Pivot Magazine May/June 2020

Named BEST MAG AZINE by the National Magazine Awards: B2B

MAY/JUNE 2020

THE REAL COST OF DIRTY MONEY

Opioid deaths, housing bubbles and lost taxes— why Canada needs to crack down on money laundering now

THE PANDEMIC Q&A: CANADA’S YOUNG, RICH + IN PICTURES / WEALTHIEST CPA / AND RETIRED We’re in this together

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Money laundering expert Peter German

ON THE COVER The real cost of dirty money PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL NEUHAUS 4 | From the CEO

FIRST IN

6 | What does Peter Gilgan 26 think of the housing crisis? 10 | The days the earth stood still. FEATURES 16 | Just how bad will the 22 | The trust crisis COVID-19 recession be? Corruption and financial crime are tarnishing even the most reputable democracies. Can Canada’s image be restored? 17 | Protecting against BY PETER SHAWN TAYLOR HAVE ransomware attacks. YOUR SAY 26 | Mr. Clean Money laundering 18 | How accountants can How former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German took and corruption stop the flow of dirty money. on British Columbia’s dirty-money disaster. are eroding trust in institutions on BY ADRIENNE TANNER a global scale. LAST OUT What can CPAs 33 | Gimme shelter do to combat this? 48 | Inside Salesforce’s roomy Canada has some of the world’s worst whistleblower protection laws. new Vancouver headquarters. What will it take to fix them? BY MICAH TOUB pivot.letters@ 51 | Lab-grown luxury. cpacanada.ca 36 | The young and the restless 52 | Roommates 2.0. Inside a new movement of frugal millennials who are swapping the 9-to-5 grind for early retirement. @cpacanada 53 | The gospel according BY ALI AMAD to Krugman.

42 | The equalizer 54 | Best bets for books, Tech titans are ruling the world by mastering data and artificial movies and TV shows. intelligence. Louis Têtu wants to help the rest of us fight back.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TROY MOTH BY LUC RINALDI 58 | Put ’em up.

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criminal activities, and already include various reporting requirements. The Canadian government awaits the next international assessment of our anti-money laundering framework. As those discussions pick up momentum, we need to keep some core principles and approaches in mind. Chief among them is the importance of adopting a risk-based framework that maximizes the effectiveness of any anti-money laundering regulatory regime without overburdening the system with admin- istrative complexity. The Financial Action Task Force, the international standard-setter for anti-money laundering efforts, recently published a guidance document on a risk-based approach for the accounting profession. The core idea is for stakeholders in the financial system and capital markets, including accountants, to identify the ALL TOGETHER NOW areas with the highest degree of risk A tangled patchwork of policies is preventing Canada from winning and focus resources and mitigation the fight against financial crime. It’s time for unity. BY JOY THOMAS approaches accordingly. Canada’s anti- money laundering framework should build upon a risk-based approach and Canada is finally coming to terms also need to bring transparency to include several core elements: with dirty money. Over the past two our financial system, protect those Corporate transparency: CPA years, a series of revelatory investiga- willing to report criminal activity, Canada strongly supports the goal of tions and reports has helped us begin and earmark resources to investigate transparency, including the establish- to understand the breadth and severity and prosecute the people behind it. ment of beneficial ownership registries. BISHAST AT HOTEL, TORONTO of money laundering in this country— Traditionally, governments have We recommend that, up front, policy-

and what we need to do to fix it. targeted financial institutions in their makers set out the regulatory burdens, SHOT KŌ AT It’s increasingly clear that incremental, efforts to fight money laundering and privacy implications and risks of such uncoordinated policy tweaks won’t do the trick. No province or industry WE NEED AN ALL-HANDS-ON-DECK can go it alone. What we need is an all-hands-on-deck solution—a coordi- SOLUTION—A COORDINATED APPROACH nated approach that unites all the key TO STOP THE FLOW OF DIRTY MONEY players to stop the flow of dirty money once and for all. terrorist financing. But in recent years, increased transparency. Indeed, for a While the COVID-19 pandemic Canadian bodies governing the legal, registry to be useful and efficient, it and its aftermath will rightly colour real estate and investment professions requires consistency in information Canadian policy decisions in the are all contributing to the battle, (as required by law), not an array immediate future, our government introducing new rules intended to curb of different rules. “The trust crisis” must not forget about fighting money laundering. The accounting (page 22) provides the latest details corruption, fraud and financial crime. profession could also play a critical on Canada’s efforts to develop registries To restore Canada’s reputation as a partnership role in both ensuring of beneficial ownership. trustworthy nation, governments, public trust and reporting suspicious Whistleblower protection: CPA regulators and the private sector will activities to senior executives, boards Canada believes the country would need to forge strategic partnerships and regulators. Our ethical codes benefit from a national framework for and crack down on more than just the and public-interest mandate represent whistleblowing that includes secure

act of money laundering itself. We will an important bulwark against these channels for whistleblowers to report PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT BARNES; HAIR AND MAKEUP BY CLAUDINE BALTAZAR/PLUTINO GROUP;

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CPA-PresLetter_EN.indd 4 2020-04-07 9:43 AM Named BEST MAGAZINE potential misconduct without fear of by the National Magazine reprisal or recrimination. Currently, Awards: B2B

Canada has a patchwork of protections VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 3 provided by various pieces of federal, EDITOR Luc Rinaldi PUBLISHER provincial and territorial legislation, Heather Whyte, MBA, APR, CDMP meaning that individuals, professionals SENIOR EDITOR Lara Zarum Adam Cholewa ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER ART DIRECTOR Tobin Lambie and organizations may not know FRENCH EDITOR Mathieu de Lajartre PRINCIPAL, CONTENT whether they are covered or where to DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Douglas Dunlop Daniel Neuhaus turn for protection. Any integrated plan SALES DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR Laura Cerlon Melanie Morassutti aimed at uncovering wrongdoing, pro- ADVERTISING SALES, EDITOR, DIGITAL Stephanie Bomba ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVES moting integrity, and stopping money Mary Ruccella (416) 364-3333 x 4051 SENIOR DESIGNER Dan Parsons [email protected] laundering and terrorist financing will EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Harriet Bruser, Ada Tat Ian McPherson (416) 364-3333 x 4059 need mechanisms that effectively pro- [email protected] COPY EDITORS tect whistleblowers and securely handle Jen Cutts, Janet Morassutti DIRECTOR, LANGUAGE SERVICES Jane Finlayson resulting disclosures. “Gimme shelter” CONTRIBUTORS Ali Amad, Matt Barnes, Brian Bethune, EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD (page 32) makes clear that enhancing LM Chabot, LeeAndra Cianci, CHAIR: Francis Fong, Kristopher Grunert, John Redding, CPA, CMA such protections is long overdue. Matthew Hague, Matthew Halliday, PAST CHAIR: Vinetta Peek, FCPA, FCMA Organizational compliance: Gundi Jeffrey, Chris Johns, Megan Jones, Jason Kirby, John Lorinc, MEMBERS: An effective plan to tackle money David Malamed, Kagan McLeod, Maury K. Donen, CPA, CMA Grady Mitchell, Troy Moth, Suta Rahady, Debra J. Feltham, FCPA, FCGA laundering and terrorist financing will Jake Sherman, Guillaume Simoneau, Andrée Lavigne, CPA, CA Riley Smith, Wing Sze Tang, Adrienne Ashley Lowe, CPA, CA also require the development of new, Tanner, Peter Shawn Taylor, Micah national standards that lay out expecta- Toub, Katie Underwood, Dustin Veitch tions for organizational integrity and compliance programs. “The best defence” (page 19) shows what accounting firms are doing to help their clients meet compliance frameworks. Pivot is published six times a year by the Chartered Professional Accountants Enforcement: The final element in of Canada in partnership with St. Joseph Media. Opinions expressed are not this collaborative national approach is necessarily endorsed by CPA Canada. Copyright 2020. the development of an enhanced, trans- TORONTO SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 277 Wellington St. W., M5V 3H2, Tel. (416) 977-0748 or 1-800-268-3793 parent and streamlined law enforce- Tel. (416) 977-3222, [email protected] Fax (416) 204-3409 ment system. Canada’s enforcement ONLINE MONTREAL cpacanada.ca/pivotmagazine record leaves much to be desired: 2020 Robert-Bourassa Blvd, Suite 1900, H3A 2A5, ADVERTISING The country has had few successful Tel. (514) 285-5002, advertising.pivotmagazine@ money laundering investigations and Fax (514) 285-5695 cpacanada.ca prosecutions. According to a 2018 Additional annual subscriptions are available at the following rates: members, $32; students, $45; non-members, $55. Single copy, $5.50. Outside Canada: $89 for a report by Transparency International, one-year subscription; $8.90 for a single copy. GST of 5% applies to all domestic sub scriptions. For subscription inquiries, call (416) 977-0748 or 1-800-268-3793 from there are significant inadequacies in 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday; fax: (416) 204-3416. GST registration number 83173 3647 RT0001. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40062437. Printed in Canada. our legal framework and enforcement ISSN 2561-6773. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to the Toronto address above. Pivot is a member of the Canadian Business Press and Magazines Canada. All manuscripts, system. In “Mr. Clean” (page 26), material and other submissions sent to Pivot become the property of Pivot and the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, the publisher. In making submissions, money laundering expert Peter German contributors agree to grant and assign to the publisher all copyrights, including, but not argues that, while the federal govern- limited to, reprints and electronic rights, and all of the contributor’s rights, title and interest in and to the work. The publisher reserves the right to utilize the work or portions ment has increased funding for enforce- thereof in connection with the magazine and/or in any other manner it deems appropriate. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or ment initiatives, more is required. transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of Pivot. Canada has long talked about these problems. It is time for action. We need an infrastructure that combats ST. JOSEPH MEDIA money laundering, empowers and CHAIRMAN MANAGING DIRECTOR, CONTENT protects whistleblowers, and promotes Tony Gagliano Maryam Sanati PRESIDENT MANAGING DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC transparency and accountability across Douglas Kelly CONTENT LABS Jonathan Harris the financial system. If we succeed, SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT, VICE-PRESIDENT, RESEARCH STRATEGY Clarence Poirier Canada will no longer be seen as a Duncan Clark PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Maria Mendes laggard in this regard, but as a beacon DIRECTOR, CONSUMER MARKETING PRODUCTION MANAGER in the global effort to restore trust. ◆ Rui Costa Joycelyn Tran

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PURPOSE DRIVER THE BIG BUILDUP Peter Gilgan amassed a fortune building houses across North America. What’s he going to do with it? BY JASON KIRBY

On a clear February day, Peter Gilgan’s luxury Before you started building homes, penthouse on the 55th floor of the Four Seasons you were a professional accountant. How did in Toronto’s chic Yorkville neighbourhood provides that prepare you for what was to come? a fitting perch to take in the urban and suburban I was very fortunate to work with small- to medium- landscape that he’s done so much to shape. In sized clients. I was sort of a confidant to a number 1978, the former accountant’s firm, Mattamy of them. I got to learn from other people’s mistakes Homes, built its first two homes in Burlington, and successes. I got to see different management Ont. Today, the company is the largest private styles, ranging from management by bumbling, homebuilder in North America, having constructed to management by fear, to management by inspi- more than 100,000 homes across Ontario, Alberta ration. I had a million-dollar education that did and several U.S. states. not cost me a dime. Along the way, Gilgan—who has an estimated net worth of US$4 billion, according to Forbes—has What is your management style? emerged as one of Canada’s most generous phi- Management by inspiration. We talk convincingly lanthropists. In June 2019, he donated $100 million and with deep conviction about what a valid and to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, which will just thing it is we’re doing, and hopefully people are go toward building a new patient care tower—one inspired by that and carry the ball down the field. of many such gifts he’s made. Last year also brought another milestone for the father of eight: Gilgan, You need a team you can trust to do that. 69, reorganized Mattamy (named after the oldest What’s been your approach to finding the of his eight children, Matt and Amy) to create a right people? new parent company, Mattamy Asset Management In our Toronto-based business, I’ll bet the average (MAM), of which he will be chairman and CEO. employee’s tenure is north of 20 years. My com- MAM will hold the Canadian and American mitment is: I’m not giving people jobs, I’m giving homebuilding businesses as standalone companies, them careers. The big difference, especially in this as well as invest in a wide range of asset classes, industry, is when the economy turns, as it inevi- private equity and new ventures. Gilgan spoke with tably does, we do not turn. We keep going. So, Pivot about the state of Canada’s housing market, most years, our employees work for the company, MAM’s early investments and the meditative joy but some years the company works for them. That’s of long-distance cycling. something you have to plan for.

6 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 PHOTOGRAPH BY JAKE SHERMAN

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today is different than prior generations, in terms of an urban lifestyle. It used to just be a way to get into the market and not a first choice.

Is there an affordability crisis in certain Canadian housing markets? There’s an availability crisis that leads to an affordability crisis. There are two issues. The amount of time it takes to get anything approved is two to three or more times as long as it was 30 years ago. That’s exacerbated by the dearth of land inside approved areas of development, which has led to a stunning shortage of land that can be brought on stream in our lifetime. And so house prices have outpaced wages. We’ve been living in a period of phenomenally low interest rates, so in terms of monthly payments, it hasn’t been as onerous. But if we were in an eight or 10 per cent mortgage environment, things would look very different.

What led you to decide to launch Mattamy Asset Management? They say don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I’ve been doing homebuilding all my life, but when you look to the future, the prudent thing to do is to have some diversification. And I want to make it clear that we’re not shrinking our homebuilding business. People keep interpreting it that way.

