Action Alert: Protect ethical, equitable and safe health care for Albertans, Premier Smith!

Alberta’s Bill 13, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, will bar regulators – including Alberta’s nursing regulator – from making cultural competency, unconscious bias, or diversity, equity and inclusion education or training mandatory.  

Join us! Call on Premier Smith to amend Bill 13 to ensure that all Albertans receive ethical, equitable and safe health care.  

Bill 13, if passed, will prohibit regulators from mandating education unless it relates to very narrow definition of “technical competence,” severely limiting the ability of regulatory bodies to require training in anti-racism, cultural safety, gender equity, and 2SLGBTQI+ inclusion.  

Skills developed through cultural safety, anti-racism, anti-discrimination and anti-oppression education and training are critical to patient safety and are standard in evidence-based nursing practice. The passage of Bill 13 will have profound consequences for public safety and health outcomes and will disproportionately harm, in particular, Indigenous peoples, Black and other racialized communities, and members of the 2SLGBTQI+ community.  

If enacted in Alberta, similar legislation could spread across Canada, undermining decades of progress in health equity and cultural safety. So, join us! Call on Premier Smith to amend Bill 13 to ensure that all Albertans receive ethical, equitable and safe health care and that Alberta’s nursing regulator retains the tools to ensure cultural safety and equitable care and the protection of the most vulnerable.