Canadian Public Accountability Board completes rule and legislative amendments to expand public disclosure of inspection results

The Canadian Public Accountability Board (CPAB) announced that final rule and legislative amendments needed to expand its regulatory disclosures have been approved, enabling it to publish individual firm inspection reports and making file-specific inspection result reporting to audit committees mandatory. The approvals complete CPAB’s multi-year disclosure project, which also includes disclosure of significant enforcement actions imposed on a firm and disclosure of recommendations in a firm report that were not addressed by the firm, both effective January 2023. The changes also make disclosure of issuer-specific significant inspection findings to the issuer’s audit committee mandatory, an area where most CPAB-registered firms already participate voluntarily. Individual public inspection reports will apply to 2025 inspections, and under amended Rule 413 participating audit firms may not publish or extract portions of CPAB inspection reports without CPAB’s consent. CPAB expects the first individual firm inspection reports to be published in Q1 2026 and will periodically review and consult with stakeholders on the functioning and effectiveness of the disclosure changes.