What has MAM invested in? “I WANT TO BRING TO THE TABLE You’ve been quite tight-lipped so far. It’s really early days. We have a wonderful com- SOMETHING BESIDES JUST mittee of folks who run the more passive invest- A CHEQUE. IT’S IMPORTANT TO ment side of things. A small percentage has been allocated to blue-chip type stuff. Some of it’s in HAVE THE FOLLOW-UP.” very entrepreneurial ventures, which, given my background, is where I’m more involved. Some In Toronto, average home prices are is investing in startups, including companies now climbing again at double-digit rates. we’re starting. Is that sustainable? A moderate level of inflation in real estate prices Over the years, you’ve given more is very good and very healthy. It’s been a huge than $260 million to various causes, contributing factor to building this country over many in the healthcare sector. You’ve said the last century, to inspiring people to own their you don’t want your philanthropy to be own homes and working that little bit harder to about just putting your name on things—that achieve that. I’d like to see it remain like that. you wanted to find something more grassroots. Have you? What changes have you seen in how Yes, we have. We’re working with the WE organi- Canadians view home ownership? zation to build a college in Kenya. It’s under I don’t see a significant diminution in people’s desire construction right now. We’re financing two of its to own, but I do see diminution in the ability to eight faculties—civil engineering, as well as busi- afford to own. I also think what owning a home ness and IT—and one of my ambitions is to get

looks like for a significant portion of young people some of my friends and colleagues, very successful PHOTOGRAPHSHERMAN BY JAKE

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CPA-Q&A_EN.indd 8 2020-04-16 1:43 PM businesspeople and wonderful engineers, to I am deeply concerned about housing. Of course, become guest lecturers at the college. I love the that’s how we make money, but I believe it’s also a idea of being able to bring to the table something really noble profession that contributes to the health besides just a cheque. You’ve got to have the cheque, and well-being of society. The real focus to me was but you’ve got to have the follow-up. about availability and affordability, and we felt this group could be a voice for that. Obviously, you Would you ever consider doing what can’t control what others are going to do and say, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have done and we didn’t share their views on other issues. and pledge to give away the bulk of your The reaction of our stakeholders made us rethink fortune to philanthropy? that, and while I’ll never stop talking about the It’s great for them. I’m not in that league. My net issue, we made a decision that this type of contri- worth would be a rounding error for those two bution was one and done. guys. But I like the legacy game and hopefully it’s wealth that lasts and grows for many generations You’re an avid cyclist. You’ve ridden across and is used for good things: to increase the amount Canada for charity. What’s your favourite of philanthropy we do, but also to create lots of thing about being on your bike? employment in this country. You can’t create Oh, where do we start? There’s the cardio and employment without capital. muscular fitness. The camaraderie that comes with riding with good friends. There’s also no better Prior to the Ontario election, way to see the land. Sometimes it just clears the you and other large developers gave mind. I’ve had some phenomenally meditative money to the controversial group moments when I’m riding on some old country Ontario Proud, which was dedicated road somewhere in Italy or God knows where, and to defeating Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals. I’ll just get lost in myself for an hour and come out What were your intentions? of it with crystal clear insights. ◆

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PICTURE THIS ALONE, TOGETHER How the coronavirus has disrupted business as usual BY LUC RINALDI AND LARA ZARUM

The coronavirus put our planet on pause. In March, virtually everything—from stores and bars to schools and borders—closed and humanity hunkered down. Though necessary to save countless lives, our collective solitude decimated entire industries, wiped out staggering amounts of wealth and left millions without work. Governments cut interest rates and committed trillions of dollars to help both individuals and businesses weather the storm, but it’s still uncertain when—or if—the world will return to business as usual. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed a deep well of human resilience and ingenuity. Up against the most merciless disruptor in modern history, we have stepped up, not given up. Good Samaritans have sewn face masks and fetched groceries for quarantined loved ones and strangers, while numerous business leaders have temporarily forfeited their salaries to pay their employees. Certain businesses—such as telecoms, video chat platforms, e-commerce sites and food-delivery apps—have gone into overdrive to accommodate our new normal, and others have found ways to adapt: entire offices worked from home, schools 1 shifted their classes online, touring musicians played for webcams instead 2 Canada’s of auditoriums. The crisis has changed $107B not only how many com- emergency aid panies do things, but what package includes they do. Canada Goose is worker and producing scrubs and childcare benefits, as well as $55 billion hospital gowns in addi- in tax deferrals to tion to luxury parkas, help businesses while LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, is using its perfume factories to pump out hand sanitizer. Even rivals are setting aside their differences for the greater good: Competing auto parts manu- facturers Magna and Linamar, for example, are teaming up to make desperately needed venti- lators. Across the country, thousands more companies are doing their part to help keep Canadians healthy and happy. Even in isolation,

we have found ways to come together. ◆ PHOTOGRAPH BY CONTRIBUTORS NAME TK

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CPA-COVID19_EN_v2.indd 10 2020-04-15 2:43 PM What does COVID-19 mean for CPAs? Find essential tax, audit and reporting information at cpacanada.ca/ covid19resources .

4 1 | March 15 Pope Francis delivers his Sunday blessing to an empty St. Peter’s Square.

2 | February 1 An Apple employee sits inside a closed Beijing showroom. Apple closed its stores worldwide to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but reopened its Chinese locations in March, encouraged by a lack of new cases in the country.

3 | March 30 An Amazon worker at the company’s Staten Island, 5 N.Y., warehouse holds up a sign during a strike. The workers walked off the job and demanded the facility be shut down and cleaned after a coworker tested positive for COVID-19.

4 | March 5 A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange watches with dread as markets plummet. In March, U.S. stocks experienced their biggest percentage drop since Black Monday in 1987.

5 | March 17 The beaches remained open—and packed—in Clearwater, Fla., during spring break. On April 1, Governor Ron DeSantis ordered Floridians to stay home for 30 days.

PHOTOGRAPHS: POPE, APPLE, STOCK MARKET BY GETTY; STRIKE, BEACH BY REUTERS MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 11

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1 | March 3 Toronto Transit Commission employees disinfect “touch points” on a subway. By mid-March, weekly ridership on the city’s subways, buses and streetcars was down 60 per cent, representing a revenue loss of $14 million.

2 | March 14 A mask-clad family takes a selfie in front of the City 1 2 of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, one day 3 after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared a state of emergency.

3 | March 13 Two men perform on a balcony in Turin, Italy. Unable to tour, many professional musicians streamed concerts online instead.

4 | March 17 Newly laid-off workers line up to access unemployment benefits in Las Vegas. Nevada is at risk of losing more jobs than any other American state due to the COVID-19 crisis’s particularly devastating effects on the tourism and hospitality sectors.

5 | March 2 An employee at a garment factory in China’s Shandong province works to bolster the country’s supply of face masks.

6 | March 25 A Bauer employee sports one of the medical-grade face shields that the hockey equipment manufacturer began making when the NHL suspended its season.

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CPA-COVID19_EN_v2.indd 12 2020-04-08 10:33 AM 4 5 2,130,000 Employment insurance claims submitted to the federal government in the last two weeks of March, about the same number of claims made in the entire 2018-2019 fiscal year.

PHOTOGRAPHS: TTC, TOURISTS, BALCONY, MASKS BY GETTY; LINE BY AP IMAGES; BAUER COURTESY OF @BAUERHOCKEY/TWITTER MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 13

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1 2

1 | March 18 3 A Spirit of York employee bottles hand sanitizer. The Toronto distillery began producing the in-demand disinfectant instead of vodka and gin.

2 | March 17 CTV News reporter Nick Moore finds a creative way to practise “social distancing,” attaching his microphone to a hockey stick to interview a pharmacist in Halifax.

3 | March 12 Stephen Colbert delivers his Late Show monologue to an empty studio. The speech was recorded as a rehearsal, but it went so well that the show aired it that night.

4 | March 13 Sasha Banks (standing) faces off against Alexa Bliss during an eerily quiet episode of the WWE’s SmackDown. The wrestling 4 5 organization moved its travelling shows to an Orlando, Fla., training complex and began filming in a crowd-free studio.

5 | March 17 Chef Francisco Anton pokes his head out of a makeshift takeout window at his Brooklyn, N.Y., tapas restaurant, La Ñapa. Anton installed the window shortly after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered bars, restaurants and schools shut in mid-March.

PHOTOGRAPHS: DISTILLERY BY DANIEL NEUHAUS; HOCKEY STICK COURTESY OF @CTVMOORE/TWITTER; 14 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 COLBERT COURTESY OF CBS; WRESTLING COURTESY OF WWE; WINDOW COURTESY OF @EMMA_A_WHITFORD/TWITTER

CPA-COVID19_EN_v2.indd 14 2020-04-14 4:54 PM Business is built on social and human capital.

Understanding the relationship between success and non-financial factors can help you manage emerging risks, strengthen your licence to operate and identify new opportunities.

LEARN MORE: www.cpacanada.ca/A4SCanadaprojects

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THE ECONOMIST thus needed to extend support to those that our normal automatic stabilizers do not reach. For those who don’t typically qualify for EI—such A RECESSION as the self-employed, part-time workers or the precariously employed—the government announced the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which UNLIKE ANY OTHER provides income support in amounts roughly Governments and central banks are using equivalent to EI. Combine that with the increase to every available tool to prevent economic the GST/HST tax credit, the Canada Child Benefit, catastrophe. Will it be enough? student loan deferrals and mortgage payment deferrals, and you get a group of measures designed to help as many affected workers as possible stay afloat. It is a foregone conclusion that the Then there’s the more complicated group of COVID-19 crisis will drive Canada measures aimed at helping the business sector do and the global economy into reces- the same. The 75 per cent wage subsidy for qualify- sion. What isn’t clear, however, is ing businesses has so far made the biggest headlines. what this will mean for Canadian The direct support will go a long way in protecting businesses and society, because some jobs and businesses that would have otherwise FRANCIS FONG this recession will be like no other been lost. But it is far from the only measure. In fact, we’ve seen. This is a policy-driven it might not even be the most important. Wages and recession, the outlook of which evolves daily as salaries are often a business’s biggest expense, but governments grapple with how to flatten the infec- a wage subsidy alone doesn’t help a business that tion curve—from instituting self-isolation policies also has a multitude of other financial obligations, and closing borders to mandatory quarantines from real estate and other fixed expenditures to and business shutdowns. inventory and debt-carrying costs. Canadians are understandably worried about This is why we are seeing interest-free loans and how this situation will evolve and what it means loan guarantees from the federal government, as for the economy. But that question is as much one well as a new program that will allow government of public health as it is economics. The depth and to purchase equity stakes in companies, similar to duration of this recession will be a direct function the Troubled Asset Relief Program that the U.S. of how long Canadians are forced to stay home. Treasury instituted in 2008. If public health efforts are successful, the pandemic will be short-lived, we will return to normalcy THIS IS AN UNPRECEDENTED imminently and the economic impact may be isolated to the time in which activity collapsed. EVENT THAT WE ARE FIGHTING However, the longer shutdowns and layoffs persist, WITH UNTESTED POLICY TOOLS the more we risk triggering other vulnerabilities we were monitoring before COVID-19 emerged. In addition, we’ve seen some of the most dramatic A prolonged shutdown could lead to widespread interest rate cuts and liquidity injections in history problems in the mortgage market. Borrowers from the Bank of Canada. In just 23 days, the Bank may be unable to make payments, which could cut interest rates by 150 basis points to effectively snowball into a housing shock or a disorderly zero, instituted a new quantitative easing program, unwinding in the vulnerable corporate-debt and injected support into interbank lending, money sector. Any of these risks unfolding could per- markets and mortgage finance markets to the tune manently destroy a portion of Canada’s economic of hundreds of billions of dollars. Even during the capacity and limit our ability to bounce back height of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the Bank from this crisis, similar to how capacity was did not need to do this because the stability of destroyed in highly affected countries like the Canada’s financial system alone was sufficient to U.S. or the U.K. in 2009. weather the storm. Considering current stress Notionally, Canada has programs meant to help levels, the Bank of Canada is expecting to go to during recessions—Employment Insurance (EI), such lengths before there is even any data on how for example. However, far more individuals and bad things have gotten. businesses are being impacted by these shutdowns And on top of those actions, we’ve also seen

than would normally be the case. New tools are Canada’s bank regulator slash banks’ counter- ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAGAN MCLEOD

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CPA_COLUMNS_EN2.indd 16 2020-04-09 5:30 PM cyclical capital buffers to spur additional lending, U.K.-based reinsurer, which negotiated a $950,000 while the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corpo- payment to the hackers, although it took 10 days ration reinstated the Insured Mortgage Purchase to resolve the matter. The reinsurer then initiated Program, a 2008-era initiative aimed at support- a lawsuit to recover the money against the ing mortgage lending. unknown attackers and Bitfinex, the cryptocur- The point of these programs is to address the rency exchange, which was holding most of the broader issue that, in times of crisis, businesses need ransom payment in a digital wallet. support in managing cash flow when there is none. The U.K.’s High Court froze the 96 Bitcoins in The fact that there are so many programs recognizes question and ordered Bitfinex, which is based that the business sector’s needs vary wildly. To truly in Hong Kong but registered in the British Virgin protect Canada’s economic capacity, we need to be Islands, to reveal the identity of the hackers. It is providing as much coverage as possible to ensure unknown at this time if Bitfinex complied. businesses stay afloat. So will this all work to minimize the recession? RANSOMWARE IS THE FASTEST Honestly, we can’t know at this point. This is an unprecedented event that we are fighting with new, GROWING FORM OF CYBERCRIME. untested policy tools. Whether or not governments BY 2021, EXPERTS PREDICT A NEW are going far enough is as uncertain as how long we’ll all be self-isolating. ATTACK EVERY 11 SECONDS. At the same time, the earnestness and dedication in the response across all levels of government, and The ruling had another significance: In English the way Canadians have come together, is equally law, it solidified the status of cryptocurrencies and unprecedented. Perhaps that is the most comforting crypto assets as a form of property, which opens notion out of all of this: that in the face of the worst the door for proprietary injunctions. pandemic of our lifetimes, we are seeing the best Although a notable victory, the ongoing legal in ourselves emerge as well. ◆ case hardly puts a dent in the seemingly endless onslaught of ransomware attacks around the world. Francis Fong is chief economist at CPA Canada. The FBI, which has recently renewed a warning to businesses, governments and other institutions that ransomware attacks are on the rise, reported in 2017 that, “On average, more than 4,000 ransomware CYBERSECURITY attacks have occurred daily since Jan. 1, 2016. This is a 300 per cent increase over the approximately 1,000 attacks per day seen in 2015.” BIG PHISH In October 2019, Cybercrime Magazine predicted Thousands of businesses suffer cyber a dire escalation in the problem. “Ransomware is attacks every day. Is your company ready? expected to attack a business every 11 seconds by the end of 2021,” editor-in-chief Steve Morgan wrote. The magazine’s parent company, Cyber security In late January 2020, court filings Ventures, estimated that, “global ransomware in the United Kingdom revealed damage costs will reach US$20 billion by 2021—57 that an unnamed Canadian insur- times more than in 2015. This makes ransomware ance company had been victimized the fastest growing type of cybercrime.” by a ransomware attack the previ- Considering the frequency of attempted incur- ous October. Approximately a sions—and the cost not only of the ransom but, DAVID MALAMED thousand of its desktop computers more critically, of the disruption to an entity’s and 20 servers had been infected. ability to conduct business—many companies and The hackers, who infiltrated the company’s IT institutions remain ill-prepared to defend them- system and installed malware called BitPaymer, selves. Given the example of the Canadian company demanded a US$1.2-million ransom be paid in that had its ransomware loss covered by insurance, Bitcoin, the most prominent cryptocurrency, to obtaining coverage might seem like a logical step. unlock the hijacked files. However, several issues need to be considered. Fortunately for the insurance company, it had One is the cost of a policy, which is rising and purchased cyber insurance coverage from a typically has a large deductible; another is the irony

