moved for leave to introduce Bill C-258, An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act (qualification of auditor).
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Thunder Bay—Rainy River for being present to second this important legislation.
The bill is based on the premise that white-collar crime is, in fact, a blue-collar issue. Working people need to be able to trust the financial statements of the companies where their pension plans are invested. As it stands now, there is no independence of auditors. In fact, the auditor that reports on the financial statements of a company may be the same financial adviser that gives it advice on its income taxes. How can an auditor give advice for one financial service and then audit the veracity of that very same work?
The bill would make it such that a person might not become the auditor of a corporation if that person had provided other professional services to that corporation or any of its other spinoff corporations within two years of the person's proposed appointment as the auditor. This would ensure that working people could trust the integrity of the financial statements of the companies where they would be investing their hard-earned pension dollars.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)