I am going to complicate this even more. The Quebec bill that was just adopted, Bill 46, does not use the term “vérificateur” nor the term “expert-comptable”, but just “auditeur”. If you would like to know why, I will explain it to you.
I was a member of the working groups that negotiated the tabling of Bill 46. This bill governs public accounting. That is the expression used, “public accounting”, and it refers specifically to audit and review engagements.
However, when the time came to choose the terms to identify those having the right to provide this type of service, we asked ourselves if we wished to use the term “comptable public”, for the English “public accountant”, and the three professional associations decided that this French term did not have a meaning in the French language. In general, the public does not know what a public accountant does.
However, in the other provinces, the term “public accountant” is very clear, and indicates an individual who has the right to perform public accounting, but not in Quebec. Thus, the term “expert-comptable” would be used. In the end, the reason why “expert-comptable” was not chosen was because, especially in the case of the CGA and CMA, the accountants must have a special permit to perform public accounting. This would have created two categories in their association: public accountants and accountants. They could not allow this. Therefore, we looked for another term that everyone could agree on. We settled on the term “auditeur” because we wanted to somewhat follow what is happening in France.
However—and I imagine my colleague can say this more authoritatively—, in the nine other provinces, the term “public accountant” is used. In looking at how the legislation has been translated, we note that in French, rightly or wrongly, it is rendered by the term “expert-comptable”. Thus, where the term “public accountant” is in the original version of a legislative text, we find, in the French, the term “expert-comptable”.