Noting that the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to significantly impact Canadian reporting issuers and their auditors, the CPAB believes that it is important that the quality of audits is not compromised by these challenges, and that care is taken by auditors to properly assess the accounting and disclosures made by Canadian reporting issuers.

Since audit committees play a critical role in overseeing the external audit, CPAB encourages audit committees to consider the following areas that could impact the quality of public company audits in Canada and discuss with their company management and audit teams: (i) Internal controls; (ii) Fraud; (iii) Complex/new accounting issues; (iv) People; (v) Project management; (vi) Changes to audit and review procedures; and (vii) Foreign jurisdictions audit work.

For further details, refer to the CPAB Exchange Bulletin on the CPAB’s website.