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How CPA Canada supports standard setting

Learn how Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) supports the independent boards and oversight councils that set Canada’s financial reporting and assurance standards.

CPA Canada provides funding, staff and other resources to support an independent standard-setting process that is delivered through Canada’s accounting and audit and assurance standards boards and oversight councils.

About the boards and oversight councils

CPA Canada provides funding, staff and other resources to support an independent standard-setting process that is delivered through Canada’s accounting and audit and assurance standards boards and oversight councils.

Canada’s financial reporting and assurance standards boards and oversight councils comprise:

The boards establish and maintain standards on accounting and auditing to serve the public interest. The oversight councils appoint board members and oversee and provide input into the boards’ activities to ensure that the process for setting standards functions properly.

Members of the boards and oversight councils are mainly volunteers. They represent a wide range of professionals from Canada’s business community, such as:

  • financial statement preparers and users
  • auditors
  • academics and regulators from the private and public sector

This diversity ensures the consideration of differing viewpoints during the development of standards. Thus the boards and oversight councils can serve the public interest through a process that is free of undue influence from specific professions, organizations and other groups.

How the boards and oversight councils operate with respect to CPA Canada

CPA Canada and the boards and oversight councils operate at arm’s length from one another. This relationship enables the boards and oversight councils, and their staff, to fulfil their standard-setting obligations free from any undue influence.

The staff resources that CPA Canada provides the boards and oversight councils are CPA Canada employees. However, they set standards independently from other CPA Canada staff members. This arrangement ensures that accounting and auditing standards truly serve the public interest and remain free from undue influences.

How CPA Canada assists with the implementation of standards

Because understanding financial reporting and assurance standards is a key competency for Chartered Professional Accountants (CPAs), CPA Canada provides:

  • non-authoritative implementation guidance
  • tools and education to support its members in the consistent application of accounting and auditing standards