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CPA_COLUMNS_EN2.indd 17 2020-04-08 4:17 PM FIRST IN

that, by having coverage, an organization might THE TRUST CRISIS be making itself a more attractive target. Fleming Shi, CTO and founding engineer of the American digital security firm Barracuda Networks, says THE BEST DEFENCE that attackers are looking for targets who have Experts estimate that nearly $47 billion insurance because they view them as easier to was laundered through Canada in extort a payment from. He thinks insurance has 2018. How can accountants help stop contributed to a rise in the amount of money the flow of dirty money? hackers are demanding, from an average of US$4,000 per attack in the U.S. in 2018 to approximately US$41,000 by the end of 2019. In 2011, Peter Dent, a long-time Whatever decision an organization takes regard- partner at Deloitte, discovered an ing insurance, it is imperative that it makes ran- employee for one of his clients, a somware protection a top priority. That means Ransomware manufacturing firm, was up to no preparing a risk profile, perhaps with the assistance attackers in the good. It turned out the company’s of so-called “white-hat hackers” (security experts U.S. demanded finance manager was committing an average of GUNDI who will assess how easy or difficult it is for intrud- JEFFREY fraud. He was the beneficial owner ers to gain access to an organization’s system, $41K of several businesses on his firm’s either by trying to penetrate its defences or through from victims by list of approved vendors, and he had signed off on tabletop exercises). the end of 2019 payments to them for fictitious goods and services. A dedicated cybersecurity team should be put in “What he did after those funds arrived into his place that includes not just internal personnel but company’s bank accounts to make them appear external experts as well. Hackers become endlessly legitimate is the act of money laundering,” says more sophisticated in their methods, and in-house Dent, the director of operations for Deloitte’s experts are often too busy to keep up with the financial advisory practice in B.C. “The filing of latest developments. Relying solely on the CIO, for corporate tax returns, the creation of fraudulent example, to keep abreast of new offensive and financial statements, et cetera, was all part of his defensive techniques may not be the best decision. scheme to make the earning of those illicit funds It might also be prudent to find out where to appear legitimate.” obtain Bitcoin, or some of the other several thousand Dent is just one of the many CPAs fighting money cryptocurrencies (the top 10 control about 85 per laundering in Canada. The crime aims to conceal cent of the market). If an attack is successful, and the true source of illicit wealth, “cleaning” the the victim decides to pay the ransom, time is of proceeds of crime by giving them a legitimate the essence. The longer the system is inaccessible, origin or moving them through enough channels the greater the potential harm or damage. of the financial system that it is all but impossible But the most important form of defence, more to trace where they originated. Though globalization than likely, is the least expensive and easiest to and digitization are allowing Canada’s businesses conduct: educating employees. Many hackers gain to enter new markets, win new clients and expand access to a company’s computer system through a like never before, these forces also contribute to the simple phishing email. A survey by the German flow of dirty money, posing a risk to those same portal Statista identified spam and phishing emails companies. “We are evolving in our fight against as “the leading causes of ransomware infections.” money laundering, but the economy and the bad Ransomware attacks are likely to increase in the guys are evolving faster,” says Greg Draper, FCPA, near future. Although there are no guaranteed a Calgary-based partner and forensic services team actions to insure against such harmful intrusions, member with MNP. organizations can mitigate or prevent potential Fortunately, services provided by professional losses by conducting proactive procedures. Prepar- accountants like Draper and Dent can be a bulwark ing for a clandestine intrusion has become an against these risks. To help their clients avoid unfortunate reality of today’s digital universe. ◆ getting caught up in such schemes, accounting firms develop anti-money laundering compliance David Malamed, CPA, CA, DIFA, CPA (IL), CFF, CCA, programs that identify and report suspicious CFI, CFE, is a forensic accounting and fraud investiga- activity. They also provide independent effective- tion expert at Cooper, Green & Warren LLP in Toronto. ness reviews of those programs. “We’re also being

For more information, visit uncoverfraud.com. asked to do more due diligence work in this area,” ILLUSTRATION BY KAGAN MCLEOD

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CPA_COLUMNS_EN2.indd 18 2020-04-08 10:35 AM to conceal their identity. It may also be a hint if a client is reluctant to provide identification docu- mentation or if transaction prices are significantly above or below market prices. Other red flags include unusual ATM activity: deposits made in the middle of the night, multiple deposits at different ATMs by the same individual. Or, for those working in a finance department, the use of vendors or suppliers that are not consistent with the nature of the business—for example, a real estate company using an auto body repair shop for recurring mortgage financing. The trick, Dent adds, “is detecting the non-obvious relationships between these individuals and/or corporate entities.” He says that public source data (including corporate registries, litigation records, social media, news reports and so on), amalgamated with institutional data, can help identify these non-obvious relationships. Emerging industries such as cannabis and cryptocurrencies also bring new compliance and investigative challenges. Draper notes that, in the cannabis industry, what is legal in Canada may not be in other countries, “making it difficult to assess whether funds are the proceeds of crime or simply business revenues.” Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin—conceived as an alternative to the regulated financial system—have been used frequently to finance criminal activities. “There are definitely unique money laundering risks to both sectors,” says Draper. “The legitimate players

says Draper, “so that our clients can bring on “WE ARE EVOLVING IN OUR FIGHT board new business suppliers, distributors and customers with confidence.” AGAINST MONEY LAUNDERING, Traditionally, organizations tackled the risk of BUT THE ECONOMY AND THE BAD money laundering as a matter of compliance, but Dent says they also have to focus on the criminal GUYS ARE EVOLVING FASTER” activity that generated the funds being laundered. If they don’t, they may inadvertently undermine are working hard to demonstrate an effective their own risk-mitigation strategies. “An orga- compliance regime that their investors, bankers nization can be ‘checking all the boxes’ in its and regulators expect.” compliance framework and meeting the anti- Dent applauds B.C.’s efforts to crack down on money laundering regulatory requirements,” says money laundering, including the creation of a Dent, “but still be at risk of being an inadvertent beneficial ownership registry and the Land Owner conduit for money laundering.” Transparency Act. “The rest of Canada is beginning There are ways for accountants to abort crimes to feel the pressure,” he says. “The proceeds from before they occur. Draper advises that “any transac- illicit funds will continue to find their way into the tion that adds effort and cost without obvious provinces that don’t follow B.C.’s lead.” ◆ economic benefit is a red flag.” A simple example is moving money from account A to account B to Gundi Jeffrey is the managing editor of Think- account C, instead of just A to C. Using third parties TWENTY20, a digital magazine that provides insights to conduct transactions, or transacting through shell into how current and future trends are transforming companies—particularly in high-risk jurisdictions— the accounting profession worldwide. For more

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAMY are warning signs that the beneficial owner is trying information, visit thinktwenty20.com.

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CPA_COLUMNS_EN2.indd 19 2020-04-08 10:35 AM THANK YOU FOR LONG-TIME SERVICE JEFF JUTZI MEMORIAL AWARD Barry Travers, FCPA, FCA KPMG, Toronto For outstanding leadership, engagement and dedication as Eddy Burello, FCPA, FCA facilitators of the In-Depth Tax Program. Congratulations TO THE EDUCATORS WHO MADE OUR 2018 – 2019 MNP, Toronto TAX COURSES SUCH A HUGE SUCCESS... to this year’s winners!

Patrick Décarie Ari Kapitany Leora Selesnick Technicolor Canada Inc Deloitte Deloitte IN LOVING MEMORY OF Montréal Ottawa Toronto CHARLENE MACNEILL

FACILITATORS AND SUPERVISORS (continued) THANK YOU! Jessica Haley Greg Lo Kevin Perkins Stewart Spiers Christopher Hanley Vincent Lo Peter Phung Garth Steele Denika Heaton Ray Loucks James Porter Mark Stevens Daryl Heinsohn Jen Lucier Anita Poscente Tristan Story Mike Healy Benjamin Luk Anne Postlewaite Owen Strychun William House Matthew MacAdam Adom Postma Karen Sung Your experience, insight and contributions are invaluable. Shehryar Hussain Ian Macdonald Santosh Prasad Georgia Swan Matthew Hutchens Dwayne MacKay Quinton Pullen Sharon Szeto Armando Iannuzzi Bruce MacPhee Cezar Raagas Yola Szubzda Abraham Iqbal Madison Mai Chris Rathwell Sam Tabrizi Armand Iratunga Matthew Mammola Sathees Ratnam Nicholas Talarico Shanawaz Islam Sally Man Ki Lau Jennifer Reid Alvin Tam LECTURERS Leslie Ivany Dustin Mansﬁ eld Shelagh Rinald Mark Tang Sankalp Jaggi Ian Manson Ryan Robinet Brian Taylor David Bunn Andrew Forbes Sheryne Mecklai Janice Roper Rishma Jessa Felicia Mar Matthew Roman Robert Teleske Eddy Burello Armando Iannuzzi Jacob Milosek David Robertson Marino Jeyarajah Carla Marchant Danvir Roopra Nancy Thandi Donald Carson Silvia Jacinto Heath Moore Tamara Rozansky Greg Johnson Benoit Martinet Matthew Ross Simon Thang Judith Charbonneau- Stéphanie Jean Michael Munoz Jim Samuel Preetika Joshi Hayley Maschek Dante Rossi Allison Thomas Kaplan Torran Jolly Kurt Oelschlagel Ryan Thulien Julia Joyce Justin Mastrangelo Martin Royer Dawn Tipton Danny Cisterna Mark Kaplan Heather O’Hagan Barry Travers Ari Kapitany François Mathieu Pejman Saket Anthony Tomacic Luigi De Rose Kelly Kolke J e ff O l d e w e n i n g Andy Tse Howard Kazdan Stephen May Tony Salgado David van Voorst Ronnie De Zen James Kraft Florie Pellerin-Catellier Bryan Walsh Kenneth Keung Whitney Mayﬁ eld Monique Sami Adam Vander Duim Simon Douville Greg London Pam Prior Eric Xiao Mandeep Khosa Maureen McCullough Karen Sands Alan Valihora Mary Esteves Rick McLean Quinton Pullen Todd King Chantale McGuire D’Arcy Schieman Ebony Verbonac Hayat Kirameddine Katie McIntosh Candace Sears Boris Volfovsky David Klassen John Mendis Leora Selesnick Paul Walker Nick Korhonen Ryan Minor Birju Shah Robert Wang FACILITATORS AND SUPERVISORS Hetal Kotecha Atif Mir Karina Shahani Gwendolyn Watson Miles Laing Kirill Molchanov Simon Sham Kelly Watson Adrian Adams Marc-Antoine Brault- Matthew Cowin Kevin Foster Colin Lane Laurent Moons Tim Sham Jin Wen Haroon Ali Khan Brissette Dale Craig Blaise Foulson Rock Lapalme Jesse Moore Henry Shew Bryan Whalen Samy Amar Ian Brown Susan Cruickshank Dean Fowler Stephen Latimer Caroline Morin Sara Siddique Karen Wilkinson Nathalie Amirault Robbie Brown Deol Dalwinder Didier Fréchette Sally Lau Amy Murdock Christopher Singh Douglas Winter Sandy Anderson Shaun Brown Christine Damianidis Mandeep Gaheer Rob Leavoy Allana Murray Gandhu Justin Wong Lindsay Antenucci Stephanie Buss Jennifer Dawe Travis Gallant Victor Lee Kam Nat Colin Sirr Janice Woo Karthika Ariyakumaran Robyn Campbell Patrick Décarie Teresa Gannon Annie Lemieux Sasha Nekipelli Sajeepan Sivasooriyan Mary Yang Nathalie Aubin Stephanie Caron Nathan deJonge Alex Garber Robert Leombruno Christy Ngo Jason Skilnick Jacob Youn Farinaz Bahmani Aaron Chai Cindy Desrochers Nadya Geddes Jeremy Levi Megan Ni Hal Sloan Steve Youn Michael Bancroft Shaina Chawla Trevor deWolde Alex Ghani Tyler Lewis Jason Nickel Byron Smith Kevin Yu Doron Barkai Ruth Chen Maninder Dhadda Joe Gill Raymond Li Brad Olsen Sean Smith Gordon Zittlau Dan Basso Prisca Cheung Vincent Didkovsky Christa Gillis David Lin Stephanie Olsen Richard Spadafora Christina Zurowski Amy Beaman Carl Ching Scott Douglas Drew Gilmour Ben Liva Stephanie Pantaleo Alison Spiers Byron Beswick Ling Chu Dwayne Dueck Charanjit Girn Rohini Bhat Ryan Clarke Karthika Elanga Richard Girouard Simran Bhatti Julie Colden Mary Ellis Yevgen Glushko Dana Birch Michelle Coleman Michael Espinoza Jorge Gomez Liam Bordeleau Anthony Condello Jessica Fabbro Meghan Greene WANT TO GET INVOLVED? Hanane Borgacci Amanda Couvrette Jacqueline Fehr Paul Grossman LEARN MORE AT Gianpaolo Bozzo Simon Couvrette Erin Foote Ronald Ha cpacanada.ca/teachingtax

Untitled-3 2 2020-04-14 11:47 AM THANK YOU FOR LONG-TIME SERVICE JEFF JUTZI MEMORIAL AWARD Barry Travers, FCPA, FCA KPMG, Toronto For outstanding leadership, engagement and dedication as Eddy Burello, FCPA, FCA facilitators of the In-Depth Tax Program. Congratulations TO THE EDUCATORS WHO MADE OUR 2018�–�2019 MNP, Toronto TAX COURSES SUCH A HUGE SUCCESS... to this year’s winners!

Patrick Décarie Ari Kapitany Leora Selesnick Technicolor Canada Inc Deloitte Deloitte IN LOVING MEMORY OF Montréal Ottawa Toronto CHARLENE MACNEILL

Untitled-3 3 2020-04-14 11:47 AM CPA-GlobalTrustCrisis_EN2.indd 22 Crisis Trust The take toimage? repair Canada’s democracies. Whatwill it world’sthe most reputable evencrime tarnishing are Corruption financial and

C Cohen cites the SNC-Lavalin affair and and affair SNC-Lavalin the cites Cohen behaviour, for corrupt of tolerance levels a long Angolan way to go before it reaches has Canada gon of while propriety. And a snow-white as para country own their view of Canadians’ most with conflicts Angola. and Arabia Saudi alongside to watch,” a“country as nowis listed Canada findings, latest of these a result As worldwide. malfeasance corporate and of corruption prevalence on the surveys and opinion expert regulations, sources measuring business practices, data 13 from varied compiled is index 2012.” since The decline overall of an part and drop, large unusually “It an is grimly. Cohen James director executive Canada International Transparency says to 12th,” ninth from fell world. “Canada the in top countries 10the “cleanest” of one no longer Canada considers 2020, Keeping this sort of company likely oflikely company sort this Keeping ception Index, released in January January in released Index, ception Per 2019 Corruption national’s gap.” Inter Transparency “trust fromserious a suffering is anada SHAWN TAYLOR BY PETER

