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My friends,

Every December, while I prepare to close the book on the previous year, I like to take some time to acknowledge the progress that we have made as a community and look ahead at what the upcoming year has in store.

Our community started 2022 under a cloud of uncertainty, unsure of what the future would hold for us and what the upcoming year was going to look like. Despite all the uncertainty that you have dealt with over the past few years, I have been extremely impressed by how we all banded together despite the challenges and threats looming around us. 

A term that became familiar during the pandemic was “the new normal”, and one of the many positives to come out of 2022 is that we are finally beginning to see what that looks like. This year, we got back to hosting in-person events, and for those of you who know me well, you know just how exciting that was for me personally. Getting the opportunity to come face to face with many of you once again after being unable to do so for far too long has been such a pleasure. We held many events throughout the year including multiple Regional Tune Ups, the CTC Summer Camp, and the CT Symposium, just to name a few. If you made it out to an event this past year, thank you–and if you didn’t have the chance, we hope to see you in 2023. Your first opportunity to go to an event in 2023 will be at our Mental Health and Wellness Seminar and Building an Ethical Workplace being held on February 15 and 16 respectively online and at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa.

Arguably, our biggest accomplishment this year came in the form of a ratified collective agreement. All throughout the collective bargaining process, the number one thing on our minds was the importance of negotiating a deal that benefitted our members. We are pleased with the deal we secured and were glad to see that our members supported it in such strong numbers.

Looking ahead to the New Year, we are looking forward to making progress on several issues that we know are important to our members. Some of those key issues that we are going to be focusing on include continuing our push on our ongoing pay equity case, as well as the completion of the CT conversion for the CT-IAUs.

Also, in light of the recent developments on the return to the workplace, we want to assure you that we understand how important telework is to our members. We disagree with the employer’s decision to enforce a blanket return-to-the-office mandate across the federal public service without having had any discussion with ACFO-ACAF. In the New Year, we will continue to make telework our top priority.

Regardless of how you choose to celebrate this time of year, I hope that you have a joyous and relaxing holiday season.

On behalf of all of us here at ACFO-ACAF, happy holidays!

Dany Richard, MBA, CPA, ICD.D

President and Chair of the Board of Directors

ACFO-ACAF