The nationals are getting bigger.
Here is what that means for you.
MNP has not slowed down.
Since acquiring 26 Deloitte Canada offices in 2021, the Calgary-headquartered firm has absorbed dozens of regional practices — including 21 BDO Canada offices across BC, Alberta, Ontario, and PEI effective December 31, 2024. In 2025 alone, MNP merged with firms in Cornwall, Gatineau, Kingston, and two Quebec locations. January 2026 added Kanish & Partners in the GTA. The pace has not let up.
The numbers tell the story plainly. MNP now operates approximately 150 offices coast to coast. BDO Canada, after the December transaction, operates roughly 25. A firm that once competed meaningfully with MNP for mid-market clients across Canada has effectively retreated to a national network with significantly reduced geographic reach.
This is not an isolated event. It is a pattern. National firms in Canada — MNP most visibly, but Grant Thornton and RSM as well — are systematically acquiring regional and mid-size independent practices. The targets are typically firms with strong local client relationships, specialist practices, or geographic coverage the national firm wants. The pitch to partners is capital, succession, and resources. The result, for the partners who stay independent, is a market that looks increasingly different from the one they built their practices in.
What is actually changing
Three things are shifting simultaneously for independent firm partners as national consolidation accelerates.
Talent competition is intensifying. The nationals are not just buying firms — they are buying teams. When a regional firm joins MNP, its articling students, senior accountants, and junior partners gain access to national training programs, career paths, and compensation structures that independent firms structurally cannot match. For independent partners watching their best junior staff field calls from national firm recruiters, this is not a future problem. It is a present one.
Client expectations are evolving. Larger owner-managed businesses — the core client base for most independent CPA firms — are increasingly asking whether their firm has the capacity to handle cross-provincial complexity, M&A advisory, or specialized tax work. The nationals have made a deliberate pitch that bigger means better coverage. Independent firms need a deliberate counter-narrative.
The technology gap is widening. National firms are investing in technology at a scale that independent practices cannot easily match. MNP’s AI webinar for Canadian SMBs, their quarterly capital markets reports, their succession planning content — these are advisory assets built at enterprise scale. Independent firms competing for the same clients need to make deliberate choices about where they invest.
“The firms that will thrive in the next decade are the ones that get specific about who they serve, how they serve them differently, and why that difference has value.”
Understanding your options
The consolidation wave creates two distinct strategic paths for independent firm partners — and both are legitimate. The first is a deliberate exit: positioning the firm for acquisition on favourable terms, with the right timing, the right buyer, and the right outcome for clients and staff. The second is a deliberate commitment to independence: building the value proposition, the team, and the client base that makes the independent model not just viable but preferable. What the consolidation wave makes untenable is the middle — drifting without a clear answer to either question.
National firm partners are managing partners in title but often practice group contributors in reality. The partner a client meets in the pitch is not always the partner running their file. At an independent firm, the relationship with the partner is direct, continuous, and unmediated by firm hierarchy. For owner-managed business clients — whose most important financial decisions are also deeply personal — that matters.
Speed matters too. Independent firms make decisions in days, not weeks. A client who needs a response to a time-sensitive transaction, a CRA inquiry, or a banking covenant question gets their partner on the phone. Not a relationship manager. Not a service coordinator. The partner.
And local knowledge compounds over time in ways that national firm rotation does not. A partner who has served clients in a regional market for fifteen years understands the local business community, the regional tax environment, and the specific dynamics of that industry in a way that a national firm deploying staff from a central pool does not.
The question worth answering now
The consolidation wave is not going to stop. The question for independent firm partners is not whether the nationals will continue acquiring — they will — but what the right answer is for your firm specifically.
For some partners, the right answer is a well-structured transaction — on your timeline, to the right buyer, at a valuation that reflects the relationships and reputation you have built. For others, it is building a practice that is deliberately and demonstrably better for the clients you serve than anything a national firm can offer. Both are sound strategies. What is not a strategy is waiting for the decision to be made for you.