2020-04-07 10:16AM - - -

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL NEUHAUS rampant money laundering in British to be a comprehensive, “legally binding” corruption-fighting Columbia’s casino and real estate sectors tool, yet its signatories cover nearly every egregious case cited as key reasons for Canada’s recent fall in Transparency International’s latest report. The same goes from grace. “There is a perception out for the OECD’s Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign there that governments and institutions Public Officials in International Business Transactions, which don’t listen to the public and that the dates back to 1999. Such efforts have clearly had little impact system is rigged against them,” says Cohen. on stemming bad behaviour and financial crimes. Real, “That leaves the average person feeling tangible progress in fixing the trust gap will not be found in powerless, and we need to overcome more plenary sessions or high-minded rhetoric, but through that trust gap.” granular, detail-focused efforts carried out on a country-by- Canada is not alone among developed country basis. And it’s here that accountants have a big role countries suffering a reputational blow. to play, says José R. Hernandez, a Cana- In recent years, both Australia and the dian CPA, PhD and principal in the United Kingdom have also seen their Zurich-based risk consultancy firm Corruption Perception Index rankings It may be Ortus Strategies. “The trust gap is one fall as a result of financial concerns—a of the most important subjects facing series of banking inquiries in Australia years before the accounting profession and demo- and an auditing crisis in the U.K. Mean- cratic institutions,” he says. “Accountants while, major firms in Iceland and Sweden Canada’s are an integral part of business and have been implicated in international markets, serving as important gate- bribery scandals, and the largest bank in reputation is keepers to prevent corruption, bribery Denmark has been tied to money and money laundering. And we have a laundering operations emanating from restored, but leadership role to perform.” Russia and Estonia. No country appears immune to this sort of bad behaviour, we are finally ixing what ails Canada requires and these revelations are doing significant that we first recognize how we damage to public confidence in institu- making got into this situation. “Canada’s tions and government regulators. the necessary resource-rich and stable economy, To grasp the scale of this growing sense Fas well as our open and perhaps naïve of dissatisfaction, consider another sur- changes culture, have made our country a haven vey from the global communications for bad actors,” says Hernandez. “Dirty consultancy Edelman. The firm’s 2020 money has to find a home somewhere, Trust Barometer, also released this past and a country such as Canada with so January, found a majority of respondents many desirable assets is going to attract that sort of activity.” across all developed countries no longer White-collar crime erodes trust and causes substantial dam- believe they’ll be better off in five years; age, as the B.C. money laundering scandals make plain. a stunning 56 per cent think capitalism In 2008 and again in 2014, the Financial Action Task Force, is doing more harm than good. (Canada a little-known but influential international standards-setting was one of only five countries in which a body, called out Canada for “a significant set of deficiencies” majority still support capitalism.) This regarding our ability to determine the true owners of private rising sense of despair curiously coexisted corporations—what is called beneficial ownership transparency. with a rather healthy global economy, This is a key factor in cracking down on financial criminal long before the COVID-19 pandemic activity and corruption. A 2016 evaluation report again cited rattled markets. Once, economic growth the ability of firms to operate in relative anonymity as a major was sufficient to nurture faith in the future. weakness in our defence against money launderers. But it wasn’t Today, growing populist anger and a until the B.C. money laundering and SNC-Lavalin scandals of steady supply of crises have eroded that the past several years that regulators and politicians began faith and threaten to undermine democ- organizing a fulsome response. “There is a heightened sense of racy across the globe. “We are living in a urgency in Canada now,” says Hernandez, who is CPA Canada’s trust paradox,” reads a statement from representative on the federal government’s Advisory Commit- Edelman. “The battle for trust will be tee on Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing. “We may fought on the field of ethical behaviour.” be falling behind other developed nations. Some of these laws This global malaise has been a long probably should have been passed five years ago.” time coming. And we’ve seen plenty of The process of repairing Canada’s reputation began in earnest efforts at correcting course over the with the 2018 federal budget, which included amendments years to no apparent effect. The United requiring most federally incorporated private companies to Nations Convention Against Corruption, maintain an accurate register of all “individuals with significant which came into force in 2005, claims control”—for example, someone with an interest of 25 per cent

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CPA-GlobalTrustCrisis_EN2.indd 23 2020-04-14 4:37 PM or more of the shares of the company. In tandem with these Such a broadly accessible registry changes were new anti-money laundering rules issued by the would also offer important advantages Ottawa-based Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis for accountants doing their due diligence, Centre (FINTRAC), along with a suite of related reforms from notes Hernandez. It would be easier to other oversight and regulatory bodies. The Federation of Law spot bad actors, thus improving the Societies of Canada, for example, last year created a model set reputation of the entire business com- of anti-money laundering rules to be implemented by provin- munity. “Crime and dirty money hate cial law bodies, including strict client-verification procedures transparency. But transparency does not and a ban on lawyers accepting cash payments of more than come for free: We need to give up some THE TRUST CRISIS $7,500. The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization privacy, build adequate infrastructure of Canada (IIROC) has similarly established new rules for and educate ourselves to do business with its members on cash deposits and client risk assessments, better safeguards,” he says. “Businesses which take effect in June 2020. When everything is up and need to know who is behind the money running, Canada will have a more robust and modern system in the organizations they deal with. You for tracking who moves what money where. don’t want to be involved with dirty The most significant aspect of this new regulatory regime money, but finding that out requires a would be the creation of a registry, or registries, of beneficial Canada’s new lot of research, time and money.” ownership. Other components include tighter rules for “money regulatory However, even a fully public system services businesses” engaged in moving funds around the regime requires has drawbacks. Carol Bellringer, an digital currencies, world, and a broader definition of what forms of money must prepaid cards FCPA and the former auditor general be tracked, including digital currencies, prepaid cards and and e-transfers to of Manitoba and B.C., believes there e-transfers. There are also new rules requiring the reporting be tracked will be complications in building and of numerous small, suspicious cash transactions as if they maintaining such a massive, publicly were a single transaction. available registry across multiple juris- The changes mean “Canada is mirroring global standards,” dictions. “You have to weigh the costs observes Daniel Leslie, a lawyer with Norton Rose Fulbright and benefits,” she says. While she and an expert on anti-money laundering and financial services. acknowledges the appeal of making so But, he points out, we are doing so in a uniquely Canadian much information public, “it’s not way. As with many other aspects of Canadian federalism, always practical.” creating a new national initiative for anti-money laundering This tension between balancing privacy is neither simple nor easy. Most corporate registration is a with disclosure is similarly reflected in provincial matter, and the creation of a Canada-wide registry Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2019 of beneficial ownership requires more than just changing a mandate letter to Navdeep Bains, an few federal rules. “It is now the responsibility of the provinces and territories to introduce those requirements,” says Leslie. It’s up to each individual jurisdiction to ensure its own registry integrates seamlessly with those of all other provinces and CRACKDOWN territories—a process that will inevitably involve complications. A snapshot of the global campaign against Of particular interest to the accounting profession, Leslie adds, corruption and financial crime due diligence expectations are now embedded in all stages and aspects of these anti-money laundering rules. While creating a functional registry is crucial to repairing Canada’s international reputation, the actual form and role of this registry also remains uncertain. Leslie expects it to be a CANADA BRITAIN This past February, B.C. Following the collapse of closed system, with information about significant owners of a Supreme Court judge Austin infrastructure giant Carillion corporation available only to financial regulators, police and Cullen launched the Com- amid auditing oversights, businesses with a relevant interest in the firm, such as creditors. mission of Inquiry into the British government Money Laundering in British appointed Sir Donald Cohen, of Transparency International Canada, instead Columbia. The Cullen Brydon to investigate the advocates for a publicly accessible registry that anyone can use. Commission will examine the “quality and effectiveness He envisions a registry that includes legal name, corporate effect of money laundering of audit.” His 2019 report address and birth month and year—or, better yet, a system of on casinos, horse racing, calls for audit to be redefined real estate, luxury goods, as a way “to establish and unique national identification numbers that would allow key cryptocurrency and many maintain deserved confi- individuals to be tracked without invading anyone’s privacy. other sectors. A forthcoming dence in a company” and Cohen believes giving access to the public will allow more eyes report will make recommen- recommends the creation dations on how to improve of a new corporate auditing to review the system and deter those who would abuse the the province’s reputation profession with its own corporate registry. “If Canada is open to global money, we need through better regulation governing principles, to be open to global scrutiny as well,” he says. “We think it will and enforcement. qualifications and standards. help prevent illicit finances from getting in.”

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CPA-GlobalTrustCrisis_EN2.indd 24 2020-04-14 4:38 PM FCPA and the minister of innovation, science and industry. activity, and continued to participate” In it, Trudeau calls for “a national approach to beneficial in a “reckless” way. ownership so that law enforcement . . . have the tools to crack It may be years before Canada’s inter- down on financial crime in real estate while respecting national reputation is fully restored, but Canadians’ privacy rights.” A national consultation process Canada is finally making the changes took place earlier this year, but there is no timeline for when necessary to repair its trust gap and return a registry will be up and running. to the highest global standards for fighting money laundering and corruption. ven if Canada nails down how its beneficial ownership Amid all these repairs, accountants are registry will work, a registry alone will not rectify ideally suited to ensure the new regime Canada’s sagging reputation on corruption and trans- functions properly. “As a profession, we parency. More effort needs to be put into enforcing are experts in all the areas these new rules Ecurrent laws, both to ensure bad actors are put away and to touch on,” says Bellringer. “We establish deter others, according to Toronto CPA Jennifer Fiddian- internal controls, make sure they’re Green, a former member of the RCMP’s financial crimes unit working and then verify that information. who is now a partner and lead of Grant Thornton’s forensic It will be up to us to make it work.” investigations practice. “We need to have more consequences Fiddian-Green goes further in sketch- for this sort of illegal activity,” she states, observing that ing out an opportunity for accountants proceeds-of-crime charges are often bargaining chips that to play a major role in ensuring Canada get negotiated away because they’re considered less conse- is safe from money laundering activity. quential than other criminal charges. Canada’s relaxed “Accountants need to go beyond debits attitude toward prosecuting white-collar crime was another and credits and make sure we really know major criticism made by the Financial Action Task Force. who our clients are, what services they “We need to change that story.” need and how they’re going to use them, To bolster its own enforcement story, FINTRAC now because clients potentially carry risk for publicly discloses all money laundering penalties. And the accountants,” she says. In this way, Criminal Code has been updated to make it easier to pros- accountants can become Canada’s first ecute anyone engaged in money laundering activities by line of defence by helping clients to avoid adding “recklessness” to the definition. “This is a vast getting entangled in dirty money and to improvement,” says lawyer Leslie. “Previously, in order to spot new sources of dirty money as it criminalize money laundering, you had to prove knowledge tries to enter Canada. “No one wants to and intention. Now it is sufficient to show a person was merely let illegal activity in the country,” she aware there was a risk the funds were derived from criminal says. “Accountants need to do more.” ◆

AUSTRALIA ESTONIA MALAYSIA SWEDEN Following widespread out- It has been called “the Between 2009 and 2015, Earlier this year, Swedish rage over domestic banking biggest scandal in Europe”: an estimated US$4.5 billion telecom giant Ericsson practices—including bribery, Between 2007 and 2015, was looted from the sover- agreed to pay a fine of more falsifying documents and an estimated US$230 billion eign wealth fund 1Malaysia than US$1 billion to U.S. charging fees to dead in dirty money, much of it Development Berhad authorities after admitting clients—Australia created from Russia, flowed through (1MDB) through deliberately it paid bribes in China, a Royal Commission into a single Danske Bank complex and deceptive Vietnam, Indonesia, Kuwait Misconduct in the Banking, branch in Tallinn, Estonia. financial transactions and and Djibouti to win contracts. Superannuation and At one point, the tiny office the misuse of American This is the second largest Financial Services Industry. accounted for nearly law firm trust accounts. fine ever imposed under Last year, the commission’s 10 per cent of Danske Much of this money was U.S. anti-bribery legislation, final report demanded Bank’s total annual profit, spent on luxury real estate and dwarfs the US$62 sweeping changes to all without attracting and private art collections. million in total bribes paid business and remuneration proper scrutiny from Financier Jho Low, out. While firms can have models across the mort- regulators or the bank’s a Malaysian government their fine reduced if they gage, insurance, fund headquarters in Denmark. advisor, is accused of cooperate with authorities, management and financial The case has led to numer- money laundering and Ericsson received only a advice sectors, and chas- ous criminal investigations, bribery by the FBI and partial reduction because it tised regulators for being and authorities around remains a fugitive. Goldman failed to disclose all relevant too close to bank manage- the world are expected Sachs, which raised materials, was late in ment. The government has to issue fines. Last year, US$6.5 billion in bonds providing key documents promised to implement all the bank was permanently for 1MDB, is also under and did not adequately recommendations. expelled from Estonia. investigation for bribery. discipline certain employees.

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CPA-GlobalTrustCrisis_EN2.indd 25 2020-04-07 10:17 AM 26 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020

CPA-PeterGerman_EN.indd 26 2020-04-07 10:18 AM Mr. CRISIS TRUST THE

man in a dark jacket approaches the cash cage at a B.C. Inside Peter casino, carrying a red cloth shopping bag. Flanked by Cleansecurity guards, he slides the bag across the counter, German’s mission and a casino employee dumps out its contents: stacks Aof $20 bills bundled in elastic bands, just like in the mob to stop the flow movies. The cashier lines them up in even rows and begins to of dirty money count. The sum, in excess of $250,000, will be exchanged for chips and later cashed out in the form of larger-denomination bills and cheques. This is how dirty money becomes clean. Video footage of this transaction—just one of countless such exchanges that have taken place over the past decade—provided a visual punch to the release of “Dirty Money,” an explosive report on money laundering in B.C. casinos. At a June 2018 press conference in Vancouver, the report’s author, lawyer and former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German, stood by as the security camera feed rolled. The source of the money, BY ADRIENNE TANNER he told reporters, was the drug trade—mostly proceeds from PHOTOGRAPH BY TROY MOTH opioid sales controlled by organized crime. “You’ll notice the elastic bands around the wads of twenties,” he said. “That is not how the banks issue cash.” “Dirty Money,” along with a subsequent report that Ger- man released in March 2019, sent shock waves through Canada’s political, legal, business and law-enforcement circles.

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CPA-PeterGerman_EN.indd 27 2020-04-07 10:20 AM German’s findings drove home just how deeply money launder- cleaned. A follow-up report on money ing has permeated not only B.C.’s gambling industry—an laundering in real estate led by Simon estimated $100 million in dirty money has passed through the Fraser University professor Maureen province’s casinos—but also other industries where large sums Maloney estimates that $47 billion was of cash are still commonly accepted. German estimated that a laundered through Canada in 2018. In staggering $5 billion was laundered in B.C. real estate in 2018 2015, Canada’s money laundering prob- alone, which reportedly caused the average cost of a Metro lems were estimated to be the worst in Vancouver home to rise by five per cent. The auto industry is Alberta, which topped the chart at also infected: In one of the reports, German details how a money $10.2 billion, followed by Ontario at THE TRUST CRISIS launderer walked into a car dealership with $200,000 in cash an estimated $8.2 billion. German says and purchased a luxury vehicle; when the bank later asked no one knows the true total. dealership staff about the provenance of the money, they said “All the things that make Canada a it was from a car sale. No further questions were asked. wonderful place to live also make it A money launderer German’s most alarming finding is that all this financial walked into a car desirable for organized crime: large ports crime has gone largely unpunished. Even though, for instance, dealership with and airports, modern banking and com- B.C. casinos log suspicious transactions, enforcement stemming $200,000 in munication, large ethnic diasporas, easy cash and bought from those logs has been practically nil. In a statement, former a luxury vehicle. land access to the U.S.,” says German. RCMP assistant commissioner Kevin Hackett called the report’s No questions “Plus, we have established organized findings a “snapshot in time” and said that they didn’t reflect were asked. crime networks, relatively mild criminal every money laundering case. He wrote that eight of the RCMP’s sanctions, a forgiving justice system and 40 “prioritized projects” in B.C. involve money laundering, difficulty investigating and prosecuting and that the force is also assisting a number of national and financial crime.” Art Vertlieb, a B.C. international money laundering investigations. lawyer who has known German for years, Nonetheless, money laundering remains rampant because says it’s essential that governments across it is impossibly complex, costly to fight and receives little Canada tackle the problem. “Wherever public attention, probably because the exchange of bills seems you have corruption, it can erode the like a victimless crime. It isn’t, German social, legal and economic fabric of the insists. Laundering deprives governments country,” he says. “It’s like a cancer.” of tax revenue and enables corruption, In the wake of “Dirty Money,” the 2019 as it cleans the proceeds of bribery, “All the things federal budget allocated $200 million embezzlement, illicit drug sales and other over five years to anti-money laundering financial crimes. Dirty money has a steep that make measures, including a task force and extra human cost, too. “Thousands of families RCMP funding. Still, German argues that have lost sons or daughters due to opioids, Canada a more is needed. In the past, pressure from fentanyl, heroin, cocaine,” says German. the international community has com- “That’s why this is important.” wonderful pelled the Canadian government to make In May 2019, with German’s reports in necessary legislative changes and dedicate hand, the B.C. government announced place to live the proper resources to eradicate money it would launch the Cullen Commission, laundering. “Unfortunately, that’s what a public inquiry into the province’s money also make it may take again,” he says. “I put it down laundering problem that will have more it desirable to political and bureaucratic will. We have legal authority than German did to com- a pretty comfortable lifestyle and tend to pel witness testimony and gather evidence. for organized turn a blind eye.” But thanks to German, The wide-ranging commission will money laundering is no longer a problem analyze several B.C. sectors, including crime” that Canadians can ignore. law and accounting, which are self- regulated at the provincial level. Currently, anada’s foremost money launder- accountants and accounting firms have ing expert stands with the ramrod- reporting obligations under federal anti-money laundering and straight posture of a Mountie, but terrorist financing legislation. The commission’s broad-ranging there’s no stereotypical cop stiff- terms of reference indicate that it is to make recommendations Cness in his speech. Instead, he has a warm, that it considers “necessary and advisable” in respect to the self-deprecating demeanour. At 68, he regulation of the professional services sector, which includes divides his time between practising law, law and accounting. Opening statements began in February, consulting on financial crime and crim- and the main hearings will begin in September. inal justice, acting as president of the But a provincial inquiry can only go so far, because money International Centre for Criminal Law laundering isn’t restricted to any one province. Wherever there Reform at the University of British Colum- is organized crime, there is dirty money that needs to be bia, and spending time with his family—

