Bill 13 shifts the balance away from prevention and toward after-the-fact responses, weakening the safeguards that make trust in professionals possible.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Malinda S. Smith is a political science professor and associate vice-president research at the University of Calgary.
Bukola Salami is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Black and racialized peoples’ health at the University of Calgary.
Kannin Osei-Tutu is an associate professor and senior associate dean, health equity and systems transformation at the University of Calgary.
Alberta’s government has passed the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act (Bill 13), legislation it describes as a safeguard for freedom of expression and ideological neutrality. While framed as a narrow response to concerns about speech, Bill 13 makes a deeper and more consequential intervention: It alters the scope and purpose of professional regulation itself.
The government’s stated rationale is straightforward. Ministers argue that some professional regulators have exceeded their mandate by disciplining members for lawful opinions expressed outside the workplace. In this view, professionals should not face licensure consequences for personal expression unrelated to technical competence or job performance. Bill 13 is framed as restoring a clearer boundary between professional regulation and private life.
Few would dispute the importance of protecting freedom of expression. But Bill 13 goes well beyond that objective. It sharply restricts what regulators may require of professionals while they are practising. Training requirements must now be justified as strictly “necessary” for technical competence or narrowly defined ethical duties. Education related to equity, cultural safety, accessibility or systemic discrimination – even when evidence-based and directly linked to service quality – now operates under new legal constraint.
This is not merely a free-speech law. It is a redefinition of professional ethics.
Across health care, education, law, social work, engineering and other regulated fields, training in cultural safety, non-discrimination, accessibility and bias has long been understood as part of ethical and competent practice. These requirements are not about regulating beliefs; they are about ensuring professionals can serve diverse publics safely, respectfully and effectively. Professional ethics have always extended beyond technical proficiency to include how authority is exercised, how power imbalances are managed and how foreseeable harm is prevented.
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In Canadian law, ethics and codes of conduct are not expressions of personal belief or political opinion. They are enforceable conditions of licensure, designed to protect the public where professional judgment carries real and unequal consequences. Regulators do not police ideology; they regulate conduct. Education tied to substantive equality, accessibility and cultural safety reflects evidence about service failure and unequal outcomes, not attempts to compel conformity or suppress dissent.
By narrowing regulators’ authority, Bill 13 risks reducing professionalism to a minimalist model centred on credentials and technical skill alone. Yet professional harm does not always arise from criminal acts or overt misconduct. It more often emerges through patterns of exclusion, bias or disregard that erode trust and safety over time.
For more than 170 professional colleges, the implications are immediate. Regulators may find it harder to address non-criminal but foreseeable harms or to require preventive education responsive to evolving evidence and public need. Responsibility shifts away from professionals and regulators and onto individuals navigating essential systems with fewer safeguards.
The legislation bars regulators from considering enumerated personal characteristics such as race or gender identity when developing regulatory programs or standards. By constraining the use of certain characteristics, including for equity, bias mitigation and cultural competence purposes, Bill 13 sits uneasily with established human-rights frameworks. Section 10.1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act permits ameliorative programs, and section 15(2) of the Charter protects measures addressing systemic disadvantage. While these provisions remain in force, Bill 13 narrows regulatory neutrality in ways that may limit the practical design of pro-active or equity-advancing measures.
The consequences are not abstract. Patients may receive care that fails to account for cultural context, disability or social determinants of health. Students may learn in classrooms where bias and exclusion go unaddressed unless they rise to criminal thresholds. In both settings, harms are real, cumulative and preventable – yet increasingly difficult for regulators to address under Bill 13.
Professional regulation in health care and education exists to protect the public through duty of care, fairness and trust – not merely to certify technical competence. Evidence-based standards, including training that reduces bias, ensures accessibility and strengthens cultural safety, are central to that mandate. Bill 13 shifts the balance away from prevention and toward after-the-fact responses, weakening the safeguards that make trust in professionals possible.
Albertans, indeed all Canadians, depend on professionals who are not only technically skilled but accountable to the diverse populations they serve. Bill 13 redraws the boundaries of that accountability. Whether it strengthens or undermines public confidence in health care and education will depend on whether neutrality is applied as a principled safeguard or becomes a substitute for evidence, accountability and care.