A member's musings on government service: Timothy Bryant of the Calgary Chapter recently returned to ConocoPhillips after a 15-month Fellowship with the Canada Revenue Agency. He reflects on his time in government service.

• Position: Chapter News

My Canada Fellowship assignment with the Canada Revenue Agency ended on October 1, and I have returned to ConocoPhillips in Calgary as Manager, External Affairs. In this position, I am responsible for all Canadian government relations, public affairs, communication, and community investment.

The past 15 months in Ottawa has been very rewarding for me. I was able to work with a variety of senior officials at the Agency on many different important initiatives affecting large corporate taxpayers. They looked to me to provide the external perspective (or "dose of reality" as my supervisor Lyse Ricard would say) on these large projects. My most significant contributions were on the following initiatives:

* developing a new way to engage large corporate taxpayers during the audit process as part of the Agency's commitment to respond to and implement the recommendations set out in the OECD study on Tax Intermediaries (a study on which TEI provided formal comments on two occasions);

* developing the Agency's response to the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Canada including setting up an external advisory committee and chairing the subcommittee on Revenue Recognition and Computation of Profit;

* developing and delivering training products for senior auditors that focus on understanding the business of taxpayers, tax risk management, and the effect of regulation (for example, SOX and new accounting standards like FIN48) on corporate tax groups;

* providing feedback on the International and Large Business long-range business plans; and

* educating senior officials on corporate governance matters and how the Agency could respond from an audit perspective.

Some of the noteworthy highlights were: representing the Agency in the annual TEI Liaison meetings (I've been on the Canadian Income Tax Committee for the past 7 years so it was very interesting to be on the other side of the table); making a presentation to the CRA Board of Management on the Agency's response to IFRS; delivering a 90-minute presentation to a group of 1,000 senior large file case managers, international tax managers, and tax avoidance managers; and the sense of accomplishment from knowing that the senior management team on the compliance side of the Agency has a much better appreciation of how large corporations operate and the constraints and pressures they are faced with.

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