Alberta Bill 33 doesn’t contain the word merit. The hiring section of the Justice Statutes Amendment Act, 2026 (No. 2), tabled in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta on October 27, 2026, adds a new section 10.2 to the Alberta Human Rights Act, and what that section does is prohibit. It tells a long list of provincial bodies that they may not run what the Act calls an ameliorative measure in hiring or promotion, and it leaves the definitions, the exemptions and part of the list itself to regulations that haven’t been written.
The bill is still a proposal. According to the Assembly’s record for Bill 33, it passed second reading on October 28, 2026, and the human rights section comes into force only on proclamation, so nothing in it binds an employer today. The bill text defines an ameliorative measure only by pointing back to section 10.1 of the Act, the provision that has shielded such policies, programs and activities, and its operative sentence sets that shield aside for hiring and promotion at the bodies it names.
The government’s information page on the bill describes hiring by provincial bodies that would be “neutral, fair and based on merit and competence,” while the text itself says that no provincial body shall “plan, advertise, adopt or implement an ameliorative measure” relating to hiring or promotion. The first is a standard. The second is a prohibition, and a prohibition tells an employer what to stop doing without telling it how to choose.
Key facts
- Bill 33, the Justice Statutes Amendment Act, 2026 (No. 2), received first reading in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta on October 27, 2026, and passed second reading on October 28, 2026, according to the Assembly’s bill record.
- Section 1 of Bill 33 adds section 10.2 to the Alberta Human Rights Act and comes into force on proclamation, according to the bill text published by the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.
- Section 10.2(1)(c) in Bill 33 lists 12 categories of provincial body, including school boards, public post-secondary institutions, municipal authorities and municipal police services, according to the bill text.
- Section 10.2(6) in Bill 33 bars provincial bodies from requiring employees to take training on cultural competency, unconscious bias, or diversity, equity or inclusion, subject to an exception in section 10.2(7) for training reasonably necessary to do the job.
- The Alberta Public Service recruitment overview directive, effective February 1, 2004, requires complete competition records to support recruitment decisions under the Public Service Act, according to the Government of Alberta.
Which employers Alberta Bill 33 would cover
The reach runs well past the provincial public service. Section 10.2(1)(c) names employers under the Public Service Act, public agencies, Crown-controlled organizations, health agencies, post-secondary institutions, school boards, municipal authorities and police services, then adds any entity that receives provincial funding to provide a public service. Cabinet can add more by regulation and exclude some.
Put plainly, Alberta Bill 33 does not require merit-based hiring in its text. It bans ameliorative hiring and promotion measures at provincial bodies, permits exemptions by regulation, and sets no test for what merit is or how it would be shown.
A town council, a school division and a university fall under the same sentence, and so would the police hiring behind the change two Alberta towns are seeking. The training rules in section 10.2(6) reach the same employers.
How a hiring decision would show merit under the bill
If merit comes first, the text should show how it is measured. That would mean a position’s requirements written down before the posting goes up, every candidate assessed against those requirements in the same way, and a record kept of why the person hired got the job.
Alberta already has a working model for the record. The Alberta Public Service recruitment overview directive, in effect since February 1, 2004, makes human resources staff responsible for “complete competition and exemption from competition records to support all recruitment decisions.” That directive applies to organizations under the Public Service Act. Bill 33’s list extends to school boards, municipalities and universities, and the bill imports no comparable duty for any of them.
Records are what let a rejected applicant, a tribunal or an auditor ask which dataset and which number a decision rested on. Announcements and records often part company. The federal public service payroll kept rising after Ottawa cut 12,683 positions.
Who would write the rules Bill 33 leaves open
Section 10.2(8) gives the Lieutenant Governor in Council, in practice cabinet, the power to add provincial bodies, exclude others, grant exemptions for particular positions or hiring programs, and define any term the section uses without defining. Under section 10.2(5), an exempt body does not breach section 7 of the Act when it hires for the purpose of the exempted measure.
The government’s information page says the existing protections stay in place, including the duty to accommodate and bona fide occupational requirements, and the Justice ministry’s October 27 release describes hiring based on merit and job requirements. Neither description is written into section 10.2. A short added subsection, borrowing the 2004 directive’s language, could require written job requirements, consistent assessment and a kept record at every provincial body.
If Bill 33 passes third reading and is proclaimed, every school board, municipality and post-secondary institution on the list must stop any ameliorative hiring or promotion measure on that date, and whether any of them must record why a candidate was hired will depend on regulations cabinet has not yet made.
