Sunday News Roundup 25.05.04: Federal election disappoints accountants and more Canadian accounting news
Our weekly Canadian accounting news roundup includes election disappointment among conservative accountants, the PCAOB fighting to survive, and more.
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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.
PCAOB publishes Doane Grant Thornton report as it fights for 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 unsightly 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 featuring findings from audit firm inspection reports 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 Canadian ones bereft of similar audit inspection transparency.
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 rebranding of Grant Thornton in Canada as proof positive that firms are burdened by regulatory regimes. So it came as something of a surprise to see the PCAOB release an audit inspection report of none other than the newly branded Doane Grant Thornton.
DGT has been pretty clear that it would make a shift to focus on assurance, tax, and business advisory services — areas where it “can make the biggest impact” — and away from audits of reporting issuers. Judging from the inspection report, this would appear to be the case, as DGT was not the principal auditor in any PCAOB inspections and, unfortunately, had a 50 per cent deficiency rate in the two audits inspected by the US audit watchdog in 2024.
Accounting Dealbook
Meanwhile, south of the border, accounting firms 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
CPA Canada calls climate disclosure rule pause ‘a step backward’ (Press Release)
International
U.S. accounting firms tap India to alleviate talent crunch (Reuters)
By Canadian Accountant staff.
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