Fears of deepening fragmentation of Canada’s accounting profession have become reality, despite the efforts by industry leaders to create a single national professional designation.
In May, the Quebec government passed legislation that created a fourth accounting designation that united CGA, CMA and CA accountants in the province under the Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA) designation.
The new designation affects about 20% of Canada’s accountants and had been in the works for more than a year and a half as the government had encouraged the three accounting organizations to consider unifying the profession.
As a result of the pending changes, merger discussions began last year among the three national accounting organizations in the hopes of unifying the profession nationally under the CPA designation (See “Fears of industry fragmentation driving initiative to merger accounting organizations in B.C.” – issue 1158; January 3-9.)
But soon after Quebec’s law was passed, provincial CGA organizations began termination merger discussions with their provincial CA and CMA counterparts. CGA-Ontario ended talks first, followed by CGA-BC and then the rest of the provincial organizations, except CGA-Alberta.
By late May, CGA-Canada ended talks with CMA-Canada and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
In a letter to members, CGA-Canada noted that several key legal and governance issues remained unresolved at the provincial and national levels.
While a majority of accountants from all three organizations in B.C. favoured a merger, CGA-Canada suggested a two-thirds majority vote of members would likely be required at the national level for the merger to succeed, a result it suggested would be “problematic” to achieve.
Despite the pullout from CGA organizations, merger discussions continue between the other two designations in various provinces, and CGA-Alberta has continued merger discussions with CMA Alberta. •
