Sunday News Roundup 25.05.04: Federal election disappoints accountants and more Canadian accounting news

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get all the week’s stories. Click here to sign up. 

TORONTO, May 4, 2025 – Tens of thousands of chartered professional accountants woke up this past Tuesday to the news that Mark Carney had been elected prime minister and spent the rest of the day in various stages of disappointment and depression. Accounting is a conservative profession and accountants in general tend to vote for conservative parties. 

While we can safely assume that many CPAs voted for the Liberals under the leadership of an economist and central banker, history has proven that the majority of Canadian accountants likely supported Pierre Poilievre. (Fun fact: Poilievre lost his seat to Bruce Fanjoy, who was once the director of marketing at Deloitte.) We can already see the opposition forming to Carney’s promise of the “biggest transformation of our economy since the Second World War.” 

Meanwhile, CPA Canada is hoping that Carney “prioritizes the much-needed tax reform that CPA Canada has been calling for,” which is simply wishful thinking. Carney will have his hands full with tariffs and trade agreements, let alone a vengeful Pierre Poilievre, soon to be representing an Alberta riding, to be concerned about the complexities of the Income Tax Act. 

US audit watchdog boss fights for PCAOB survival

This past Thursday, Erica Y. Williams, the head of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States, made a speech at Baruch College. For the uninitiated, Baruch College is a smallish university in New York City whose accounting program has a stellar reputation internationally. And the PCAOB, of course, is now in the crosshairs of the Trump Administration, which is looking to put the audit watchdog permanently to sleep. 

How horrid it’s been to watch top civil servants and administrators fight for the survival of their programs since the election of Donald Trump. “I am deeply troubled by legislation passed by the House Financial Services Committee that proposes to eliminate the PCAOB as we know it,” said Williams. “More than 20 years after Enron, investors are better protected today because of the PCAOB.” 

Remarkably, the PCAOB just released machine-readable, downloadable datasets of audit firm inspection findings going back to 2018, which can be used to analyze historical inspection findings. It’s almost as if the PCAOB expects to be “disappeared” from existence in some kind of Orwellian dystopia where history is rewritten. At the very least, the data will be a boon to academics, even to Canadians bereft of similar audit inspection transparency.

PCAOB publishes Doane Grant Thornton inspection report

Of course, many auditors would disagree with our position and would be happy to see the end of the PCAOB. Some have pointed to the shift in business focus of recently rebranded Doane Grant Thornton in Canada as proof positive that firms are overburdened by regulatory compliance.

The PCAOB recently released an audit inspection report of the firm. Firm data shows that, in 2021, there were three total issuer audits in which DGT (then simply Grant Thornton) was the principal auditor, compared to zero in 2024.

The PCAOB found a 50 per cent deficiency rate in two audits conducted in 2024 (in which the firm was not the principal auditor), compared to no deficiencies (a zero per cent rate) for three audits conducted in 2021, two of which the firm was engaged in as the principal auditor.

Accounting Dealbook

Meanwhile, south of the border, accounting firm Baker Tilly is acquiring Moss Adams in a $7 billion deal that will create the sixth-largest advisory CPA firm in the United States. But according to Reuters, the power behind the throne is actually a private equity firm called Hellman & Friedman, an “existing investor” in Baker Tilly, that will make a “strategic investment in the combined entity.” Since Moss Adams was a Seattle-based firm with no presence in Canada, and the combined firms will still be called Baker Tilly, the acquisition should have no effect outside of the US. 

Quick Hits: Articles of Interest 

Canadian

How have Canadians’ tax burdens changed over the past decade? (Globe and Mail)
Key tax promises advisors and investors should watch for under a Liberal government (Globe and Mail)
CPA Canada calls climate disclosure rule pause ‘a step backward’ (Press Release)
Killing it in Silicon Valley: An interview with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (Globe and Mail)
Pembina Trails School Division accounting spreadsheets leaked online after cyberattack (CBC) 

International

U.S. accounting firms tap India to alleviate talent crunch (Reuters)
Trump Media auditor says it was wrongly booted from US accountancy group (Financial Times)
GOP Lawmakers Vote to Eliminate Accounting-Firm Watchdog (Wall Street Journal) 

By Canadian Accountant staff.