CM Autumn Template - Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario

A Message
from the Chair
Along with the Council and management team of the
Institute, let me begin by expressing my delight at the
arrival of Rod Barr, FCA, as our new President and CEO.
Rod’s extensive and hands-on familiarity with CA profession
affairs was acquired both through a long and accomplished
career at Deloitte & Touche LLP, and during many years of
volunteer involvement at the Institute itself. The latter
included a two-year tenure as our Chair from 2004 to 2006
and a subsequent seat on the CICA Board of Directors, all
while remaining a member of the Institute Council.
All this means that Rod has been able to hit the ground
running – and running hard – as the following will attest.
Professional standards and the AIT: Exception granted!
First, our long effort to protect our province’s internationally
recognized standards for public accounting in the new
Agreement on Internal Trade has turned the corner. Just as
this issue of CheckMark went to press, the Institute
received formal notification from the Government of Ontario
that it will indeed mandate a “legitimate objective
exception” for the province’s rigorous public accounting
qualification standards, which are required by legislation
and overseen by the Public Accountants Council. Doing so
will safeguard these standards from provisions in the
agreement which would otherwise enable the “automatic
certification” of professionals from other provinces with less
rigorous regimes. We are delighted with this result, and will
update you as implementation details become available.
Toward the finish line on a new Chartered Accountants
Act
Secondly, members will know that passage of Bill 158, an
entirely new CA Act, tabled in the spring of this year, has
been hamstrung in part by the lobbying of certain
accounting bodies outside Canada that claim that
Gerald Mills, FCA
provisions in the bill would obstruct entry to providing
accounting services in Ontario for internationally trained
accountants. It does no such thing. (Please visit The Facts
on Bill 158 on the Institute’s homepage, at www.icao.on.ca,
for the facts of the matter.)
The prohibition on the unauthorized or misleading use of
“Chartered” and “Accountant” and its iterations is in fact
more than half a century old, and poses no impediment
whatsoever to members of those other accounting bodies
who have offered their services for many years now in
Ontario and can continue to do so. In reality, Bill 158 is an
urgently needed set of updates to the Institute’s regulatory
authority to deal with a very different environment than
existed in 1956, at the time of the current CA Act’s
passage. It simply carries over these restrictions on the
use of our name and designation.
Having responded to these objections about Bill 158 with
information directed to decision-makers at Queen’s Park
and employers of professional accountants, and in media
coverage of the issue, we have urged the Ontario
government to pass this legislation during the fall sitting of
the House.
Auditor liability reform: back on the radar
Throughout the whole period that these matters have been
in play, and as Ontario wrestled with the worst of the
recession, the Institute was required by necessity to scale
back its long-running advocacy efforts toward a sensible
legal liability regime for audit and assurance professionals.
This has now changed: In September, the Law Commission
of Ontario (LCO) – an independent body formed to advise
governments on legal reform matters – announced a study
into the impacts of the current, and increasingly ruinous,
system of joint-and-several liability.
(Please see page 5)
CheckMark • Autumn 2009
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