Steve: I know you've been very helpful to us in the advice that you've given us with regard to a number of issues, including helping us recruit a person who was our own comptroller for many years. Do you help clients with, for example, their financing-ways that they can raise money, or marketing, or recruiting of personnel? To what extent does your role go beyond simply auditing the books?
Bill: Yes, we certainly do for a small office, we do get involved in things like financing, assisting in preparing applications to the bank for lines of credit, and advisory services on procedures and policies to put expansion circumstances into play.
Steve: Do you think that nowadays an accountant needs to have skills that go beyond a sort of basic theory of accounting? Is it becoming more of a sort of business consultant type of job? Do you have any comments on sort of the evolution of accounting in today's world? Bill: Very definitely, the accountant today needs to be more than a numbers cruncher. We get involved in all phases of the client's work. The Certified General Accountant's Association realized this thirty, forty years ago, and developed education courses for our members and four our students, that go far beyond just adding and subtracting and all its complications, because it's very necessary for today's business. Steve: Do you think that the advent of the computer-at least the way in which the computer is able to do so many things, and do its actually extremely complex calculations-has therefore taken some of that traditional work away from the accountant, and freed up the accountant to provide more of the soft kinds of skills and advice that the businessmen are looking for?
Bill: You hit it exactly on the head with that. The need for the accountant is not to add and subtract columns, but rather to be able to analyze and present the programs and procedures that will improve a business operation or help it to expand.
Steve: Are young people taking accounting? Is it a popular course of study in the universities? Do you feel that there are enough young accountants graduating from our universities? Are you involved to any extent in that?
Bill: Yes, our association is very active in that area. We need more accountants, surprisingly. There's a heavy load on our education system in order to prepare our new accountants properly for our systems. Steve: What has been your experience with foreign-trained accountants? I think there are quite a number of foreign-trained accountants coming to Canada who have studied abroad. What are the biggest obstacles that face them, in terms of being successful in the accounting career here in Canada?
Bill: Of course, the primary areas where they have difficulty, and where we concentrate their training is in accounting principles and taxation, and we cover, of course, the law of the country, because our rules of taxation and rules of business activity are quite different than many places in the world.
Steve: Is there also-to what extent can a foreign-trained accountant overcome the sort of cultural differences, having grown up in a different environment, and then coming here to interact with Canadians who have their own ways of thinking and doing things. What sort of a shortcut, or how do people overcome this hurdle?
Bill: Well, actually, the incoming accountants are quite impressive. Their education at home is greater than most of us think that it is, and their adaptability and swing-over to our methods of doing things is quite prompt and very successful in most cases.
Steve: I think you have had quite a few foreign-trained accountants here working in your office, and I would imagine that you are very satisfied with them; otherwise, they wouldn't still be here. Bill: Yes, that's correct. We haven't hit every nation, of course, so far, but we certainly have a fair representation in all of our offices across Canada, of people from other countries. Steve: Now do you find that among your clients, there are people-and this, of course, relates to our language system, and of course, we're interested in developing a broader and broader market for The Linguist system. Do you find that some of your clients, either the principals of those clients or some of their employees, have a need to improve their English in order to be more successful in this economy-in the North American economy?
Bill: Yes, and we've seen it happen. We get some new clients in, starting their immigration business here, and work with them through the problems that they have, and see their adaptation to our language skills improving, time after time, and it seems that their business improves right along with it.
Steve: Okay, well, I want to thank you very much for taking this opportunity-or taking the time to talk with me this morning. So thank you very much, Bill.
Bill: Oh, you're most welcome.