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CPA-PeterGerman_EN.indd 28 2020-04-07 10:20 AM both. As a young beat cop, he was stationed in tiny rough- and-tumble communities in Atlantic Canada. He took a break from police life to complete a law degree and work as a lawyer in Prince George, B.C., but he returned to the RCMP in 1986, resuming his ascent to deputy commissioner, the second- highest position in the force. Along the way, he earned five university degrees, including a PhD in law, most of them as an active Mountie. His friends and colleagues describe him as curious, ambitious and tireless. “He’s notorious for not sleeping,” says John Dickson, a fellow lawyer and former RCMP officer. “You’d get emails from Peter at all hours of the night. He’s one of those guys who will sleep four or five hours, if that. Otherwise, he’s working.” Former colleagues say German’s even-handedness and superb investigative instincts have allowed him to stickhandle some of Canada’s most high-profile and politically sensitive inquiries with almost no allegations of bias. In the early 1990s, he led the investigation into “Bingogate,” a scam that funnelled the proceeds from charitable bingo games and lotteries into the B.C. NDP coffers; the ensuing scandal brought down the NDP government of the day. (The irony that German now works for another NDP government in B.C. is not lost on him. “I’m not a political animal,” he says.) Six years later, he was asked to assemble a new team to assume conduct of the Airbus investigation after the original case—examining allegations that senior Progressive Conservative staffers profited from kickbacks from the sale of Airbus jets to Air Canada—ended in disaster. A key player in the scandal, Karlheinz Schreiber, was later arrested, deported to Germany and charged with fraud, bribery and tax evasion. B.C. Attorney General David Eby considered German’s reputation for impartiality a plus when selecting him to write “Dirty Money.” “If I brought someone in who had even a hint of being in the bag for the NDP, the findings wouldn’t be credible,” he says. German’s work is beyond reproach, says Ernie Malone, a retired RCMP chief superintendent and accountant who worked alongside German in Vancouver. “If there’s one word that stands out with Peter, it’s integrity.”

erman’s “Dirty Money” report outlines just how complex modern money laundering schemes have become. The document describes in detail the “Vancouver model,” a term coined by John Langdale, a professor Gat Macquarie University in Australia. The model is meant to circumvent Chinese currency restrictions, which limit the amount of money that can be removed from China. The process begins when a Chinese resident transfers money, obtained either legally or illegally, to an underground banker in China. he and his wife, another retired Mountie, The resident then flies to Vancouver, where they meet the have two adult daughters. He wrote Pro- banker’s accomplice, who presents them with their cash in ceeds of Crime and Money Laundering, Canadian currency, predominantly $20 bills sourced from Canada’s leading textbook on the topic, drug sales. Finally, the resident buys chips at a casino, gambles in 1998, and updates it six times a year. Above: Stills of and cashes out, leaving with higher-denomination bills or a German was born in Vancouver in a B.C. casino cheque. Everyone involved gets what they want: The resident 1952 and grew up with two goals: become cash cage, where removes money from China, Canadian criminals clean their roughly $250,000 an RCMP officer and become a lawyer. in dirty money cash and the underground bankers take a cut.

VIDEO COURTESY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Most people would have jettisoned one was converted Stopping schemes like these is incredibly challenging and dream for the other; German achieved into chips expensive, says German, partly because of the legal and

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CPA-PeterGerman_EN.indd 29 2020-04-09 5:20 PM accounting expertise needed to tackle them, but also due to Below: Peter of financial crime. But in recent years, their transnational nature. Adding to the difficulty are German (left) the force has shifted resources away from and B.C. Attorney Canada’s “clunky” money laundering laws, which make it a General David financial crime, possibly because money challenge to meet the bar for a criminal prosecution, says Eby released laundering cases are so difficult and CPA Jerome Malysh, a former RCMP sergeant and forensic the first “Dirty costly, and so rarely produce convictions. accountant who assisted with the “Dirty Money” report. In Money” report in A recent Toronto Star investigation the U.S., every industry is required to report cash receipts over June 2018 at a showed that, between 2012 and 2017, 86 press conference $10,000. Canada, meanwhile, has a hodgepodge system of in Vancouver per cent of charges for laundering the reporting requirements. Securities laws are provincially proceeds of crime never made it to trial. THE TRUST CRISIS controlled and inconsistent. In most provinces, registered Such charges are often resolved by guilty ownership—which can differ from beneficial ownership—is pleas to other, usually drug-related, the focus, making it challenging to identify who owns what, charges. As a result, the RCMP have be it real estate or corporations. (Following German’s reports moved on to “easier and better things,” last year, B.C. established the country’s first beneficial ownership registry.) “Casinos, banks and credit unions report,” says German. “But the auto sector, boats, auction houses, private mortgage companies, real estate appraisers—none of them When one loophole report.” When one loophole closes, organized criminals move to another. For instance, B.C. has introduced new anti-money closes, criminals laundering legislation, but the number of suspicious cash investigations in Ontario doubled in 2018, according to Global move to another. News. German describes it as playing a game of whack-a-mole. Still, all the reporting requirements in the world won’t help It’s like playing a game if there is no enforcement. The RCMP invested heavily in fighting commercial crime in the wake of the Enron scandal of whack-a-mole. in the early 2000s, when German was the top officer in charge

says Malysh. In December, the RCMP disbanded Ontario’s financial crimes unit to focus on national security, organized crime and drugs, the Toronto Star reported. “At the municipal level, a lot of police departments still have financial crime units,” says Malysh. “But they’re not doing money laundering.” For one, he says, money laundering prosecutions are a federal responsibility. Plus, “They can’t afford it.” Yet German remains optimistic. His reports include a series of recommendations for fighting money laundering, including implementing expanded cash reporting requirements, devoting more resources to enforcement and prosecution, improving mandates for regulators such as FINTRAC, addressing beneficial ownership of corporations and trusts, and sharing more information between law enforcement, industry and regulators. B.C. has moved quickly to adopt some of German’s recommendations, such as mandatory money laundering courses for realtors. The full list of fixes may seem overwhelming, but German argues that they are not impossible. “Just look at the United

States. They’ve already done it,” he PHOTOGRAPHPRESS BY CANADIAN says. “It just requires political will.” ◆

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CPA-PeterGerman_EN.indd 30 2020-04-15 2:44 PM Join the conversation

In 2018, Foresight: Reimagining the Profession brought CPAs and the business community together from around the globe to address the accounting profession’s most relevant issues. The need for transformational change was both a key takeaway and starting point for advancing the profession in the areas of Data Governance and Value Creation. Join the conversation on our new interactive online platform and help define the future of the profession.

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JOB ID # 021746 DUE DATE FONTS ART DIRECTOR CLIENT Lexus APR 06 2020 Nobel TJ INSERTION DATE COLOURS COPYWRITER BUILT AT 100% None Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black None SCALE 1" = 1" PUBLICATIONS IMAGES ACCOUNT MGR TYPE 0.375" w x 0.375" h 0.375" h x 0.375" w Pivot Magazine DJI_0007ﬁ nal_ﬂ ipped.tif (566 ppi), Lexus_Tag-EA_2D_H_White_Eng.ai Kelly/Dom TRIM 10.875" h x 7.875" w 10.875" h x 7.875" w SAVED AT STUDIO ARTIST BLEED 0.125" h x 0.125" w 0.125" h x 0.125" w 4-6-2020 9:05 AM JF VIEWING 0" h x 0" w 0" h x 0" w PRODUCTION MGR MS THE TRUST CRISIS Gimme Shelter n September 2019, when a whistleblower accused Donald If Canada is serious Trump of engaging in an illegal quid pro quo, the U.S. president and his allies agitated for the identity of the about fighting financial anonymous intelligence officer to be revealed. Thanks Ito the strength of U.S. whistleblower protections, the crime, why aren’t complainant’s name remains unknown. Elsewhere around we properly protecting the world, however, those who speak up about wrongdoing are often left high and dry. the whistleblowers Canada is no exception. In fact, according to top experts in the field, our nation has some of the world’s worst who expose it? protections. “Currently, Canada’s whistleblower law is the object of consistent international ridicule,” says Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Account- ability Project (GAP) in Washington, D.C. “It’s regularly held up as an example of free-speech rights that are false advertising in practice.” The law Devine refers to is the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act (PSDPA), which came into effect in 2007. BY MICAH TOUB The first law of its kind in Canada, it established an integrity commissioner to receive complaints from federal public service whistleblowers who’ve suffered reprisals, as well as a tribunal to hear their cases. That may sound good on paper, but it’s been a failure in practice. Just eight cases moved to the tribunal in its first 10 years. Of those, only one whistleblower had the stamina to complete the process—and she lost her case.

MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 33 THE TRUST CRISIS TRUST THE

used. “The whistleblower has no way to initiate action against those taking reprisals; the police have to do it,” he says. “But “I was scared to death. whistleblowers are trying to expose something that the powers that be do not want exposed, so to think the police I was afraid to not will support them is a stretch.” Exacerbating the problem is the fact that each province has have a job. But you its own laws. As a result, it can be difficult for a would-be whistleblower to determine how to report wrongdoing and can’t jeopardize your what protections they might have, depending on their jurisdiction. Hutton says these provincial laws tend to follow the ethics for one role.” same ineffective mould as federal legislation. Amid the dearth of laws protecting whistleblowers, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) decided in 2016 to In the private sector, the situation is try the carrot approach, establishing a program to com- even worse. Section 425.1 of the Crimi- pensate whistleblowers for reporting wrongdoing. In 2018, nal Code—established in 2004—is armed the OSC said it had received 200 tips. A year later, it to punish employers who take revenge Above: CPA Dave announced it had paid out $7.5 million to three recipients. on whistleblowers with up to five years Angot helped Still, it’s impossible to know how well protected any of in prison. But David Hutton, senior expose a multi- those tipsters were. Hutton says even big money doesn’t million-dollar fellow at the Centre for Free Expression’s insurance fraud necessarily equal adequate protection: “The reward might

Whistleblowing Initiative, says that, to scheme in not be that much benefit if you’re blacklisted in your PHOTOGRAPH SMITH BY RILEY his knowledge, the law has never been Saint John, N.B. career and rendered unemployable.”

34 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 Without robust whistleblower pro- Angot’s gambit, and the two-year ordeal that followed, tection, Canadian companies and the ended up leading to a conviction—but many aren’t as fortu- country’s public service are losing out nate, and many more wouldn’t take the risk in the first place. on a primary source of information. “I was scared to death. I was afraid to not have a job, and I According to a 2018 report from the thought that growing my career was the most important U.S.-based Association of Certified thing in the world,” Angot remembers. But he never seriously Fraud Examiners, 40 per cent of occu- considered burying the impropriety he’d discovered. “You pational frauds become known can’t look at the role as the only thing you have. The founda- through tips, and about half of those tion is your decision-making and your ethics, and you can’t come from employees. jeopardize that for one role.” The Canadian Standards Association, Historically, the U.S. has done the best job of protecting which published guidelines for com- whistleblowers. Although its public service protection—the panies that want to implement their world’s first, instituted in 1978—now suffers from degrees of own whistleblower processes, cites political interference, the country has about 60 laws protect- studies proving that “speak-up culture” ing everyone else. “Nearly the entire private sector, and all promotes trust in management and has government contractors, are governed by best-practice free the potential to lift the company’s bot- speech rights,” says Devine. tom line. The benefit for senior execu- The U.K. has also earned praise for its Public Interest tives, says Hutton, is that they stay out Disclosure Act (PIDA), a piece of legislation from 1998 that of jail and prevent “a huge scandal safeguards whistleblowers from “detriment”—that is, dis- blowing up around something they missal or other reprisals made in retaliation for a whistle- weren’t aware of.” blowing disclosure. Unlike most legislation, it applies not Given the lack of protections, it’s not only to public-sector employees but those in the private and surprising that employees who witness charitable sectors as well. wrongdoing often stay mum. Dave Devine says the European Union is set to be the new standard- Angot, a CPA who helped expose a bearer for whistleblower protections. Late last year, it adopted multi-million-dollar insurance fraud in a directive to protect whistleblowers—standards that must be The Ontario Saint John, N.B., took that leap despite Securities implemented by all member countries within two years. The the possibly dire consequences. In 1998, Commission directive includes many of the things that other countries have he began his first director of finance role has awarded failed to achieve, including guaranteed due process, legal assis- $7.5 million at a local insurance-finance company to whistleblowers tance for whistleblowers, protection against criminal or civil and settled in by combing through recent for reporting liability for breaking non-disclosure agreements and taking financials. Certain transactions struck wrongdoing evidence, and a reverse onus of proof that requires employers him as suspicious—a six-figure insur- to prove action taken against a whistleblower was not a repri- ance policy for a small contractor, for sal. Devine says the rest of the world may eventually follow the example. When he started digging, he EU’s lead. “We’re in the midst of a global revolution for freedom realized every problem account led back of speech, at least in terms of rights on paper,” he says. to one insurance agency. “We thought Samantha Feinstein, the deputy director of GAP’s interna- it was a few bad accounts,” he says. tional program, studies how well the world’s whistleblowing “Maybe something cooked up to cover laws work in reality. She estimates that more than 100 coun- some short-term losses.” tries have protection for at least some of their workers. “For Angot eventually discovered the fake the most part, though, whistleblowers are only prevailing at accounts were actually part of a long- most 25 per cent of the time, even when they survive proce- running fraud perpetrated by his firm’s dural challenges and receive a decision acknowledging that largest customer, a well-respected local their rights were violated,” she says. “In large countries such business magnate. The board of directors as the U.S., the success rate is roughly 10 per cent.” at Angot’s company pressured him to Trump’s impeachment put whistleblower protections in the keep quiet: They didn’t want to lose their spotlight, and Hutton hopes that the issue keeps gaining biggest source of business, which could momentum in both the public and private spheres. “We’ve cause the company to collapse. Despite seen supposedly reputable banks and insurance companies the gag order, Angot decided to speak setting up horrible schemes to defraud their customers. We’ve up. “I felt everyone deserved a right to seen corporations that pollute the environment or sell drugs know, here and now,” he says. “If you that are going to kill people,” he says. Whistleblowers represent have someone in their 70s working for a defence against such activities. Without them, he says, “There’s your business and their life savings no limit to the harm that the private sector can do to us in are tied up in it, you might want to give the pursuit of money, or to what government may do through them the opportunity to understand incompetence or corruption.” ◆ what’s going on.” —With files from Matthew Halliday

MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 35 The Young and the Restless

They’re fresh, flush and (mostly) work-free. Meet the millennials who are , f t Can big as gsavin ske ma you e? Readr reinventing retirement. a millionai bomoreut the a FIRE Movement onlinea /da at cpacana .c . firemovement

BY ALI AMAD

For most of us, retirement is the stuff of fantasies. substantially beyond your daily needs. This is not an But for a growing contingent of largely millennial option for many.” Thompson also warns that anyone workers, the dream of doing what you want, when you undertaking this lifestyle would do well to have want, isn’t far off. Adherents of the FIRE movement— a plan B in case of a market crash—which, as the it stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early— COVID-19 crisis makes clear, is always a possibility. have a unique philosophy: Aggressively invest your The FIRE movement has gained popularity over savings while living relatively frugally. The goal is to the past several years, as aspiring early retirees kiss your day job goodbye and live off investments. have flocked to blogs like Mr. Money Mustache, “I admire people with the thoughtfulness and written by Peter Adeney, a Canadian-born software determination to challenge our consumer culture developer who retired at age 30. His blog and many and take a hard look at their needs and wants,” says others preach the gospel of thrift. The movement Doretta Thompson, financial literacy leader for CPA is not simply about amassing a large fortune; Canada. “I’d point out, however, that maximizing in an age of conspicuous consumption, it’s less about savings implies that you make enough to save what you own and more about how you live.

