Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario (CPA Ontario) - Toronto

I came here to give one star rating after horrible experience with them. While reading all the comments from students, members, and employees, I start wondering why the leadership of this org hasn’t been changed yet? It’s obvious that CPAO is not led by the right person and everything of it is wrong. Go change the leadership if you care the legitimacy of this CPA body. We are in a democracy.

Update: Now a CPA, I'm forced to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on professional development events in order to meet the annual professional development hours requirement. These costs are in addition to the already expensive annual membership dues. This whole PD system is a scam and a money grab that honestly does not add any value to my career development whatsoever. I recently qualified as a CPA, but my experience dealing with CPA Ontario's PEP team was absolutely horrible. I enrolled in the CPA program about three years ago. I was told at that time there were three pathways to being designated and not all of them would require assurance experience. They changed their rules after I started a job with a local CPA office with a primary focus on providing tax services. I was not notified of the changes until my second last experience review - yes, you read it right - until I was 2/3 into the PEP process. I am not sure why, among all the previous reviewers who supposedly reviewed my experience report, no one had pointed it out to me that I needed assurance experience. I was basically told there was no way for me to become designated without attaining a certain amount of verified assurance hours. Mind you that this "rule" is not mentioned anywhere in any documents published by CPAO or CPA Canada. I was made aware of this "rule" only after the CPAO reviewer shared with me a document that looked like an internal rubric. I lost more than one year of work experience because CPAO refused to recognize what I did was complex enough without assurance exposure. I am very disappointed at the irresponsibility, inaction and incompetence the CPAO PEP team displayed throughout my entire CPA qualification journey, not to mention the frustration trying to get ahold of someone from CPAO. Had I known beforehand that I would be dealing with a completely incompetent and disorganized organization for years, I would have chosen to spend my time pursuing other designations that are probably more valuable/practical than CPA.

Already in week 1 and terribly unsatisfied. I am basically paying full price to watch pre-recorded lectures of a guy just reading everything word for word off slides. No live facilitator is available to answer questions with interactive back and forth during the sessions. Was a live zoom session that difficult to set up? At least they could have given a discount if they didn’t want to. On top of this we have to spend two days learning useless content not even on the exam. Why am I spending nearly a day learning about plagiarism in a graduate program? I am pretty sure most of us learned that term in middle school… Instead, they expect us to self study the actual accounting course content for the quiz due in the same week. How does this make any sense at all? At least one out of these two orientation workshop days could have been spent going over the quiz/course material? One of the video sessions even went over “how to write notes”…. Thanks but no thanks. I am pretty certain majority of us students already know how to study if we are able to enter into a graduate program? Not to mention that none of the study methods they actually provided had proper scientific backing, research or some sort of “ground breaking top secret tips” useful for an accountant. They just said use “flash cards”, “summarize material” etc. Nothing even about properly backed up study techniques like active recall or spaced repetition. On top of that I had to submit an actual activity demonstrating I was following along their suggested “note taking”. Micromanaging at its best. Also total waste of my time to have to actually spend days doing this especially like when I said, we had a quiz due on the same week based on 11 chapters of course material and not a single of those topics were touched upon. Unbelievable. The service itself is also very unprofessional. I mentioned these concerns to them and no response to address my concerns despite them telling us in the beginning to “bring up any issues or unsatisfactory we may have”. It seems they just take our money while providing sub par service and demanding a lot from the students. They also seem to apply several excuses such as (covid etc) to their own faultiness yet not any leeway towards their students. Hypocrisy at its finest… Let me remind you all that accounting itself is not a difficult subject but seems CPA Ontario enjoys making it unnecessarily difficult and tremendously boring for their students. It almost borders on coming off as a scam at this point. The fees keep going up while service remains poor. I have never seen a more pretentious student body in my life. It is not like we are studying to become neurosurgeons, rocket science/theoretical physics or IB. I think a bit of humility needs to be applied here. Plus let me add that the lack of transparency is appalling. Not sure how other chartered accounting bodies operate. I think now some places accept the ACCA which is either the UK or Australian accounting body (can’t recall) which may be worth looking into instead of becoming certified through the Canadian board. Overall, it is one of the worst considerations anyone can make. You will be working hard but mostly because of their poor set up and “study” materials which barely seem to prepare you for the exam. I have heard many people say they still have to buy study material outside of the CPA provided ones to actually prepare for the complexity of the exam. Which means spending more money. Much better to spend this much time on your own business. You will most likely get back a better return on investment. CPA Canada really needs to re-evaluate their priorities and how they are choosing to deliver the content. It’s not a surprise that the desire to do CPA has been declining over the years.

