ACC 622-Assignment #1

On January 17th,2012, the Certified Management Accountants of Canada (CMA Canada), the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) and the Certified General Accountants of Canada (CGA-Canada) presented members with a framework to unify the Canadian accounting profession. Within this framework this new profession would adopt the Canadian designation Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA). All current members would be required to use it in conjunction with their existing designations. After new members get their designation there would be post-designation specialties to peruse such as tax, forensic accounting, strategic management, and public sector accounting. The unification of the Canadian profession would simplify operations and governance because it would reduce the number of governing bodies from 40 to 14, also reducing confusion in the marketplace. These newly combined provincial and national bodies would have a new Board of Directors that would include representation from each of the participating bodies. The CPA designation is the largest accounting designation in the world and as such a large entity it could ensure that the Canadian accounting profession would be able to influence international standard setting bodies.

The very first step to unification started with Quebec. In one unified decision all of the accounting bodies in Quebec were on board. On May 16th, 2012, the Quebec CA, CMA and CGA bodies announced that the Province of Quebec had passed Bill 61, the Chartered Professional Accountants Act to create the Ordre des comptables professionnels agrèès(CPA) du Quèbec. This move positioned the accounting profession in Quebec to be the first to unite under the Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation.

The CICA have been for the unification process from the beginning and on May 2012 confirmed that they