So what does it look like to live the dream? Here, five FIRE-starters share their stories.

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 36 2020-04-07 10:52 AM I don’t dread Mondays or crave Fridays like many people do

Heroux in Vietnam with his wife, Josée, and children William, 14; Amy, 12; and Caleb, 8 Mike Heroux, 38

Occupation: Founder of Dividend Stocks Rock, an investment strategy platform Location: Granby, Que.

✱ What drew you to the FIRE I calculated how much we needed per We need roughly $6,000 a month to movement? month and figured out how I could cover our expenses. I take what we Since 2008, I’d been running a finan- generate enough revenue to cover need from my business and make sure cial advice blog and loved the idea of those expenses as we travelled. When we don’t spend too much. We don’t turning it into a full-fledged operation. we came back a year later, I decided have cable or a landline, for example. In 2016, I decided to take a year-long I wasn’t returning to my old job. I also have $321,800 invested mainly sabbatical. I’d read about a Quebec We could have become financially in my pension and RRSP, and all of it family who left everything behind to independent right then and there and is in dividend stocks. We caught the travel to Mexico, and that really started travelling around the world, travel bug during my sabbatical, so appealed to my wife, Josée, and me. but we decided to stay in Quebec for we’ve started a tradition of spending at Our three kids were getting older and our kids’ education. least three weeks exploring a different we knew the time we had together country each year. This past January, was running out. So we bought an RV ✱ What does your life look we spent an entire month in Vietnam. and set off on a road trip down North like today? America to Costa Rica. I realized I work 365 days a year and I’m on ✱ Would you ever return to I wanted the freedom to be able to go vacation just as often. I’ve grown my the workforce? on trips like this whenever I wanted. business to a level that covers our I didn’t hate the corporate world, costs and I have a flexible schedule. but going back would be a failure. ✱ How did you become financially If I want to go to a concert with my If I could travel back in time, I would independent? wife on a Tuesday night and sleep have started my business as soon The prevailing wisdom is that you in the next day, I can just do it. I don’t as I finished school. I want to retain

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF MIKE HEROUX have to save money first before doing dread Mondays or crave Fridays like control of my life. My business allows something, but I did the opposite. many people do. me to do that.

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 37 2020-04-08 4:19 PM Since retiring, we’ve travelled to more than for us. We initially had a financial 40 countries advisor but then we got comfortable managing our own portfolio. By 2015, we hit our $1-million target and retired. Our biggest challenge wasn’t saving. It was resisting following the herd mentality to buy real estate. Our co-workers, friends and family all told us we were making a mistake.

✱ What does your life look like today? Shen: Since retiring, we’ve travelled to more than 40 countries. We also run a blog and free investment work- shop to encourage people to try out FIRE. We then wrote a book, Quit Like a Millionaire, to spread our message. Leung: We strategically divide our time between more expensive regions like Europe and cheaper ones like Southeast Leung and Shen on the Asia. The amazing thing is that it comes Sari Organik trail in Bali to about the same annual costs as when we lived in Toronto year-round. Shen: We grab an Airbnb when we’re Kristy Shen, 37, and in town to visit family. The first year we started travelling, I’d get emails from my parents once a month Bryce Leung, 37 with lists of jobs and demands that I apply to them immediately. Jump to Former occupations: Computer engineers last year: I called my dad on Father’s Location: Around the world Day from Germany and he said, “I’m so proud of you.” Leung: We’ve also adjusted our investment strategy. We now focus on ✱ What drew you to the FIRE before us: invest our money smartly investments that pay a higher yield, movement? and retire early within the next few whether it’s interest from a bond or Shen: Bryce and I were working as years, or buy a house and be in debt dividends from a stock. They provide computer engineers in the Toronto for the next 25. It was a no-brainer. us a steady monthly cash flow. We’re tech sector. After we got married in travelling through Thailand and 2010, we started looking for a home. ✱ How did you become financially Indonesia right now and we’re still Leung: We both come from Chinese independent? making money. Our portfolio is up to backgrounds and our culture is Shen: We rented an $850-per-month $1.4 million today. obsessed with owning property, apartment, used public transit or much like everyone else in Toronto. car shares and mostly cooked at home. ✱ Would you ever go back to Shen: But house hunting was a Leung: We spent around $40,000 a the workforce? nightmare. When we saw a dilapidated year. Investment experts recommend Shen: You can’t go back into the shack of a home sell for $800,000 in attaining a portfolio that’s 25 times Matrix once you’re awake. I have our neighbourhood, we realized how your annual expenses, so we set a target zero regrets. insane the market was. of $1 million. We invested mostly in Leung: I regret I didn’t do this sooner. Leung: We’d been diligently saving for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that In Canada, particularly Toronto, people a down payment since we joined the track different stock market indexes overextend themselves when they

workforce in 2006, and by 2012, we’d rather than individual companies. buy into real estate and we want to PHOTOGRAPHRAHADY BY SUTA saved $500,000. We saw two paths Shen: That strategy really worked save them from falling into that trap.

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 38 2020-04-08 4:19 PM Bob Lai, 37

Occupation: Product manager for an engineering company Location: Vancouver

✱ What drew you to the FIRE ✱ What does your life look talking about moving to those countries movement? like today? for a couple years so our kids can learn I grew up in a Taiwanese immigrant In 2019, we generated over $23,000 the languages and cultures. family that was never materialistic. in dividend income. We are aiming We had one car and didn’t buy a for $50,000 annually. We could be ✱ What have you learned so far? computer until I was 14. My dad, who financially independent today if we Having the right mindset about FIRE is actually retired early, taught me that moved somewhere cheaper than important. There’s this misconception, saving money gives you more options Vancouver. We also own a three- especially among people who hate in life. My wife, Ayoe, grew up on a bedroom detached home, which comes their jobs, that all their problems will farm in Denmark and she was also with a lot of expenses. But we like disappear after they quit and retire accustomed to a frugal lifestyle. where we’re living and I enjoy my job, early. But this is unrealistic and only When we got married in 2011, we so we’re not set on a firm deadline to leads to fleeting happiness. People had a financial epiphany. We’d been hit financial independence. I know should focus more on the financial tracking our budget for nine or 10 we’ll get there eventually. For us, independence aspect of FIRE. Financial months and it was eye-opening to see our big spend is travel. Last year, independence gives you the opportunity how much money we were needlessly we travelled to Taiwan, Japan and to figure out what you want to do with spending on things like eating out New York. Since I’m from Taiwan and your life. It’s not about reaching a at restaurants. We decided to cut our my wife is from Denmark, we’ve been finishing line. It’s about the journey. expenses and use savings to target financial independence. Lai and his skis at B.C.’s Mt. Seymour My dad ✱ How are you working to become taught me financially independent? saving money We’d already been investing in mutual gives you more options funds and individual stocks, so we got in life more sophisticated in our investment strategy. We diversified into areas like index funds, which reliably grow since they go up as different indexes rise in value. As my wife stayed at home to raise our son and daughter—she also worked part-time on her holistic healing business—I kept the same engineering job at a Vancouver company. In the beginning, I found I was arguing with my wife over small expenses like going out to cafés or bakeries. From my point of view, this was unnecessary spending of money we could be investing. Over time, I realized being extremely frugal wasn’t the best approach. I didn’t want our relationship to suffer over trivial things. I practise and preach finding a

PHOTOGRAPH BY GRADY MITCHELL balance between saving for the future and spending for today.

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 39 2020-04-08 4:20 PM I never look at our lifestyle changes as sacrifices We rarely leaned on any external advice and learned most of it from reading various books and blogs. An important lesson was to not put all our eggs in one basket. We didn’t spend money on anything other than the basics for a year while we paid off some debts, and then we loosened the belt. I love making my own wine and beer, so I splurged a bit on getting equipment to make that happen. We also took a month off work to visit the Maritimes, which my wife had never seen. Basically, we found a comfort zone where we didn’t feel deprived and adjusted as we went along. I managed to retire six months before my 40th birthday—five years earlier than expected. My last day at work was surreal. I felt like I was floating when I walked out the door one final time.

✱ What does your life look like today? I spend more time writing than I ever Stobbs crafting DIY terrain could have with my old job. I also got and figurines for his kids’ part-time work at a local library. I do it Dungeons & Dragons game for fun. It’s only 18 hours a week and I get to work with people who like to talk about books. Our portfolio is in Tim Stobbs, 42 maintenance mode right now, so it doesn’t take up much time. This year, Former occupation: Chemical engineer we’re planning to take our kids to Location: Regina Disney World. We were supposed to make the trip last year, but after a market downturn in 2018, we post- poned it to 2020. (We also wanted to ✱ What drew you to the FIRE ✱ How did you become financially wait for the new Star Wars attraction movement? independent? to open.) We live within our means, The idea to retire early first came to To retire by 45, I wanted to hit roughly but that is guided by our desires. me in 2006. I was working in the oil $1 million in net worth. My family I never look at our lifestyle changes as and gas industry in Alberta and didn’t have any major expenses. sacrifices. It’s about trade-offs. Do you I hated my job’s long hours and My wife, Rhea, was running a daycare want the bigger TV or do you want unreasonable client expectations. business in our home, which meant we to leave the workforce early? When you

My life felt squeezed; I didn’t have could save on daycare costs for our two understand what fulfills you, you see ; KAY BY GRADY MITCHELL time to pursue passion projects, like sons. Our mortgage was nearly paid you don’t actually need a lot of stuff. writing fantasy novels. I was aimlessly off and we didn’t have car payments, searching the internet one day and so we calculated that we spend $36,000 ✱ Would you ever return to came across the concept of early a year. We started by making monthly the workforce? retirement. Even after I found a better contributions to mutual funds, and This process has taught me that job with an engineering consulting once we had $50,000 in our RSP I don’t mind working some of the firm in Regina later that same year, accounts we switched to exchange- time. I just enjoy the balance of being early retirement still appealed to traded funds (ETFs). We also bought able to do all the different things

me. I just wasn’t interested in working dividend-paying stocks in banks, I love. I don’t think I’ll ever go back PHOTOGRAPHS: STOBBS BY DUSTIN VEITCH full-time for anyone anymore. utilities and insurance companies. to full-time employment.

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 40 2020-04-08 4:20 PM Chrissy Kay, 41

Occupation: Stay-at-home mom and co-host of Explore FI Canada podcast Location: Vancouver

✱ What drew you to the FIRE that could lead my family to financial needs. We cook a lot at home and movement? freedom far earlier than I thought fix things around the house ourselves. By 2014, my husband and I had saved possible. Before then, I’d assumed the The media sometimes portrays up $300,000. Using an advisor never mainstream narrative of “work until FIRE followers as miserly people sat right with me, so I looked into you’re 65 and then you can enjoy your sacrificing so many things, but all managing my own finances. I stum- life” was the only way. we’ve done is become more intentional bled upon a blog called Mr. Money with our spending. What has drastically Mustache, created by a Canadian ✱ How are you working to become changed is our investment strategy. who’s considered by many to be financially independent? Previously, my mother, who worked the father of the FIRE movement. I’m a stay-at-home mom raising two at a bank, handled our portfolio. I binge-read his entire blog and sons and my husband’s video-game She put our money in classic Canadian realized there was an alternative path development job covers all our investments like mutual funds. Doing my own research, I found out about Kay and her dog near her passive index investing. I saw that home in North Vancouver as long as the big indexes went up, so would our profits. I felt confident enough to invest all $300,000 of our savings in index funds. My husband and I want to make sure we don’t have to worry about returning to the workforce unless we feel like it. I realized there was an

alternate path ✱ What does your life look to financial like today? freedom I spend my free time blogging about my FIRE journey and co-hosting a weekly FIRE podcast I launched with friends last summer. I don’t budget tightly but I instinctively know our comfort range. We should become financially independent while we’re still in our 40s. To accomplish this, we keep our core spending at under $50,000 a year, excluding travel. Travel is one area where we aren’t frugal. We took two three-week trips to Asia with our kids in the last few years and we just visited Okinawa this past March.

✱ What have you learned so far? I’d recommend managing your own finances as early as possible. Whether you become financially independent or simply get savvier about where your money’s going, you can’t lose. ◆

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CPA-FireMovement_EN.indd 41 2020-04-08 4:20 PM CPA-Louis Tetu_EN.indd 42 42 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 2020-04-07 10:59AM

PHOTOGRAPH BY CONTRIBUTORS NAME TK Tech titans are ravaging the business world by mastering data and artificial intelligence. Can Louis Têtu help the old guard fight back?

