It’s almost June. When will the PCAOB publish another Canadian audit inspection report?

TORONTO, May 18, 2026 –  Five months into 2026, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States has yet to publish an audit inspection report for a Canadian accounting firm. Under the Trump administration, the PCAOB has undergone significant budget cuts and a change in both leadership and direction, with further budget cuts likely in the future.

Each year, the US audit watchdog publishes firm-specific reports of inspections it has conducted, to “assess a firm’s compliance with certain laws, rules, and professional standards in connection with its performance of audits, issuance of audit reports, and related matters involving public companies and other issuers.” These reports, which are publicly available, are widely considered to be an independent assessment of audit quality, in contrast to a self-regulatory model.

The last inspection reports of Canadian accounting firms published by the US audit agency were released in November 2025. The PCAOB published inspection reports for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton for audits that occurred in 2024. Significantly, under the stewardship of former PCAOB Chair Erica Y. Williams, the PCAOB had improved its processes to the point that it was publishing reports less than one year after audit inspections has completed.

The numbers and frequency of audit inspection reports

In the past five years, the US audit watchdog has published 48 inspection reports of Canadian accounting firms. While that works out to almost 10 inspection reports per year, the year 2022 was an outlier, with 18 inspection reports published by the PCAOB.

Under the Biden Administration, Williams was appointed Chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board by the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2021, and sworn in on January 10, 2022.

If the PCAOB publishes a Canadian inspection report by the end of June of this year, it will match the publication schedule of 2023, the only year of the past five that it has published a report later than February. In 2023, the PCAOB published three reports in June, in a year in which they published seven inspection reports of Canadian firms.

In that year, they published major reports on both EY Canada and PwC Canada, two of the Big Four accounting firms in Canada. 2023 was also a year in which the PCAOB sanctioned and levied fines against Canadian firms, and introduced a new section in its reports whereby firms voluntarily disclosed potential breaches of independence.

Trump Administration will continue to deregulate audit sector

The Trump Administration has sought to deregulate the audit industry largely through budget cuts to the PCAOB. Williams left the PCAOB in July of 2025 at the apparent request of Securities and Exchange Chairman Paul Atkins, a Trump appointee and “a vocal supporter of free-market principles in regulatory policy.”

After surviving a serious attempt to abolish the Board, the PCAOB had its budget cut in the past year by nine per cent, and a staff reduction of about five per cent. The budget cuts, which included slashing the salaries of the chair and other board member by roughly half, resulted in an 18.4% reduction of the Board’s accounting support fee to $306 million, reducing the cost to public companies and broker-dealers that fund the board.

According to the UK Financial Times, the Atkins-led SEC is “pushing pretty hard” for further cuts and staff reductions in this year’s budget process, though the PCAOB has declined comment. The Financial Times reports that, as of December, the PCAOB employed about 500 professionals to examine audits of public companies listed in the United States, but will substantially reduce the number of people involved in audit inspections.

At recent public appearances, current PCAOB Chair Demetrios Logothetis has spoken of a need to “assess” the current inspection process, “leveraging” automation and AI, and foster an internal culture at the PCAOB that is “disciplined and cost-effective.”

Colin Ellis is a contributing editor to Canadian Accountant. Title image: Composite of PCAOB office sign (courtesy PCAOB) and question mark illustration (Csaba Nagy from Pixabay).