FIR Multi-Year Reports

Provincial Summary

The Multi-Year FIR Review – Provincial Summary provides selected FIR information for multiple years, summarized at the Provincial level.

Two reports are available; one covering the period between 2000 and 2008, the second, the years 2009 onward. The two reports are necessary as a result of new accounting and reporting standards approved by the Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) and introduced in 2009.

Prior to this, the accounting and reporting standard used by municipalities was Fund Accounting. Municipalities flowed their revenues and expenditures through three funds: Revenue Fund (Revenues and Expenditures), Capital Fund (Expenditures and Financing), and Reserve Funds. Tangible Capital Assets were not reported.

The PSAB approved standards introduced in 2009 requires municipalities to adopt full accrual accounting practices. As a result of this, municipalities must account for and report their tangible capital assets in their Statement of Financial Position. As of 2009, the Financial Information Return (FIR) also takes into account these new reporting standards.

As a result of these changes, many of the data points between the two accounting standards (i.e. pre and post 2009) are not comparable. For this reason, caution should be exercised when combining data from the two reports.