Thank you for your question.
The legislation does recognize three professional bodies for accountants in Canada. In Quebec in particular there are three accounting orders, one of which is CGAs. Those orders are independent of one another and have different fields of practice. In Quebec and Ontario, until very recently, public accountancy was limited to CAs. In response to complaints we filed on behalf of our members under the interprovincial trade agreement, the legislation was amended.
I mentioned in my remarks that the problem is never that there is no regulation. There is a lot of regulation and there is a lot of mobility between the accountancy professional bodies and CGAs. The problem was that in Quebec that mobility still did not exist. So CGAs from Alberta had to leave their clients at the Quebec border in order to practise.
The National Assembly passed a bill in December. When it is completely operational, it should allow CGAs in Quebec to practise the full range of their accounting expertise: public accounting. However, as long as a CGA from Ontario or New Brunswick or somewhere else is entitled to practice public accountancy in Quebec, we will still have the problem of labour force mobility. We are hoping that this will resolve itself.