Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada’s headquarters in Toronto, on Oct. 6.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Jean Desgagné, CPA, CA, is the immediate past chair of the CPA Ontario Council. He was a member of the CPA Ontario Council from 2017 to September, 2023, and served as chair since 2021.
In the spirit of transparency, I am sharing here some of the items that the Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario discussed at our recent annual general meeting. It is important for members of our profession to understand that, despite what others have written and said, our decision to withdraw from CPA Canada is not about breaking up the profession or diminishing its voice; it’s not about personality or politics.
To the contrary. Our decision in no way puts the unified Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation at risk. And this decision, which our counterpart in Quebec has also made, arose out of five years of persistent transparency and accountability issues with CPA Canada.
A decade ago, the legacy accounting bodies in Canada and Bermuda unified the CA, CMA and CGA designations under a single one: CPA. Jurisdictional and legislative responsibility for the regulation of the profession remained unchanged – it continued to be held by each of the provincial, territorial and Bermudian (PTB) professional bodies, with CPA Canada having no legislated authority.
To support the early stages of unification, the newly amalgamated PTB bodies entered into a collaboration accord with CPA Canada and the other PTBs. This was essentially a business arrangement that defined how we would work together. The drafters of the accord understood amendments would be necessary, and so wisely included a two-year review clause.
This review period extended into five years of stalemate. At CPA Ontario, we understand that in a federation there must be give and take and we are fully committed to a governance process that reflects the diversity of Canada, where decisions on matters of common interest are made collaboratively.
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However, while some might disagree on how we got here, the fact remains this: Despite best efforts, fundamental issues with CPA Canada remain unaddressed.
In 2019, CPA Canada’s technological failures let down an entire cohort of our students who had diligently prepared for their Common Final Examination. We found its response and its review to be unsatisfactory and this led to CPA Ontario and CPA Quebec commissioning an independent third-party review of the event so that the core issues could actually be identified and addressed.
Another issue: While our profession prizes transparency as one of its core tenets, we continue to have concerns regarding CPA Canada’s financial transparency surrounding the provision of education programs for the CPA designation. We have tried continuously to get more comprehensive financial information – including trying to use our contractual audit rights – but were unsuccessful.
Additionally, CPA Canada challenged our legislative role as the regulator and voice of the profession in Ontario. Without consulting us or any of the provinces, it registered a trademark for a designation that could affect the CPA designation – the Global CPA or GCPA. Only after months of pressure from us did CPA Canada finally agree to withdraw that registration. It is still not clear to us what they intended to do with that designation, particularly given all the effort to unify the three legacy designations in those preceding years.
These are just a few examples of repeated failures and a lack of transparency that left us no choice. As the profession’s governing Council in Ontario, we had a responsibility to act.
Withdrawing from the collaboration accord was never our preferred course of action. We worked to resolve these issues, and to ensure direct oversight of the profession by the PTBs, governance changes to enable that direct oversight, and increased financial transparency and accountability. But with repeated issues and a partner who did not come to an agreement acceptable to us, Council acted in accordance with our mandate so that we could uphold our legislated responsibilities.
As the departing chair, I recognize this leaves us at a crossroads. That said, I am heartened by the commitment of our provincial and territorial counterparts to continue working together, and by the active discussions that are already under way.
The CPA Ontario Council will seize this moment to chart a better way forward for our profession.