BY LUC RINALDI | PHOTOGRAPHY BY GUILLAUME SIMONEAU

hen Jeff Bezos started an online bookstore Coveo’s success hinges on Têtu’s belief that we in his garage 26 years ago, he was a are now living in an experience economy. Whereas proverbial David slinging stones at a Ford, Walmart and other Goliaths of the past Barnes & Noble-shaped Goliath. By last invented and sold things, modern juggernauts January, when Amazon briefly became specialize in experiences—or, more precisely, Wthe most valuable public company in the world, reducing the time and effort between the moment Bezos was no longer David. He was Goliath. we want something and the moment we get it. Uber Louis Têtu sells slingshots to anyone bold enough didn’t invent the taxi; it made it easier to hail and to wage war against today’s tech giants. As CEO of pay for one. Amazon didn’t invent the department the Quebec City-based software firm Coveo, he store; it offered lower prices, more selection, faster offers his customers—companies that typically don’t deliveries and the ability to go on a shopping spree have armies of developers and data scientists—access by simply yelling, “Hey Alexa!” to the technologies that fuelled Amazon’s ascent: The more we use these services, the more stream- machine learning, analytics, intent detection, lined they become. Machine learning algorithms natural language processing and beyond. “Every analyze our past purchases and behaviours to company wants to be like Amazon. They want a fair determine what we want and need, sometimes chance at competing against the tech-first companies: before we figure it out ourselves. (Thirty-five per Netflix, Uber, Wayfair,” says Têtu. “This is the wave cent of Amazon purchases and 80 per cent of Coveo CEO that Coveo is riding. We are trying to democratize Netflix viewing are the result of personalized Louis Têtu the use of data and AI.” recommendations.) “Tech-first companies have

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CPA-Louis Tetu_EN.indd 43 2020-04-07 10:59 AM trained us to get what we want when we want it,” Coveo’s 1,500 customers include some of the Big says Têtu. “The effortless journey to fulfilling your Four and CPA Canada, each of which pays between intent is what makes businesses win or lose in this five figures and multiple millions every year to use decade. It’s not the product. It’s the experience.” the firm’s software platform. For them, Têtu frames To thrive—or survive—in the experience economy, Coveo as a means of survival: “If you implement every company needs to leverage data and AI to Coveo, you’re going to be a participant in the provide the level of ease, speed and personalization winner-take-all economy,” he says. “You’re not going that customers now expect. Otherwise, they won’t to be Blockbuster. You’re going to be Netflix.” be customers much longer. The moment they can’t find a product on your shelves, they’ll take out their n technical terms, Têtu is the CEO of a pure phones and buy it online, giving their business to cloud-native, multi-tenant software-as-a-service your competition from the aisles of your store. company—and he knows exactly how unenticing Few businesses have the resources or technological that sounds. Speaking about “customer search know-how to outmanoeuvre the likes of Amazon. journeys” at Coveo’s conference last year, he Têtu pitches Coveo as a way for those companies to Ijoked, “Not a good conversation to have at a bar.” fight back. He calls it an “experience intelligence On the tech-CEO spectrum, he is more Rolex-and- platform”—which, in lay person’s terms, might cuffs than hoodie-and-jeans. At 55, he spends his translate to One Software to Rule Them All. Today’s long weekends flying helicopters and small planes businesses are drowning in platforms: CRMs, ECMs, or skiing with his wife, Louise, with whom he has CMSs, BPMs. If you don’t know what those are, that’s three adult children. the point: Making sense of these tools and all the If you catch Têtu using the royal “we,” he’s prob- data they collect can be overwhelming. Coveo is the ably speaking on behalf of his executive team. He’s unifying backbone, says Têtu, “the layer of software worked with the same core group—COO Guy that connects it all and delivers personalization at Gauvin and CFO Jean Lavigueur—for 30 years, scale across those experiences.” abiding by a philosophy of “no fear, no greed, no At its core, Coveo is a search tool. Type in a keyword guilt.” Despite building two billion-dollar compa- or a question, and it will scour the digital nooks and nies, “there were times when things looked super crannies of an organization—some combination of grim for us,” says Lavigueur, a CPA who describes emails, databases, product catalogues, public and Têtu as a gifted strategist whose decisions are private documents, web pages, all those acronymic informed by data, not rank. The trio survived the platforms and more—to find what you’re looking for. dot-com crash of 2000 by wrangling an investment It can point an accountant to an obscure tax law, a from Bain Capital, and then carried Coveo through confused customer to the appropriate FAQ, or an the last recession despite abruptly losing their larg- online shopper to the perfect product. Like Amazon est source of revenue, a partnership with Microsoft, in 2009. The team gives off the impression that they “Louis and his team recognized long ago became an inseparable hive mind. “If they Learn how to transition, start, and go home, I go home. It’s as simple as that,” says where the world was going Têtu. “I could not work without these guys.” grow your fi rm in the cloud from Coveo has offices in San Francisco, London and before the world knew” Montreal, and its headquarters are in Quebec City, experts in the accounting industry. or Netflix, it learns as it goes, better understanding where Têtu grew up. The youngest of five, he was users and becoming more predictive with every search. a precocious child. He skipped two early grades Our Business Builder webinar series focuses Coveo remained in relative obscurity until Nov- and graduated from Laval University with a on how accountants and bookkeepers can ember 2019, when OMERS Growth Equity led a mechanical engineering degree at 20; the society head-turning $227-million investment into the called to tell him he was the youngest mechanical improve processes, build effi ciencies, and company, one of the largest rounds in Canadian tech engineer in Canada. overall ‘how-tos’ to grow their business. history. The investment makes Têtu the rare CEO Têtu spent a year in Bell’s management-training to have led two companies with valuations above $1 program, but it wasn’t for him. “I was looking up billion. (Oracle purchased his last, Taleo, for US$1.9 the ladder and realized I didn’t aspire to do my Register online today: billion.) “Louis and the team recognized where the boss’s job, or the level above that.” Instead, at 23, quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/accountants/webinars/ world was going before the world knew, and they Têtu quit and joined his older brother’s company, started to build technology that allowed them to get Berclain, which made software that automated far ahead of everybody,” says Mark Shulgan, the scheduling in manufacturing plants. “We had no Small businesses Accounting fi rms managing director of OMERS Growth Equity. idea what we were doing,” he says. Yet within five Sign up for QuickBooks Online Streamline your fi rm’s workfl ow using the today and get 50% off. QuickBooks Online Accountant ecosystem. 44 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 Log in to cpacanada.ca/Intuit for more information

CPA-Louis Tetu_EN.indd 44 2020-04-07 11:00 AM years, the brothers had hundreds of employees on rying to pinpoint exactly what Coveo does four continents and counted Boeing and John Deere is as difficult as explaining what Amazon is. among their customers. Tableau, a data visualization company in After Berclain merged with the Dutch software Seattle, uses Coveo to help customers trouble company Baan, the team eventually left the business shoot software questions online, which they’d built and started another: Taleo, which Treduces the number of support calls it receives, digitized and automated hiring. By 2005, Têtu had cuts deflection rates and saves the business up to 1,000 employees in 40 countries and hundreds of $18 million a year. For Atlanta’s Acuity Brands, Fortune 500 customers. After the company went Coveo provides a searchable central marketplace public, the board suggested he move to Silicon Val that encompasses 5,000 products from 32 brands ley. Instead, he stepped down as CEO, hired his own with 14 different websites. Lavigueur says account replacement, remained executive chairman and ing firms use Coveo to connect and extract insights moved his family to Toronto; he wanted his kids to from disparate sources of information: spread live their teen years in a cosmopolitan, multicultural sheets, financial statements, letters, software, city. Today, they’re the global citizens he envisioned, rules, case law and tax codes from any number living in London, Dublin and Montreal. of jurisdictions. “Tax departments deal with a lot By 2012, when Oracle acquired Taleo, Têtu had of fresh data that is relevant to the value they need his eye on another venture: Coveo. He had been to deliver to their customers,” says Lavigueur. an angel investor since 2008, but as the company “Every day, there’s so much new content. How do grew, the board and founder, fellow Quebec City you make sense of all that data?” entrepreneur Laurent Simoneau, brought Têtu and Coveo also uses the platform to make sense of his team aboard. “You jump on a roller coaster, its own data. The company collects information and it’s one heck of a ride,” says Lavigueur. “At the about the way customers use the software—visits, end, it’s nice to take a break. But after a little while, impressions, clickthrough data and so on—in an you say, ‘I want to do it again.’ ” aggregated, anonymized form and feeds it to machine

Learn how to transition, start, and grow your ﬁ rm in the cloud from experts in the accounting industry. Our Business Builder webinar series focuses on how accountants and bookkeepers can improve processes, build efﬁ ciencies, and overall ‘how-tos’ to grow their business. Register online today: quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/accountants/webinars/

Small businesses Accounting fi rms Sign up for QuickBooks Online Streamline your fi rm’s workfl ow using the today and get 50% off. QuickBooks Online Accountant ecosystem. MAY/JUNE 2020 45 Log in to cpacanada.ca/Intuit for more information PIVOT

CPA-Louis Tetu_EN.indd 45 2020-04-14 4:43 PM Têtu at Coveo’s Quebec City office

learning algorithms that improve functionality. those new employees will be developers and R&D A chief information security officer and data staff who can concoct new software applications. protection officer ensure compliance with data and “Coveo can be used in virtually any industry,” privacy regulations, such as the EU’s GDPR. says Shulgan, adding that, when Têtu pitched According to the American research firm Gartner, OMERS, the investors in the room started asking: Coveo’s closest competitors include Lucidworks, a If the software can do this, could it do that? “It San Francisco-based firm that raised US$100 mil- was incredible to see the number of light bulbs lion last August to develop its AI-powered “insight going off around the table,” he says. “At this point, engine” Fusion, as well as Mindbreeze, a subsidiary Coveo is only addressing a sliver of what’s out there. of the Austrian software giant Fabasoft; its InSpire We think the total market size is huge.” platform scored highest on customer satisfaction Têtu acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic may hamper Coveo’s near-future growth plans. “Every day, there’s so much His first priority, he says, is protecting his employees’ health and job security, and providing con- new content. How do you make sistent service to customers. But he has long been sense of all that data?” preparing for this moment: Têtu has always intended to use the OMERS money to make in a 2019 Gartner report. “In such a dynamic acquisitions in the event of a market downturn. market,” the report’s authors conclude, “there is “Coveo can become a home for companies that still room for vendors to differentiate themselves.” might not be in a great position after this,” he Têtu hopes the OMERS investment will help says. “I’m trying to sort out what is truth versus Coveo jump to the front of the pack. He plans to fantasy versus drinking my own Kool-Aid, but use the cash to grow aggressively across the board, I think Coveo is approaching the leadership including hiring 270 people in 2020, which will position.” It may not be in Goliath territory just bring Coveo’s total head count to 750. Many of yet, but Têtu definitely isn’t David anymore. ◆

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CPA-Louis Tetu_EN.indd 46 2020-04-07 11:00 AM MASTERING MONEY

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19-1104__Mastering-Money-PodcastPhase 1 (Pivot Full Page Ad).indd 1 4/9/2020 10:10:11 AM CPA-BOB_EN.indd 48 48 OUTLAST PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020 their employees under one roof. one under employees their all to bring wanted company city, the the throughout offices multiple With space. original its soon outgrew firms, management customer-relationship world’s one of the largest But Salesforce, home. call company’sof clients the most that district business downtown adjacent to the neighbourhood ahip Gastown, in view mountain a with office an had of Salesforce Vancouver the arm years, For seven BY ADRIENNETANNER light andplentyofgreenery emphasize mountainviews, natural Salesforce’s new Vancouver digs NATURE OF FORCE OFFICE SPACE OFFICE 2020-04-07 11:02AM

PHOTOGRAPH BY CONTRIBUTORS NAME TK CPA-BOB_EN.indd 49

PHOTOGRAPH BY CONTRIBUTORS NAME TK and a rack of balance boards boards balance of arack and also take turns on a treadmill atreadmill on turns take also with flexible sit/stand desks desks sit/stand flexible with PHOTOGRAPHS BY KRISTOPHER BY GRUNERT PHOTOGRAPHS desk. The carpet made of of made carpet The desk. Salesforce’s commitment commitment Salesforce’s recycled fishnets reflects reflects fishnets recycled are universally equipped equipped universally are Salesforce workstations nearby. Employees can can Employees nearby. to sustainability. to sustainability.

recharge. The colourful The recharge. table allows workers workers allows table to take a break and and abreak to take Salesforce’s motto: motto: Salesforce’s “Blaze your trail.” your “Blaze The ping-pong ping-pong The mural features features mural used for relaxing or reconfigured reconfigured or relaxing for used form the heart of the workplace. workplace. the of heart the form room, with couches that can be be can that couches with room, They are designed like a living aliving like designed are They each of the office’s four floors floors four office’s the of each to accommodate larger staff staff larger to accommodate add personal touches with with touches personal add meetings. Staff members members Staff meetings. team photos and service service and photos team The social lounges on on lounges social The medal displays. medal

MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 2020-04-07 11:02AM 49 LAST OUT

Nothing draws people together like a Last summer, Salesforce opened kitchen. This one includes its new downtown digs in a Seymour snacks galore, ranging on the virtue scale from apples to Street tower with expansive views of gummy bears. The tile work, the mountains and Burrard Inlet— which is different on every and with four dedicated floors, it now floor, is designed by Japanese artist Shinji Murakami and has ample space to house its growing reflects local vistas and Vancouver team. The office is close iconic images. to public transit, which helps the company recruit and retain employees. Michele Schneider, Salesforce’s senior vice-president of global workplace services, says the central location also encourages staff to support local communities by venturing out to grab lunch and attend events. Like all Salesforce’s offices—it has over 130 worldwide—the new Vancouver space includes lounges furnished with comfy couches pushed right up against the windows to allow all employees to enjoy the view. Also positioned near the windows: collaboration zones, a treadmill desk and individual workstations, all of which give workers the option to stand or sit, as well as access to balance boards for those who want to strengthen their core while they work. Salesforce is working to configure all its offices worldwide in much the same way as the Vancouver layout, Schneider says. Employee wellness is supported with amenities, such as a parenting room for staff stopping by with a child or nursing mothers who need a place to pump; a mindfulness room and games rooms; and a snack bar that includes a selection of fresh Staff are fruit. The company’s emphasis on encouraged to take a sustainability is reflected in the moment for reflection carpet made from recycled fishnets, in the meditation room, where they will find recycling stations that include a bin privacy, soft lighting for electronic waste, and many oxygen- and books offering tips producing plants. “Not only does the for mindfulness. space feel comfortable and residential,” Schneider says, “it also makes you feel close to nature.” Still, the Salesforce design leaves room for distinctive touches. Each office’s kitchen tiles are unique and designed to reflect local touchstones. Shelves are stocked with books by local authors and employees are encouraged to submit photos of themselves working and volunteering, which

are framed and hung on the walls. ◆ PHOTOGRAPHSGRUNERT BY KRISTOPHER

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CPA-BOB_EN.indd 50 2020-04-07 11:02 AM EXTRAORDINARY ITEM Other front-runners in the space include San Francisco’s Diamond CARBON HACKS Foundry, which has its own millennial- Cheaper, more ethical lab-grown diamonds are cutting into targeted brand, Vrai, and recently the fine jewellery game BY WING SZE TANG announced plans to scale production from 100,000 carats per year to one million. Ada Diamonds, which has At Couple’s first pop-up shop, which fragment of a natural diamond—in a cultured diamond showrooms in San ran from November to February on sealed chamber with carbon-containing Francisco and Manhattan, has the lofty Toronto’s swanky Mink Mile, the dia- gases like methane. When exposed goal of putting diamond mining out of monds on offer sparkled like the ones at to extreme heat, the gases turn into business. These startups are challenging Tiffany’s, the legacy jeweller across the plasma, carbon crystallizes on the the industry dominance of De Beers, street. But subtle details—like a display diamond seed and it grows. which launched its own synthetic of flowers tucked into test tubes— As the tech has advanced, so has diamond brand, Lightbox Jewelry, in hinted that something was different: the marketing spin: Lab diamonds 2018; its pastel rocks are sold as trendy Couple’s gems are made by science. aren’t positioned as cheap lookalikes fashion baubles for US$800 a carat, Lab-produced diamonds have existed but as authentic diamonds—in ostensibly to avoid cannibalizing its for decades, but leaps in technology chemical composition, they’re core fine jewellery business. are now making them contenders in identical to their mined siblings—with While lab diamonds now account the fine jewellery and engagement ring the upside of being sustainable and for about two per cent of the overall markets. “It’s not a trivial exercise to conflict-free. According to Human diamond jewellery market, the threat to grow diamonds,” says Jeff Brenner, Rights Watch, the traditional diamond mined diamonds is real—particularly Canadian co-founder of Couple, which trade still fuels human rights abuses in Canada’s North, where mine launched in 2018 with an engagement such as forced labour, and unchecked remoteness and brutally cold climates ring for Brenner’s wife. “But now mining is ruinous for ecosystems, make diamond extraction extremely we’re at a place where we can grow causing soil erosion, deforestation challenging and expensive. Bain larger diamonds with better quality.” and wildlife decimation. “For the first & Company predicts the synthetic time, you can get a real diamond—not diamond trend has potential to WHILE LAB cubic zirconia, not moissanite— reshape the industry. Global consumer guaranteed to be ethical and better demand for diamond jewellery reached DIAMONDS NOW for the environment,” says Brenner, US$82 billion, an all-time high, in ACCOUNT FOR whose company is currently scouting 2017. If synthetic stones can take a permanent store locations in Toronto bigger cut of that market, their makers’ ONLY TWO PER and New York City. future will be bright. ◆ CENT OF THE OVERALL MARKET, THE THREAT TO MINED DIAMONDS IS REAL Today, it’s possible to “culture” a one-carat diamond for about $300, down from $4,000 in 2008, according to a 2018 report by the consulting firm Bain & Company. Couple’s Classic solitaire engagement ring, which starts at $6,296, is about 35 per cent bigger than a similarly priced mined diamond. Such stones are commonly created through a process called chemical vapour deposition, which places a “diamond seed”—either a

