About Canada’s Standard-setting Boards and Oversight Councils
Standards are critical to our understanding of the performance of organizations, ensuring fairness and transparency.
Accounting, auditing, and now, sustainability standards provide a common and essential measurement that lend credibility and trust to both financial and non-financial results of public and private companies, not-for-profit organizations, crown corporations, governments, and auditing firms.
Canada’s standard-setting Boards and Oversight Councils are the Accounting Standards Board (AcSB), Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB), Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (AASB), Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB), and the Reporting & Assurance Standards Oversight Council.
Our Boards establish and maintain standards on accounting, auditing, and sustainability reporting to serve the public interest. Our Oversight Council appoints Board members and provide input into the Boards’ activities, ensuring that standard-setting functions as it should.
Board and Council members are volunteers. They are individuals with varied backgrounds, from the private and public sectors, such as financial statement preparers and users, auditors, academics, regulators, and sustainability professionals.
Our Relationship with CPA Canada
Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada's (CPA Canada) role in standard setting is one of stewardship, supporting the integrity of Canada’s independent standard-setting process.
More specifically, CPA Canada supports independent standard setting – delivered through the Boards and Oversight Council – by providing resources and funding. The standard-setting Boards and Oversight Councils operate at arm’s length from CPA Canada.
The CPA Canada Handbook
CPA Canada publishes the CPA Handbook (Handbook) in both English and French, which contains the accounting and assurance standards and guidance developed and/or adopted by the AcSB, PSAB, and the AASB. The CSSB expects to issue Canada’s first sustainability disclosure standards in 2024.
CPA Canada members can access the Handbook for free at www.knotia.ca. Others can purchase the Handbook at www.CPAstore.ca.