Alberta’s Farm Freedom and Safety Act, 2019 changes how provincial employment, labour-relations and workplace-injury rules apply to farming and ranching operations. It excludes additional agricultural workers and small operations from parts of the Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code, while requiring larger covered operations to provide either authorized private insurance or Workers’ Compensation Act coverage.
The Act also gives the Lieutenant Governor in Council broader authority to define covered agricultural activities through regulations and creates a ministerial review process for insurance compliance. The practical result is a more sector-specific framework, but one that draws important lines based on family ownership, operation size, type of primary production and length of employment.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act amends the Agricultural Operation Practices Act, Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code. It requires covered farming and ranching employers to ensure workers have authorized private insurance or workers’ compensation coverage, while excluding certain family workers and small operations from that requirement and from specified employment protections.
Who It Affects
The changes directly affect Alberta farm and ranch employers, paid agricultural workers, family-operated corporations, sole proprietorships and partnerships, private insurers, the Workers’ Compensation Board and provincial labour regulators. The treatment differs across statutes, particularly for greenhouses, nurseries, mushroom farms and sod farms.
Why It Matters
Bill 26 moves agricultural work further away from a single employment-law model and toward rules tailored to farm structure and production type. Its broad regulation-making powers mean that the eventual scope of covered operations and acceptable private insurance can depend on rules made under the amended statutes.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act starts by creating a common vocabulary for its agricultural provisions. A “farming or ranching worker” generally means a worker in an industry listed in Schedule D of the Workers’ Compensation Regulation who works on a farming or ranching operation.
The definition excludes unpaid workers and certain paid family workers connected to a family-owned corporation, sole proprietorship or partnership. The family definition reaches spouses and adult interdependent partners, as well as specified relatives by blood, marriage, adoption or adult interdependent relationship, including first cousins.
For covered workers, the Agricultural Operation Practices Act creates a choice of protection. A farming or ranching employer must ensure that workers have either private insurance authorized by regulation or coverage under the Workers’ Compensation Act.
The requirement does not apply to an operation employing five or fewer workers, when family members and workers employed for fewer than six consecutive months are excluded from the count. The Lieutenant Governor in Council may set the type and amount of acceptable private insurance and prescribe proof or other required information.The Act adds enforcement and review machinery around that insurance choice.
The Minister may refer an employer’s compliance to a practice review committee on a written request or on the Minister’s own initiative. The request must identify the applicant, operation, employer if known, location and steps already taken to resolve the issue.
The committee may investigate, help the parties resolve the matter and recommend whether the employer complies with the insurance rules. The Minister can decline requests that are frivolous, duplicative, made in bad faith, disconnected from the subject matter or already tied to specified enforcement or review proceedings.The amendments also change the boundary of Alberta’s employment laws.
Under the Employment Standards Code, the agricultural-operation exclusion covers workers directly involved in primary production of products such as eggs, milk, grain, seeds, fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, sod, trees, shrubs, plants, honey, livestock and poultry, as well as qualifying greenhouse and nursery production. The Act preserves a separate small-operation exclusion for operations with five or fewer employees, subject to the same exclusions for family workers and employees engaged for fewer than six consecutive months.
The Labour Relations Code takes a different approach: it excludes people directly employed on qualifying farming or ranching operations from the definition of employee, but expressly leaves greenhouse, mushroom farm, nursery and sod farm operations outside that definition of farming or ranching operation.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The insurance requirement generally applies only when a farming or ranching operation employs more than five counted workers; family members and workers employed for fewer than six consecutive months do not count toward that threshold.
Covered employers may satisfy the new insurance obligation through authorized private insurance or coverage under the Workers’ Compensation Act. Regulations may determine the required insurance type, amount and proof.
The family-member definition includes spouses and adult interdependent partners and extends to children, parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and first cousins, including relatives of the spouse or adult interdependent partner.
The Employment Standards Code amendments expressly include primary production involving mushrooms, sod, trees, shrubs and plants, and allow regulations to identify additional primary agricultural operations.
The Labour Relations Code excludes direct employees of qualifying farming and ranching operations but specifically excludes greenhouses, mushroom farms, nurseries and sod farms from that definition.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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New agricultural definitions and insurance framework
Section 1 adds the definitions needed to distinguish family workers, farming and ranching employers, covered industries, operations and workers. It then creates a new Part 0.1 of the Agricultural Operation Practices Act requiring covered employers to arrange authorized private insurance or Workers’ Compensation Act coverage.
The obligation has a built-in size and tenure threshold: operations with five or fewer counted workers are outside the Part, and certain family members and short-term workers are excluded from the calculation. The Act does not itself specify the precise private policies that qualify; it delegates that task to regulations.