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL NEUHAUS tiny lab-grown gem or a small

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CPA-BOB_EN.indd 51 2020-04-07 11:02 AM LAST OUT

funding for co-living ventures reaching US$2.2 billion in 2018, up from just US$200 million the previous year. One of America’s biggest co-living brands, Common, accounts for $65 million of that venture funding. Some of it will be funnelled into a new project in Ottawa called Common Zibi, containing 252 beds spread over 60 co-living apartments in a new, 24-storey tower being developed by Toronto’s Dream Ltd. SoulRooms, meanwhile, is backed by a large Canadian real estate firm called Zahra Properties, which is helping the startup jump from 85 to 2,000 beds across the Greater Toronto Area over the next year or two. Despite current growth, big questions surround co-living’s long-term viability. Is this a smart solution to a long-term housing crunch? A reflection of millennials’ unique willingness to REAL ESTATE share? Or simply a temporary fix that young people will abandon as soon as HAPPY TOGETHER? they can afford to live on their own? Co-living startups are in growth mode, buying or building properties For tenants, the draw is clear. Sure, and renting them out by the room. So far, it seems, cash-strapped they have to deal with roommates, but, according to Cushman & Wakefield, millennials are totally into sharing. BY MATTHEW HAGUE they are saving 20 per cent in rental expenses on average compared to When Gaurav Madani graduated from traits to avoid conflict over things living alone. They are also forgoing the MBA program at York University’s like dishes and tolerance for noise. the headaches of another increasingly Schulich School of Business in 2019, he, Monthly fees start at $1,290 and common way to find housing: like many young professionals, strug- average $1,490, which covers utilities, co-buying with friends. gled to find an affordable place to rent Wi-Fi and common cleaning supplies. in downtown Toronto. “I was paying Other than the algorithm and the “THERE’S A LOT $800 a month to sublet a room near Wi-Fi, co-living isn’t new. You can find Schulich,” he says. “Suddenly, I was descriptions of rooming houses in most OF MAINTENANCE facing the prospect of paying over Charles Dickens novels. Enterprises REQUIRED WHEN $2,000 for a one bedroom in the core.” such as SoulRooms are different because Instead of packing up and moving they appeal to young, high-income A BUNCH OF somewhere cheaper, Madani teamed professionals such as tech entrepreneurs up with his classmate Arnab Dastidar and CPAs. Their apartments are fitted STRANGERS ARE to found a co-living business. Called with sleek Scandinavian-style LIVING TOGETHER” SoulRooms, the company establishes furnishings and include perks like management contracts with the group yoga classes and mixer nights. “Co-buying is an option,” says landlords of large homes and condos “This is co-living 2.0,” says Madani. Stefanie Ricchio, a CPA and business in desirable Toronto neighbour- Although the market is nascent— consultant. “But I really worry that hoods—the leafy Junction or the lively, as of 2019, there were a scant 3,000 people don’t think through the many restaurant-filled Liberty Village—and co-living beds in the U.S., according possible complications, including how lease them by the bedroom. (He and to property managers Cushman & to structure a shared mortgage, deal Dastidar were among the first tenants.) Wakefield—that number is expected with shared expenses, plan in case Sleeping spaces are private but to triple over the next two years as one person dies. What if someone has kitchens and living areas are shared; millennials continue to struggle bad credit and defaults?” an algorithm helps match roommates to find affordable housing. Investors On the business side, opinions about

based on compatible personality are lining up to cash in, with global the financial incentive for startups ILLUSTRATION BY LEEANDRACIANCI

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CPA-BOB_EN.indd 52 2020-04-07 11:02 AM vary. Renting out a home or an and care for where they live. “The columns. A rare combination of apartment by the room can garner average age of someone living at Node gifted popular communicator and 30 per cent more revenue compared is 28, and their average income is deep academic thinker, Krugman to renting to a single tenant, according $70,000,” says Khera. “We have a lot regularly and ferociously assaults to American real estate company JLL. of professionals, including a Deloitte Republican policy ideas that he That added margin helps explain how a partner in her 30s who lived in our believes should have died long ago, company such as SoulRooms operates: Dublin location because it was close but that “keep shambling along, eating They pay fair market value for their to her office. There’s a misconception people’s brains.” In 21st-century leases and charge no management fees that co-living is like dorm living. America, Krugman writes in Arguing to the property owners but pocket the That’s not necessarily the case.” With Zombies, a new collection of his surplus from renting room-by-room, Khera doesn’t see a future where Times columns, no economic proposal minus expenses, of course. co-living falls apart. “People don’t is or can be judged on its merits: But Zev Mandelbaum, president and want to spend upwards of 40 per cent “Everything is political.” CEO of Toronto’s Altree Developments, of their money on high rent unless The irony of the situation is that says he is unlikely to invest in a they are getting an all-inclusive Krugman takes considerable grief co-living project. “They tend to be lifestyle,” he says. “Our people are from the progressive wing of leftist very heavy in terms of management smart people who expect a lot, and political thought for his incremen- costs,” he says, all without guaranteeing are getting a lot. I think that in order talism and his belief in regulated customer satisfaction—one lousy to be competitive, traditional markets, albeit not as much as he roommate could ruin the experience landlords will have to start offering takes from the right for denouncing for the whole house, leaving the a similar level of service to us— unregulated markets. As far as company to mediate. “There’s a lot cleaning services, Wi-Fi, nice Krugman is concerned, his adherence of maintenance required when a designs—if they want to entice tenants to Keynesian moderation—government bunch of strangers are living together to move away from co-living.” ◆ stimulus in hard times, prudent and not necessarily taking care of cutbacks in boom eras—84 years after the property. The costs of active British economist John Maynard management make profits difficult to Keynes first published The General achieve. Over time, if management is BOOK VALUE Theory of Employment, Interest and not kept up to par, the assets will likely Money, makes him the conservative rapidly deteriorate and the operations ZOMBIE in the room. Krugman’s government will become like college dorms.” experience, in fact, consists of a brief Consider the bumps in the road faced SLAYER stint in Ronald Reagan’s White House. by co-living’s older, more established In a new collection of New York But in 1999, nine years before he was cousin: co-working. Until 2018, Times columns, economist Paul awarded the Nobel, Krugman began WeWork’s network of communal Krugman takes an axe to policy his Times columns in full political offices were estimated to be worth more ideas he believes should have outrage, already chasing the undead than US$16 billion and had raised more died long ago BY BRIAN BETHUNE with a vengeance. than US$4 billion in venture funding. Krugman originally used the term But those investments dried up when “zombie idea” to deal with the claim, the company revealed it was losing There are a lot of economists who constantly disproven and constantly US$2 billion a year, trapped in costly can be described as eminent, at least revived, that Canadians regularly lease agreements it couldn’t break. among their peers and national flood across the U.S. border in pursuit Anil Khera is the co-founder of a policymakers, but probably none as of primary health care. But there are co-living startup called Node, with outright famous in the world at large others he has found worthy of the tag, properties in the U.K., the U.S. and as Paul Krugman. A New York Times including the “death panel” horrors of one slated to open in Kitchener, Ont., columnist and distinguished professor Obamacare, the shrill cries of “deficit in 2021. He admits that his properties of economics at the Graduate Center scolds” and what he now calls the are “a little bit more operationally of the City University of New York, “ultimate zombie”: the trickle-down intensive,” but says, “the difference he is surely the only member of his and economy-boosting benefits of isn’t huge between us and a conven- profession to have won a Nobel Prize cutting taxes for the wealthy. tional landlord.” The difference might and to have inspired a recent tweet Arguing With Zombies groups also be compensated for by the higher from Donald Trump demanding decades of columns into 18 categories— capitalization rates of co-living. the Times fire him. The U.S. president’s from “Trade Wars” to “Trump” to “Eek! What makes Khera optimistic that distaste, widely shared in his Socialism!”—all headed by brief new co-living will be viable long-term is Republican Party, comes from essays. Throughout, Krugman pursues that his tenants are well-established, the polemical sting in Krugman’s a handful of interconnected themes.

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One is that Donald Trump is no outlier, inarguable. That’s not the case with but the distilled essence of his party. the final two: “be honest about PIVOT RECOMMENDS He may have changed the Republican dishonesty” and “don’t be afraid to Party into a cult, Krugman opines, talk about motives.” He also urges the Off the clock but he hasn’t worsened its policy media, as well as his fellow experts, BY LARA ZARUM prescriptions or corrupted its motives— to avoid excessive both-sides-ism. those were already faits accompli. Krugman’s favourite example of this Watch That’s why there are so many columns scourge in contemporary mainstream In the early 2000s, superintendent dating from the George W. Bush presi- media is coverage he characterizes as, Frank Tassone turned Long dency, hammering Republican policies “Views differ on the shape of the Island’s Roslyn High into one of New York state’s top-performing that are remarkably consistent with planet.” In other words, those who schools. But it turns out those of today, and even a 1992 article declare the earth is flat, in his opinion, Tassone had been running a accusing opponents of using what do not deserve any publicity at all. multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme, and in 2006 he pleaded The four rules reflect Krugman’s guilty to grand larceny. Hugh belief that the opponents he calls Jackman plays Tassone in “professional conservative econo- Bad Education, a new film based mists”—as opposed to “conservative on the con, now available on HBO. professional economists,” whose Read arguments he takes seriously—are even Economist and Harvard business worse than flat earth proponents. They professor Rebecca Henderson are not pushing zombie ideas in the doesn’t mince words with the title of her latest book, Reimagining mistaken belief they are true, Krugman Capitalism in a World on Fire. argues: They know they are false, as has Henderson, a fellow at the been shown since the Reagan adminis- National Bureau of Economic tration. For Krugman, trickle-down Research, argues that the success of free market capitalism has economics in particular is a concept come at a great cost to the pushed for political ends, for the benefit stability of democracy and the of the rich and to provide an excuse for planet. Henderson maps out an alternate path for the future of reducing benefits for the rest of society. capitalism, one that prioritizes Positing that one’s opponents are the prosperity of society at large, not simply mistaken but ill-intentioned not just those in the C-suite. raises the very real chance his book KRUGMAN’S “ULTIMATE ZOMBIE”: THE TRICKLE-DOWN BENEFITS OF CUTTING TAXES FOR THE WEALTHY would now be called “alternative facts.” may alienate America’s remaining And there is reference after reference neutral voters. Zombies is in many to the “ultimate zombie,” which the regards merely a return to what was economist believes is set to dominate called “political economy” in Adam American socio-economic policy Smith’s day, long before the rise of what p debates before and after November’s Krugman calls “the technocratic Watch dream—the idea of being a politically presidential election. Should Trump If you’d prefer a British scandal to return to office, Krugman asserts, his neutral analyst helping policymakers an American one, try Quiz, based administration and its congressional govern more effectively.” But in a hyper- on the true story of a man who allies will proceed to attack the deficit- partisan, media-siloed era, centrist scammed his way to stardom on the U.K. version of Who Wants ballooning effects of their 2017 tax voters are a dwindling demographic in to Be a Millionaire? Matthew cuts—which were supposed to pay for the U.S., and Krugman argues that it is Macfadyen plays Charles Ingram, who won the show’s top prize in themselves—by slashing expenditures no longer possible to argue the future COURTESY OF AMC on Social Security and Medicare. path of his country while putting 2001 before he, his wife and an accomplice were caught cheating ; QUIZ Krugman goes at it all with his four aside that crucial “political” adjective. the system. Stephen Frears directs rules of punditry, of which the first two Krugman makes a compelling—and this three-part miniseries, which (“stay with the easy stuff” and “write clarifying—case that economics cannot airs on AMC over three consecutive nights beginning on May 25. in [plain] English”) are essentially be separated from politics. ◆ BOOK BY ISTOCK

54 PIVOT MAY/JUNE 2020

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MAY/JUNE 2020 PIVOT 57

CPA_CLASS_ENG_MAYJUNE20.indd 3 2020-04-07 10:38 AM ALTER EGO

Accounting is my second career. THE CHALLENGER I immigrated to Canada from Romania Ofelia Valeanu, a 39-year-old CPA candidate, in 2006 and worked in marketing is a file manager at Massie Turcotte et for a while, but when the financial crisis hit, I lost all my clients. Associés Inc. in Brossard, Que. This year, But my husband, a CPA, seemed she’ll compete in the Canadian Kickboxing to be gaining clients. I was like, Championship. BY MEGAN JONES “I’m definitely in the wrong field.”

At the end of 2018, I felt stressed and needed something other than work to focus on for a couple of hours a day. I started boxing and kickboxing regularly in January 2019, and I quickly fell in love with Most people consider boxing a it. Eventually, I was training so much barbaric, violent sport. But it’s that I joked, “You’d think I was a game of will. There’s a strategy prepping for competition.” My trainer behind it. You have to focus in said, “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.” order to analyze what your opponent is doing so that you can defend and respond. There’s a lot more to it than, “Let’s put on gloves and hit each other.”

The first time I went in the ring was March 2019. I felt like I was supposed to have been there all my life. The rush was perfect. Since then, I’ve competed I wake up at 4:30 a.m. every in three officially sanctioned weekday. I have a coffee, matches and won two. then I do 50 minutes of weight training. After work, I go to the gym. All told, I train almost 20 hours a week.

Both boxing and accounting require In order to train as much strategy. When you’re as I do, I have to work with communicating with sponsors. It’s super difficult a client that’s in a in the amateur scene to difficult situation, you find them. Especially need to be tactful. when you’re a woman— You’ve got to anticipate forget it. I’ve secured a few, what they need. but I need to find more. I wish that people would fund more female athletes.

When I met my husband and he told me he was an accountant, I was like, “Oh no.” Some people think accountants just sit at desks, play with numbers, go home and watch TV. But what you do at work isn’t necessarily who you are off the clock. I can be an accountant and have fun. I can do things people consider crazy. PHOTOGRAPH BY LM CHABOT

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