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NOMINEE FOR CHAIR
Milt Isaacs
Dear ACFO Members:
 My name is Milt Isaacs and I am running for President of ACFO. I have been a Director of ACFO for more than 4 years and have served on ACFO's Compensation and Benefits Bargaining Committee for more than 5 years. And over the past two years I have served as the Director responsible for Communications at ACFO.
I am a Certified Management Accountant, and a career financial officer, employed for more than 24 years in various financial positions. This experience has given me first hand appreciation of the day-to-day issues that many of us face within the financial management community.
My vision for ACFO is what I have said in the past and continue to believe today more than ever. ACFO has to be more proactive, and far more strategic, in our activities, and we have to do more to connect to our members.
The number one issue that ACFO must focus on is compensation and benefits. As you know, ACFO has now entered negotiations with Treasury Board, under the auspices of a conciliation strike mandate, which is unprecedented for ACFO. We require a steady hand during this process, the hand of someone who has direct experience working on compensation and benefits issues. No other candidate has the compensation and benefits experience and strategic perspective that I have to offer. I know what FI's are worth, and whether you are a FI 1 or a FI 4, I want you to know that I am committed to obtaining the compensation and benefits that you deserve. In addition, I respect that we need to ensure that in this round of collective bargaining that ACFO addresses the FI 01 and FI 02 issue that was as a result of an arbitrator's award.
If I am elected President, ACFO will pursue another major priority, which is to be, and be seen as, an advocate for the improvement of financial management within the federal government. I want opinion leaders in government to know ACFO, and to know it as a credible, constructive voice on public sector finance issues. The strategic goals of this enterprise are twofold: to ensure that the financial control systems of the federal government are comprehensive and effective, and provide an atmosphere where financial officers can be effective and have greater influence. Taking that role serves our individual interests in enhancing our collective stature, resulting in better compensation and benefits over time.
Ultimately, this Presidential race is about candidates' leadership ability and vision. The most useful way of judging a candidate's merits is by reviewing his or her track record. Below is a brief summary of some of my major accomplishments at ACFO. I encourage you to compare my accomplishments to those of the other candidates. I believe this record speaks for the kind of commitment I have shown, and the kind of leadership you can expect in future.
- Before I became a Director, ACFO did not have a strategic plan. Today there is such a plan in place, a plan that I spearheaded from the very first board meeting I attended;
- I was the champion of the development of an ACFO communications plan, introduced 2 years ago to address the needs of both internal and external communications;
- I was the principal lead in the development and execution of the ACFO member surveys (carried out first in 2002, and again in 2004), which gave members a voice on key issues, and allowed ACFO to understand where members stood on a wide range of key issues;
- I played a lead role in authoring and disseminating a series of communiqués to all ACFO members on the issues and considerations associated with ACFO's collective bargaining options, sent in advance of the fall 2004 vote;
- As part of my belief in the importance of ACFO's advocacy on financial management issues, I made a commitment to improving external communications, primarily through the vehicle of the Checks and Balances reports. The release of the ACFO discussion papers Checks and Balances I and II got us unprecedented media coverage, including front-page coverage in the Ottawa Citizen. We have since captured the interest of political leaders as well as employers on these issues. I have met personally with more than a dozen MPs, including members of the public accounts and finance committees to discuss these issues.
It is important that the leader of ACFO can deliver on commitments, knows the importance of ensuring that our strategy is focused on the members, and has a proven track record. I have demonstrated all of these skills in my time on the ACFO Board. I would consider it a privilege to serve you as President of ACFO.
My Position on Resolution 3
As you may know, there has been a resolution tabled which would mandate that the ACFO President must be a full time position, and must reside in the national capital region. As you may also know, this resolution was tabled with the Board of Directors several weeks ago, and was voted down.
The rationale for the rejection of this measure was as follows:
Over the past year or two, the structure of the ACFO has changed substantially. Staff has been added to offload operational duties and specialized functions (like labour relations) from the board and President, leaving them to focus more directly on strategic and directional issues. As this process has evolved, there have been growing questions among leaders within the organization about whether the President's job will need to be a full time job going forward.
The position that the board took in rejecting the submission was that it would limit ACFO's flexibility in being able to assess the nature and scope of the President's role in future, at a time where many other elements of the ACFO operations are being reconsidered and restructured. By setting the limits that Resolution 3 imposes, we essentially confine our ability to define the President's roles and responsibilities going forward. In the view of the majority of the board of directors, this is not the time to be confining our ability to define the role of the President.
Indeed, both because the organization is changing and the current President is retiring, board members, including myself, feel that now is the ideal time to review the Presidential role.
If I am to win the job of President, my first priority will be to carry out a review of the Presidential role, to align the role with ACFO's strategic objectives and the current composition of the organization's structure and functions, and to determine whether going forward, this role should truly be a full time role or not. As such, I respectfully suggest that members reject resolution 3.
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