CPD Requirements for Canadian CPAs: What Applies in Each Province

If you are a Canadian CPA looking for your continuing professional development requirement, the short answer is 120 hours over a rolling three-year period, with a minimum of 20 hours in each calendar year, of which 60 across the cycle and 10 each year must be verifiable, including four verifiable hours of professional ethics every three years.

That holds in nine of the ten provinces and in the territories and Bermuda. It does not hold in Quebec, and the administration around it varies far more than the figures do. This page sets out the common position, the real exceptions, and where to find the detail for your own jurisdiction.

The common requirement

Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island all land on the same four figures: 120 hours per rolling three-year period, 20 hours annually, 60 verifiable across the cycle with 10 annually, and four verifiable ethics hours per three-year period. Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and Bermuda match them.

Two points about that uniformity are worth knowing. First, it is not produced by any Canadian instrument: CPA Canada sets nobody’s requirement and is not a regulator. The convergence comes from the international education standard arriving through each regulator separately. Second, Saskatchewan is the only one whose bylaw does not state the figures at all — it makes the requirement the CPA Canada standard "as amended from time to time" and gives the numbers as "the current standard", so its rule moves if the national one does.

Quebec is genuinely different

Three of the four limbs above fail in Quebec. The annual minimum is 25 hours, not 20. There is no verifiable requirement at all — Quebec caps self-study at 15 hours a reference year instead. And the cycle is fixed rather than rolling, running from 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2028 on a September-to-August reference year, so there is a hard cliff rather than a window that moves.

Quebec also imposes a one-time mandatory three-hour course on the CPA Code of ethics, with content pre-approved by the Order, plus a further hour for members providing services to third parties. The full Quebec position is set out separately, including why its four ethics hours are not in the regulation at all.

The deadline is what actually catches people out

The hours are nearly identical across the country. The declaration deadline runs eight months, and it is the single most common cause of a compliance problem.

British Columbia and Yukon require the annual compliance report by 31 January. Alberta is 1 March. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and Bermuda are 31 March. Manitoba is 1 April, Saskatchewan 15 April, Newfoundland and Labrador 30 April, and Prince Edward Island 31 May by board policy. Ontario is 1 June. Quebec is 30 September, because its reference year ends 31 August.

Late fees range from twenty-five dollars in Ontario to a hundred and seventy-five in Quebec, and the published endpoints differ in kind rather than degree — from administrative suspension through revocation of membership to being struck off the roll. The deadlines, fees and escalation ladders are compared in full here.

One deadline that is not about hours at all

British Columbia members must complete at least 1.5 anti-money-laundering hours by 31 December 2026. No other province requires them, and they may be counted toward the four-hour ethics requirement. Yukon has the same 1.5 hours with a deadline of 31 December 2027 — a year later, so the British Columbia date must not be assumed to apply. Details of the British Columbia requirement are here.

If you are registered in more than one province

You may not have to do everything twice, but the relief is uneven and not reciprocal. Ontario's regulation, Saskatchewan's board rules and New Brunswick's policy all let a member declare by pointing at the province where they hold prime membership. British Columbia relieves non-residents of duplicate detailed reporting. Alberta expressly requires a declaration to both bodies, and five jurisdictions have no mechanism at all. The province-by-province position for dual registrants is here.

Why your own regulator's document is the one that matters

Canada's ten regulators place this obligation in five materially different kinds of legal instrument — a Council regulation in Ontario, bylaws and bylaw regulations in British Columbia, a Directive in Alberta, government-approved delegated legislation in Quebec, an Executive Council order in Prince Edward Island, and board policies in Manitoba and New Brunswick. That determines who can change your requirement and how quickly, and it also determines whether the thing you are reading is binding at all.

It matters for a second reason. Several things you would expect to find in the continuing development instrument are not in it. Ontario's deadline and its late fee are not in Regulation 7-2. Prince Edward Island's regulations contain no ethics requirement, though its board imposes four hours anyway. Which instrument binds you, and what is missing from it, is set out here.

Territories and Bermuda

Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and Bermuda are separate regulators with their own instruments, and they are not simply copies of the provinces. The Northwest Territories publish the most detailed fee schedule in the country and only recommend record retention, for four years rather than five. Bermuda's by-laws set no hours at all, delegating them to its board, and carry a charge of fifty dollars a month for a late report. The territories, Bermuda, Manitoba and PEI are covered here.

Record retention

Five years is the standard across Ontario, British Columbia, Yukon, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Bermuda, with Manitoba expressing it as 60 months. Two exceptions: the Northwest Territories and Nunavut only recommend four years, and Quebec requires twelve months after the end of the reference period — which can be shorter than a single year past the cycle's close, and is the sharpest administrative divergence in the country.

Where the figures come from

The 120-hour figure is not a Canadian invention and is not, strictly, a requirement of the international standard either. IES 7 sets out where accountants’ CPD requirements actually come from, and the 120 appears in its application material as an illustration of one input-based approach rather than as an obligation.

For members in public practice there is a further layer. Ontario requires public accounting licensees to meet the competence requirements of IES 8; British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador impose self-assessment and declaration on engagement practice leaders responsible for audits; and Quebec has a separate regulation with its own 60-hour figure that specifies part of the 120 rather than adding to it. What IES 8 actually requires is covered separately.

Primary sources for each jurisdiction are linked in the individual posts above. CPA Canada's own description of the profession's structure is on its provincial and regional bodies page.

How the Canadian requirement compares internationally

CPA Canada's dedicated professional ethics minimum is less common than you might expect. Across the jurisdictions we have examined at primary source, most treat ethics as one eligible subject inside a general total rather than reserving hours for it. These comparisons put the Canadian design in context.

• Romania: 40 hours and an explicit ethics quota — the only European regime with a dedicated structured ethics minimum, at two hours a year.
• Indonesia: 30 credits and a new ethics quota — four ethics credits a year, introduced in 2025 and reported separately.
• Why CPD hours do not convert between countries — including why a Canadian hour and an American credit are not the same unit.
• CPD record examples — what a defensible record looks like in the formats regulators accept.