Canadian Public Accountability Board extends enforcement action against Manning Elliott LLP

TORONTO, October 19, 2025 – Eighteen months after easing enforcement actions against Manning Elliott LLP, the Canadian Public Accountability Board has announced the accounting firm will continue to be prohibited from accepting new high-risk reporting issuer clients, including those resulting from initial public offerings, reverse takeovers, or other transactions.

Manning Elliott is based in British Columbia — with offices in Abbotsford, Burnaby, Surrey, and Vancouver — and is a member firm of PrimeGlobal, one of the five largest associations of independent accounting firms in the world.

According to its chart of enforcement actions, CPAB imposed an enforcement action against the firm in June 2023, prohibiting Manning Elliott from accepting new medium and high-risk reporting issuers. Apparently satisfied with the firm’s progress, the Canadian audit watchdog modified the enforcement action in March 2024, allowing the firm to accept new medium-risk audit clients. On September 12, 2025, CPAB announced the restriction against accepting high-risk audit clients would remain in effect.

Vancouver accounting firms penalized on both sides of the border

2023 was not a good year for Vancouver-based accounting firms. Three firms — Dale Matheson Carr-Hilton LaBonte LLP (DMCL), Manning Elliott LLP, and Smythe LLP — were barred that year by CPAB from accepting risky, publicly traded audit clients. As reported by Canadian Accountant, Manning Elliott was later fined by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the United States for failing to disclose in a timely manner nine reportable events concerning three disciplinary proceedings brought by CPAB. 

The sanctions helped explain why all three firms performed poorly in that year’s annual rankings of new audit client engagements, based on data provided by Audit Analytics. In 2019, DMCL had led all mid-tier firms with 31 new audit clients, but in 2022 the firm gained just seven. Smythe and Manning Elliott gained six and zero respectively. 

CPAB has now published modification notices for all three firms — as well as Alberta-based PKF Antares Professional Corporation, Chartered Professional Accountants — with Manning Elliott being the last of the four to be published. All four firms are solely prohibited from accepting new high-risk reporting issuers. 

CPAB remedial actions in effect for Manning Elliott

In its 2025 enforcement action, CPAB states that the firm “continues to be subject to enhanced oversight from CPAB in the form of quarterly meetings and continues to be required to pay a monetary assessment to recover the costs of enhanced oversight and monitoring of the Firm's compliance with the restriction. 

“Each enforcement action shall continue until the Firm has, to CPAB’s satisfaction, demonstrated sustained improvement in audit quality or until the above noted enforcement actions are otherwise terminated pursuant to an application under Rule 605.” 

Enforcement actions now part of regular reporting

In 2024, Smythe LLP had the distinction of being the first Canadian audit firm to be publicly censured by the national audit regulator under new disclosure rules. The announcement was a notable change from past practices in Canada’s audit and accounting landscape. As part of a first phase of disclosure changes, effective January 2023, CPAB would now disclose all “significant enforcement” actions arising from regulatory assessments. 

Since then, the publication of enforcement actions have become part of accepted regulatory reporting in the Canadian accounting profession, at a time when audit regulation is under attack in the United States by the Trump administration. The chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Erica Y. Williams, was forced out of the position earlier this year. In her three-year tenure, Williams was credited with creating a new environment of transparency and investor trust at the audit regulator. 

Colin Ellis is a contributing editor to Canadian Accountant.