Canadian Financial Reporting Institutions

The recently published Easy Prey Investors: Why Broken Safety Nets Threaten Your Wealth lambastes virtually every aspect of Canadian financial reporting in exceptionally harsh terms. Although the authors' assertions about the implications of financial reporting violations they have seen are mostly unsubstantiated or overblown, publications like theirs are useful if they stimulate continual, thoughtful consideration of Canada's institutional arrangements. I discuss various methodologies for doing this and present some novel evidence indicating that some of the authors' assertions are simply incorrect. Canada's financial reporting institutions, like all institutions, are not perfect, so we must always listen to their critics' suggestions for reforming them; however, our institutions are in much better shape than Easy Prey Investors asserts.