Alberta’s Professional Governance Act: A Chance to Get Accounting Regulation Right

The Province of Alberta has made a bold move to modernize the legislative framework guiding certain professional regulatory organizations, through the enactment of the Professional Governance Act (“PGA”), which received Royal Assent on May 15, 2025. According to the Government of Alberta, the overarching goal of the PGA is to consolidate multiple statutes into a single piece of legislation that improves fairness, transparency, accountability, and capacity to protect the public interest.¹ These objectives are laudable, and with proper implementation, there is a real opportunity to build an ecosystem that works for the people who rely on services provided by members of professional regulatory organizations under the PGA’s purview.

Distilled further, within the context of building a stronger accounting profession, the key question is whether there is a path to a framework that protects the public while also providing clarity, cost-effective accessibility, and meaningful choice to the thousands of small businesses and individuals who make up the bulk of Canada’s economy² and rely primarily on non-assurance accounting services. With the PGA in play, an affirmative answer is within reach.

The accounting profession itself is broad, spanning specialized activities such as assurance services audits and review engagements that carry significant public-interest responsibilities and require rigorous standards and regulatory oversight. At the other end of the spectrum sit the day-to-day accounting needs of small businesses: maintaining accounting databases, preparing financial statements, administering payroll, managing cash flow, and a host of other functions that remain largely unregulated. In the spirit of the PGA, the goal is to maintain a consistent bar for professional standards while identifying gaps, understanding the risks those gaps create, and building a path to address them.

Public protection, a central pillar of the PGA, encompasses knowledge requirements, high ethical standards, confidentiality, and a comprehensive disciplinary process.³ None of these principles preclude the concept of multiple professional pathways matched to the broad spectrum of accounting services described above. The PGA’s thorough application process for associations seeking designation as a professional regulatory organization, under the Professional Governance General Regulation, appears well aligned with this reality.

This is where organizations representing experienced non-assurance accountants should be prepared to participate constructively in Alberta’s evolving professional governance framework. The Government of Alberta expressly provides a process through which a professional association may seek recognition as a professional regulatory organization, where it can demonstrate that regulating the profession and protecting professional titles serves the public interest. Organizations such as RPA Canada should have the opportunity to be assessed transparently and objectively against those standards. RPA Canada, being a Canadian national accounting body since 1978 focused outside of provincial regulatory frameworks, advocates no more regulations but legislative recognition for clarity and protection.

Recognition, however, should not be automatic; it must be earned. For the profession’s non-assurance practitioners, the PGA represents a rare legislative opening: a chance to formalize standards, strengthen public confidence, and ensure that the accountants small businesses depend on every day are held to a clear, credible, and accessible framework of their own.