I saw all the bad reviews and felt obligated to share my 2 cents. The CPA customer service has been superb and straight to the point. They have always responded to my inquiry on a timely basis, both by email and phone

Worst managed organization I have worked for. Absolutely no transparency from senior leadership and when there is communication it's always after the fact. CEO and board of directors should be ashamed of their abysmal treatment of employees. Despite years of profitability and tens of millions of dollars in reserves, it has been two years of zero increases for employees. Tens of thousands of dollars are being spent on artwork, (despite it being vacant for over a year), hundreds of thousands spent on guest speakers (friends of leadership), yet not even a small token is given for sacrifices made during the year. Reading reviews of students and members are a true reflection of the type of service to be expected from a poorly managed organization. Staff are committed and have a desire to ensure our members are satisfied, but unfortunately leadership continually fails us by letting go of great people creating huge voids in knowledge. Worst four years of my career!

Horrible service. One of my friend's long term goal is to be a CPA but this organization is letting him down from the very beginning. He paid I think 170 CAD plus for transcript evaluation of his MBA but they sent him without any exemptions. Once he objected the decision, they asked to submit the course outline. Once he did it, they said to submit the letter from university that says he was studying the same course and university syllabus hasn't changed since then . He did that too again , in series of more than 10 emails, they wasted 6 months with nothing. Either incompetent and careless or corrupt and care only about money , not students. He even provided the email addresses and phone numbers of the university admins , their website links on top of official transcripts but yet this thug organization didn't assess document but only charged assessment fee. Can't they directly call or email the university if further clarification is needed about the potential students? A stupid designation that should have no relevance anymore.

Horrible, lazy and incompetent. Took them 5 months in processing my exemptions and they still did not. Insisted me I pay again their transcript assessment fee, when the first time they didn't do anything. They are all about money and wasting peoples time. The transcript assessment team wont come on the phone, because they think they are very special. Absolute nightmare to deal with these people.

My mom and I submitted a hugely long and detailed complaint about an accountant, who charged my mother three times the amount he charged my father for the same services ( I have the invoices), within months of my father's passing. He charged hundreds of dollars for meetings that he had no signed consent form to charge for from the people present at the meetings at the time they occurred. He used a form signed to authorize him solely to do personal taxes to retroactively charge for meetings my mother, myself and my brother attended. His secretary told us the meetings were free. She said this to a woman who lost her husband of 36 years. My mother who is a millionaire several times over would never attend a meeting and deliberately avoid paying a fee she knew about, yet the CPA continues to deny that he did any wrong. He refused to provide past invoices my father paid. He told me directly I was self-serving and unprofessional, and gave advice that my mom and I, as well as accountants we subsequently spoke with, told us were not in our best interests. The CPA does not appear to hold its members accountable for anything they say verbally (even if they charge for their professional advice) because apparently it can't be proven. They denied what he told us was formal professional advice (though he attempted to charge for it) and said it was general. This leaves clients in a very unprotected position because if they act on faulty advice, they cannot hold their accountant liable. They seem to accept the member's version as true by default. The CPA found that he was not unprofessional for making these comments to me or giving this advice to us. When I complained my taxes were filed late, and the address was wrong, they believed they didn't have to address it because I didn't give them my entire T1, which is a gross overstep of privacy. When I told the accountant I would file at the CPA, he was unconcerned and said that we still had to pay for the work he did, even though he refused to file the taxes. Most people would try to avoid a complaint but he did not try to compromise. We asked him numerous times for a specific fee quote, which he never provided prior to starting work on the file (despite saying he would in writing) yet the CPA found nothing wrong. He proceeded to charge for work that he did but we did not pay. They refused to provide the names of those who made this decision, even though I have the right to that information (written in their own rules) to investigate whether the accountant had a business or personal relationship with them. They supposedly gave "guidance" to him in a few areas. I paid 100 dollars to have a 'independent' reviewer read it, who backed up the CPA and refused to acknowledge the payment records, email chains and invoices that provided the evidence that my version of events was true. I learned after paying that the reviewer is retained by the CPA, which of course means there can be a bias. They have 2 levels of review available but I won't waste my money on a second review because that reviewer is also paid by the CPA. The first reviewer repeated factually incorrect statements by the CPA, easily disproven with the email chains and invoices included. Only a selective few of the topics were even addressed and the reviewer found that they weren't obligated to address everything. My mom and I believe the CPA and reviewer failed to protect the well-being of this accountant's future clients. It was a disgrace to the memory of my father to know that the CPA enables this. After 18 months of us submitting the original complaint, they choose to send a final decision within a few days of the 2 year anniversary of my father's passing, even though I mentioned his passing date in the complaint. They demand we keep the results of the investigation private, when they are supposedly there to protect the public interest. The CPA needs to do better to protect vulnerable clients like us, a family who lost their father and husband mere months ago and fall prey to corruption and greed during their grieving process.