Since Ontario’s accountants were split into “licensed” and “unlicensed”, we have been careful to avoid engagements where we might accidentally step over the line and get hit by a train.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario, answering a need for guidance among its own members, provided a document, organized by CICA Handbook sections, to help all of us keep safe.
Here it is: Assurance vs. Non-Assurance Engagements & Licensing Implications
Eric
Ultimately, in the case of Ontario’s unlicensed CGAs and CMAs, it is the professional association’s ethics and practice leader that decides what the interpretation of assurance, non-assurance or any information that could be discerned respecting the PA Act in any particular situation. I know of a CGA who was NOT involved in any engagement or otherwise professionally engaged who was called to answer before the CGA ethics committee for disclosing that he was a “manager, public accountant” to describe his employment with a CA firm. The disclosure was made on a brief bio distributed to his co-owners of residential condominium units where the CGA was standing for election as a director of the volunteer board. The CGA Ethics Chair mildly admonished the CGA for the structure of his disclosure that, as she advised, may have mislead co-owners of the residential condo that the CGA was a public accountant, contrary to the Act. The CGA Ethics Chair failed to cite any particular reason or regulation or by-law that the CGA had “apparently” breached to cause the “investigation” in the first place.