Every business, professional and investor in Alberta holds licences, approvals, certificates and registrations that are federal today. What holds them all in place on Day 1 is not an institution but a statute: a Regulatory Continuity Act that carries forward the existing federal rules and keeps every instrument legally effective. Nobody re-applies, and no proceeding restarts.
Behind that statute Alberta stands up six small regulators, sized against what comparable small states actually run rather than against the federal bodies they replace. Competition, consumer protection and product safety merge into one authority. Intellectual property is registered rather than examined, recognising examination already done elsewhere. Insolvency supervision returns to the courts with a small statutory supervisor behind it. Legal metrology runs as a small state inspectorate over accredited private inspection bodies. Standards are adopted from international bodies by reference rather than written afresh, and radiation regulation is sized to a jurisdiction with no power reactors.
Nearly half the domain is paid for by the people who use it, through filing, registration, approval and inspection fees, in line with how each function is funded today. Three of the six offices open on a published date after Day 1 rather than on it, because the statutory continuity means nothing fails while they are being established. What Alberta does not build is a patent examination office or a large competition bureau with deep merger economics: both are capabilities a state of Alberta's size buys or borrows rather than owns.
C$ millions, fiscal 2026-27 price base. A one-time cost, a recurring cost and a payment to a member of the public are different things and are never added together.
How the figure is built
C$42.8M a year of added running cost, C$246.1M one-time of which C$62.0M is capital, and C$44.2M a year met by fees rather than by the treasury. The domain is six small regulators and the registries behind them. What holds on Day 1 is not the institutions but the statute: a Regulatory Continuity Act that carries forward existing federal law and keeps every licence, approval, certificate and proceeding legally effective, so that nobody re-applies and no proceeding restarts.
The lines
| C$M | ||
|---|---|---|
| Fair Markets authority | 42.9 | Investigations, economics, testing and legal |
| Legal metrology | 14.3 | Reference standards and laboratory |
| Standards and accreditation | 11.6 | Standards licences are a real cost even when the standards are adopted |
| Radiation and nuclear regulation | 11.4 | |
| Intellectual property registry | 11.4 | Database, filing and public records systems |
| Insolvency statutory supervisor | 3.5 | |
| FULL COST, a year | 95.0 | |
| Met by fee and cost recovery | 44.2 | Filing, registration, approval and inspection fees, function by function on existing federal practice |
| Appropriation-funded | 50.8 | Enforcement and standards adoption are public goods with no fee base |
| Already funded | 8.0 | Service Alberta consumer investigations and existing standards work |
| ADDED RUNNING COST, a year | 42.8 | |
| Registry and public records platform | 26.0 | The paper's third red line: registry continuity cannot fail |
| Product safety and metrology laboratory capability | 18.0 | A reference standard nobody accepts is not a standard |
| Case management and enforcement systems | 12.0 | Investigations, orders, undertakings, appeals |
| Standards library and adoption infrastructure | 6.0 | Adopting international standards by reference |
| Capital | 62.0 | |
| Regulatory Continuity Act and successor legislation programme | 34.0 | One interpretive rule stated in the Act rather than several |
| Published register of carried-forward approvals | 22.0 | So a lender or counterparty can check that an instrument is still effective |
| Records rebuild | 20.0 | Federal authorizations, licences, inspection and enforcement histories, public registries |
| Recognition arrangements with Canadian, United States and United Kingdom regulators | 18.0 | Externally paced: each needs a counterparty signature |
| Programme management and assurance | 14.0 | 24-month stand-up across six offices |
| Contingency at 15% | 32.1 | |
| ONE-TIME TOTAL | 246.1 |
The people
| Posts | C$M | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair Markets: competition, consumer protection and product safety | 175 | Merged into one authority on the Irish model, rather than 315 across two offices | |
| Legal metrology | 50 | A small state inspectorate over accredited private inspection bodies | |
| Radiation and nuclear regulation | 45 | Sized to a jurisdiction with no power reactors. Counted once, here | |
| Intellectual property registry | 45 | Registered rather than examined, recognising foreign examination | |
| Standards and accreditation | 40 | A thin adoption layer over international standards | |
| Insolvency statutory supervisor | 15 | Supervision returned to the courts, as in Norway, Denmark and Estonia | |
| Permanent posts | 370 | ||
| Regulatory coordination office as a cutover programme | 28 | 170 temporary posts. The paper requires that it closes rather than becoming a directorate | |
| Recruitment and training | 16 | 370 new permanent posts | |
| Complement carried | 370 permanent posts and 170 temporary, at the bottom of the paper's own best-in-class range |
Comparators
| Figure | ||
|---|---|---|
| Competition administration | Canada 527 posts; Ireland 273 for competition, consumer protection and product safety together | At a population of 5.38 million against Alberta's 5.06 million |
| Intellectual property | Canada about 1,000 because it examines patents; Ireland 45 and Estonia 50 | Both rely on European Patent Office and Patent Cooperation Treaty examination |
| Insolvency supervision | Norway, Denmark and Estonia have no insolvency regulator; Finland uses 11.5 staff | Bankruptcy runs through the courts with privately appointed trustees |
| Legal metrology | Norway runs a 41-person inspectorate for 5.5 million people | Canada already delegates ninety-six per cent of in-service inspections to accredited private bodies |
| Radiation regulation | Denmark 40, Finland 306 | Finland has power reactors and Alberta does not |
| The paper's own complete stack | 370 to 475 positions |
What these figures assume
- Continuity is statutory rather than institutional. A Regulatory Continuity Act carries forward the existing federal rules and keeps every licence, approval, certificate, registration and pending proceeding legally effective from Day 1. Nobody re-applies and no proceeding restarts, so the regulators can open on a published date afterwards without anything failing in the meantime.
- Intellectual property is registered rather than examined. Alberta recognises examination already performed elsewhere, as Ireland and Estonia do, rather than building a patent examination capability. A patent is in any event granted by a state and recognised through treaties Alberta must accede to, and accession is granted rather than taken.
- Insolvency supervision returns to the courts with a small statutory supervisor behind it, which is how Norway, Denmark and Estonia operate. In-service metrology verification is delegated to accredited private bodies, which Canada already does for ninety-six per cent of inspections.
- Fees carry what fees carry today. Recovery is assumed function by function on existing federal practice - the insolvency supervisor from the insolvency process and the intellectual property registry from filing and renewal fees, both fully; metrology and accreditation substantially; enforcement barely, because it is a public good.
- The coordination office is a cutover programme that closes. Its 170 posts are temporary and are not the beginning of a permanent regulatory directorate.
Contingency, recognised at C$0
The recovery of fees assumed here follows existing federal practice function by function rather than pushing beyond it.
Sources
- Alberta Transition Plan supporting analysis, Regulatory Framework - Section 3.5 resource demand and its international benchmarking, the deferred offices note, and the draft Regulatory Continuity Act.
- Competition and Consumer Protection Commission of Ireland; Estonian Patent Office; Norwegian Metrology Service - complements cited by the paper.
- Alberta Budget 2026 - Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction.
