Bill C-259 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act (annual financial statements)

This bill was last introduced in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, which ended in March 2011.

This bill was previously introduced in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session.

Sponsor

Pat Martin  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of Jan. 27, 2009
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment requires the auditor’s report that is to be placed before the shareholders of a corporation in accordance with subsection 155(1) of the Canada Business Corporations Act to include information regarding any other professional services provided by the auditor to the corporation.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Canada Business Corporations ActRoutine Proceedings

January 27th, 2009 / 3:15 p.m.
See context

NDP

Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-259, An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act (annual financial statements).

Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River for being present today to second this important legislation.

We believe that if an auditor has undertaken other work for a business or a corporation, that information should be freely disclosed on the company's financial statements. In other words, there should be a mandatory declaration by the auditor clearly outlining what other financial services either he or the firm that he or she works for have provided for that corporation.

We call this the Enron article because that was exactly the situation in the historic collapse of Enron. Auditors were selling financial services to the company at one end and then auditing those same books and finding them to be A-okay. We do not want that to happen to Canadians. That is why this is necessary legislation.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)