About the ICAA

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta (ICAA), formed in 1910, is the body that regulates the CA profession in Alberta. The Institute operates under provincial legislation, the Regulated Accounting Profession Act, the purpose of which is to protect the public; protect the integrity of the accounting profession; promote and increase the competence of registrants; and regulate the conduct of registrants.
The highest priority for the Institute is to protect the public interest. It does this by:

• Setting and enforcing high professional and ethical standards;
• Promoting and increasing competence of members by providing a comprehensive program of learning opportunities on current business, leadership, financial, accounting and assurance topics;
• Assessing the continuing competence of members;
• Maintaining and improving the competence of public accounting firms by regularly reviewing their practices to confirm compliance with professional standards;
• Enforcing practice standards and rules of professional conduct of registrants, and providing a means by which complaints can be dealt with in a fair and expeditious way, by investigating and adjudicating complaints against its registrants.

The Institute’s registrants include approximately 10,100 Chartered Accountants, 2,100 CA students, 875 public accounting firms, and 1,800 professional corporations. Its offices are located in Edmonton.

Unification of the Canadian Accounting Profession

Along with colleagues across the country, Alberta’s 24,500 designated accounting professionals are striding ahead under a proposed new banner, strengthening the industry by unifying education programs and professional designations.

In June of 2013, the ICAA held a member vote on unification, which saw 68.4 per cent of voting members vote in favour of unification. Since then, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Alberta, the Certified Management Accountants of Alberta and the Certified General Accountants of Alberta have been working toward unification under the Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation.

On July 1 2015, the Chartered Professional Accountants Act was proclaimed, creating the CPA designation in Alberta and the CPA Alberta body. That is now the sole professional organization for designated accountants in Alberta.

About the CA profession

Recognized worldwide, the CA (Chartered Accountant) designation represents financial expertise, strategic thinking, business insight and leadership. As highly valued professionals, CAs are leaders in all segments of the Canadian marketplace.

The majority of CAs work in the corporate world—private and public—developing and evaluating their company’s financial and business policies, managing and directing departments, and contributing, in many other ways, their skills and expertise to overall success.

In addition to these business roles, many CAs are entrepreneurs, heading up successful self-owned companies. Others work for not-for-profit organizations, contributing their valuable business and financial skills to arts, sports, environmental, healthcare and other groups. CAs in public accounting work for a wide variety and size of firms—from global to local. These CAs provide audit, assurance, financial planning, tax and business advisory services to clients of all sizes, and in tasks from planning mergers and acquisitions to developing business plans. CAs can also be specialists in fields like business valuation, investigative and forensic accounting, insolvency, restructuring, information technology and others.

In addition, CAs work in the public sector as elected officials as well as senior administrators. Many of Canada’s top business academics are CAs, contributing to advanced accounting education and post-doctoral research.