~ Distinguished Service Award ~
The CPABC Distinguished Service Award honours members who have been actively involved as volunteers for many years, recognizing them
for their dedication, commitment, and outstanding contributions to the CPA profession and/or for their unstinting support to one or more not-
for-profit or charitable organizations.
Thelma Siglos, CPA, CA
Thelma is a financial integrity consultant, specializing in forensic accounting investigations. She has held this role since
2014, when she retired from her career as a manager of financial integrity with the BC Public Service Agency. She has
shared her passion and skills with the accounting profession and the community throughout her career.
A dedicated volunteer, Thelma contributed to the accounting profession’s mandate to protect the public interest. She was
a member of her provincial legacy body’s Professional Conduct Enquiry Committee from 2005 to 2010 and its Rulings
Committee from 2008 to 2010, chairing the former in 2009-2010 and the latter in 2008-2009.
Thelma also helped to strengthen the profession within the Filipino Canadian community through her work with
the Association of Filipino Canadian Accountants of BC (AFCA-BC). She acted as AFCA-BC’s founding president and
director in 2008, and continues to support the association as a mentor.
Through her leadership, Thelma has helped many new Canadians integrate into Canadian society by supporting their learning, career growth,
and network development. In addition to her work with AFCA-BC, she has served as a director and treasurer of MOSAIC, one of Canada’s largest
settlement organizations (1983-1987) and as president of the Metropolitan Immigrant Settlement Association (1989-1991).
Thelma is currently a director and treasurer with the Jesuit Spirituality Apostolate of Vancouver. She also lends her expertise to the legal
community as a panel adjudicator for the Law Society of British Columbia.
~ Honorary CPA ~
The Honorary CPA designation recognizes the executive accomplishments of non-members who’ve made a significant contribution to the
accounting profession, and it positions them as leaders in the business community and community at large.
John F. Helliwell, CPA (Hon.)
John is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and an editor of CIFAR’s
World Happiness Reports, conducting this research from his base at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University
of British Columbia (UBC). He is also a professor emeritus at UBC.
There are three generations of accounting Fellows in John’s family. His own foray into accounting began while pursuing
a bachelor of commerce degree at UBC. After graduating in 1959, John moved overseas to study philosophy, politics,
and economics at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He subsequently obtained his DPhil in economics and
taught at Oxford while travelling back and forth to Canada to conduct research for Royal Commissions on Banking and
Finance (Porter, 1962-64) and Taxation (Carter, 1963-66); in both cases, he used his accounting background to study
how policies affected firms’ capital expenditures. During this time, he also began helping the Bank of Canada develop
its first econometric models (RDXI and RDX2); this work continued after his return to Canada in 1967.
John taught economics at UBC from 1967 to 2002, interspersed with 10 years of visiting appointments in universities and government agencies
in five countries. The longest of these was as Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University in the early 1990s.
John’s aforementioned contributions to Canada’s tax, economic, and regulatory policies have had a substantive impact on the account ing
profession. He has also contributed to the advancement of the accounting profession by speaking on tax matters for the Canadian Tax Foundation,
advising the House of Commons Finance Committee on tax reform (1970-1971), chairing the economic advisory committee of the Federal
Minister of Finance (1982-1984), and serving as a senior advisor to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
John was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1976, an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1987, and a Distinguished Fellow of
CIFAR in 2017.
CPABC in Focus • March/April 2018 17