Quote:
Originally Posted by darklord700
If you are a 50 year old CA right now, you probably wouldn't care as you'll likely retire in ten years. So this affects the CAs between 30 and 50 years old.
The younger CAs who are still trying to leverage the superiority of the CA designation to climb the corporate ladder would object this. But it's not as bad as it looks for them. Say in ten years time, everybody is lumped together under the CPA banner. But companies could tell who "were" the CAs/CGAs/CMAs easily by asking a few questions like have you ever articled in a big four firm etc.
The letters might be gone but the resumes and work experience wouldn't change. For companies who are gung ho about hiring CAs, they can easily identify who "were" the CAs among the CPAs. Or they could just require applicants to identify their former designation before the merge.
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As someone in this field; I can tell you that essentially no CA's see it as a good idea, regardless of how close to retirement they are. Every CA worked towards their designation and put in hundreds of times more work and time towards their letters than a CMA/CGA did. The amount of work involved is not even within comparison. If the merger does happen I'd love to have the CMAs/CGAs required to pass some form of qualification exam that doesn't involve multiple choice or group presentations (what a joke) before they can use the CPA designation. Sure, full "merger" of the two wouldn't be for 10 years, but if we're talking the life of a career, that is a pretty big impact if you're going to go from X amount of CA's to 10x as many CPAs in 10 years.
If they merge you can kiss any international reciprocity goodbye. Fat chance in heck that any CA country or CPA country is going to accept a CMA or CGA into their bodies.
Regardless of what Quebec does (they're pretty much insignificant anyways economically), it had better come down to a vote among CICA/ICAA members; at which point it would get quashed like a bug. I can't see Ontario legislating a merger anytime soon (hopefully).
Edit to address OP's question: If you're ready to be a grunt for 3 years and go through a bunch more schooling and studying and have strong technical skills, then go for your CA. If you're looking for a quicker route into industry, then go for CMA. CMA's generally max out at departmental managers in large firms (still pull in good 100k with some experience), where as your limits are much higher with a CA. Really a question of how much time you want to devote to the process.