Ministerial review of insurance compliance
The Minister may initiate or receive a written request for review of an employer’s compliance with the new insurance rules. Requests must contain enough information to identify the dispute and the parties, while the Minister may refuse matters that are frivolous, duplicative, made in bad faith or already covered by related proceedings.
Practice review committees may include up to three qualified people for an insurance request. They can inquire into the matter, assist with resolution and recommend whether the employer complies. This creates an administrative review route, but the provision gives the Minister significant control over which matters proceed.
Expanded agricultural exclusions from employment standards
Section 2 revises the Employment Standards Code’s agricultural exclusions. It covers direct employment in primary production across a longer list of products and allows the regulations to add operations or clarify what qualifies as a farming or ranching operation.
The section also creates or preserves a separate exclusion for operations with five or fewer employees, excluding family workers and employees who have worked for fewer than six consecutive months from the headcount. Employers therefore need to classify both the production activity and the worker’s relationship, wages and tenure before determining which employment standards apply.
Broader labour-relations exclusion for farm operations
Section 3 replaces the Labour Relations Code’s narrower family-member-focused language with an exclusion for people directly employed on qualifying farming or ranching operations. The listed activities include primary production of agricultural products and cultured fish, while regulations may add other primary agricultural operations or clarify the boundary.
The definition expressly excludes greenhouses, mushroom farms, nurseries and sod farms. That carveout creates a different result from the Employment Standards Code amendments, which expressly address several of those activities. Employers operating mixed or specialized agricultural businesses may therefore need separate analyses under each statute.
Coordinated regulation-making power
Section 4 permits the Lieutenant Governor in Council to enact or amend multiple regulations at the same time for consistency with or implementation of the Act. The power reaches regulations under the Agricultural Operation Practices Act, Employment Standards Code, Labour Relations Code, Occupational Health and Safety Act and Workers’ Compensation Act.
The provision does not authorize an amendment that the underlying statute would not otherwise permit. Its practical effect is to make cross-statute implementation easier, particularly where insurance standards, agricultural definitions and workplace rules must be aligned.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Farm and ranch employers with five or fewer counted workers, who remain outside the new agricultural insurance Part and receive broader exclusions from employment standards requirements.
- Family-operated agricultural businesses, whose specified family members may fall outside the definitions of covered workers or employees under the amended provisions.
- Larger farm and ranch employers that prefer authorized private insurance to Workers’ Compensation Act coverage, subject to the requirements established by regulation.
- Agricultural employers seeking sector-specific treatment, because the Act permits regulations to define additional primary agricultural operations and clarify statutory boundaries.
- The provincial government, which gains a more structured administrative route for reviewing insurance compliance and greater ability to coordinate regulations across workplace statutes.
Who Bears the Cost
- Covered farm and ranch employers with more than five counted workers, which must obtain qualifying private insurance or Workers’ Compensation Act coverage and maintain proof or other information required by regulation.
- Paid agricultural workers who fall outside employment standards or labour-relations coverage, because they may lose access to statutory minimum standards, collective-bargaining rights or related remedies.
- Private insurers, which may need to develop products that satisfy prescribed coverage types, amounts and documentation requirements for agricultural employers.
- The Workers’ Compensation Board and labour regulators, which must administer a framework that permits parallel private insurance and statutory coverage choices while resolving classification disputes.
- Employers operating mixed agricultural businesses, which may face different outcomes under the Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code depending on whether the operation involves greenhouses, nurseries, mushroom production or sod.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
Bill 26 tries to preserve flexibility for family farms and smaller agricultural operations while ensuring that covered workers have meaningful injury protection. The more the Act relies on exclusions and operation-specific definitions, the more it reduces uniform obligations—and the more workers doing comparable agricultural work may receive different legal protections based on headcount, family status, production type or tenure.
The Act’s central compliance problem is classification. The same workplace may need to determine whether an activity is primary production, whether a worker is directly related to that activity, whether the worker is a family member under the detailed statutory definition, and whether the operation exceeds the five-worker threshold.
Those questions do not line up perfectly across the Agricultural Operation Practices Act, Employment Standards Code and Labour Relations Code.
The private-insurance option also shifts important substance into regulations. The Act leaves the government to decide what insurance qualifies, how much coverage is required and what proof an employer must provide.
Until those requirements are clear, employers cannot assess the full cost or whether private coverage will offer protection comparable to workers’ compensation. The administrative review process may help resolve disputes, but it adds another compliance pathway rather than a simple self-certification model.
The exclusions create a policy trade-off between flexibility for family farms and consistent protection for agricultural workers. Excluding small operations, family members and short-term workers reduces regulatory burden and may reflect the realities of farm work.
It can also produce uneven protection for workers performing similar tasks at operations of different sizes or under different ownership structures. The divergent treatment of specialized operations under the two labour statutes makes that boundary harder to administer.
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