=1KPMG. (2005). International accounting standards: do they make sense from a business perspective? Retrieved March 21, 2008, from http://www.kpmg.ca/en/news/documents/Speech20051128.pdfKPMG. (2006). Capital markets are looking for more globally consistent financial reporting: KPMG's mining survey. Retrieved March 20, 2008, from http://www.kpmg.com.au/Default.aspx?TabID=712&KPMGArticleItemID=2301Murdoch, Lorie. IFRS: are you ready? Retrieved March 20, 2008, from http://www.camagazine.com/index.cfm/ci_id/34987/la_id/1IAS1Revsine, Collins, Johnson, and Amernic. (2004). The social context of financial reporting. Second Canadian edition, Prentice Hall, Saudagaran, SM (2004). International accounting: a user perspective. Second edition. Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western Publishing.