Escalator Field Guide
Elevator Field Guide
iOSAlberta’s elevator code timeline
Every edition Alberta has adopted since 2003, regulation by regulation. Plus the edition it refused outright, and why two editions’ worth of change arrive on a single day in 2027.
Every edition of the elevator and escalator code Alberta has adopted since 2003: which regulation did it, when it started binding, the edition Alberta refused outright, and the single day in 2027 when two editions’ worth of change arrive together.
Two things to know before the timeline. Alberta names its codes in a rather than in a separate adoption document, so each change has a regulation number attached to it. And since 2021 Alberta adopts new codes , a rule it has already overridden twice.
The question this page answers: which edition of the elevator code is Alberta law right now, and what is coming? Here is where things stand.
Alberta is on ASME A17.1-2019 / CSA B44-19. Declared in force on 1 December 2022, and Alberta’s own codes page still lists it as current.
Alberta refused the 2022 edition outright. A notice dated September 2025 states that ASME A17.1:2022 / CSA B44:22 “will not come into force in Alberta.” It is the only formal refusal of an edition on this site.
Skipping the 2022 book does not skip its changes. Each edition of the code builds on the one before it, so the 2025 book already contains everything the 2022 book introduced. Alberta goes straight from 2019 to 2025, which means the requirements it declined in 2022 arrive anyway, bundled in with the 2025 ones, on 1 February 2027. That is the catch: the province avoided the 2022 edition, not the work in it.
“Automatic” adoption has an override, and Alberta has used it. Since 2021 a new code is meant to take effect twelve months after it is published, with nobody having to do anything — unless the Minister of Municipal Affairs decides otherwise. On the 2022 edition the Minister stepped in twice: once in 2024 to push the date back a year, and again in 2025 to drop the edition altogether.
Every edition Alberta has adopted since 2003
B44-00: where the traceable record begins
Cabinet passed the Elevating Devices Codes Regulation AR 240/2003 on 21 July 2003, and it came into effect on 1 August. The same regulation brought in the manlift, platform-lift and personnel-hoist books alongside the core code. Alberta’s published record does not reach back past this point. See the honesty note at the foot of this page.
- CSA B44-00: the core elevator and escalator code
- CSA B311-02: manlifts
- CSA B355-00: lifts for persons with physical disabilities
- CSA Z185-M87 (R2001): personnel hoists
B44-07 takes over
Cabinet approved AR 62/2009 on 18 March 2009, but the regulation did not come into force until 1 May. Worth separating those two dates: the approval is not the day the code starts binding, and Alberta’s bulletins state both.
B44-13 arrives, with a phased maintenance programme
AR 192/2015 brought in the 2013 edition and, with it, the Maintenance Control Program under clause 8.6. Alberta did not switch that on all at once. Existing equipment could delay a formal written MCP until 1 September 2017, and the categorised tests were phased in separately: Category 1 from 1 September 2018 (annual), Category 3 from 1 September 2020 (three-yearly) and Category 5 from 1 September 2022 (five-yearly). The same regulation began Alberta’s single-bottom hydraulic cylinder replacement requirement.
Alberta switches to automatic code adoption
AR 205/2021 amended the regulation so that a new code comes into force twelve months after the month it is published, unless the Minister of Municipal Affairs prescribes otherwise. The same amendment moved Alberta’s own variations out of the regulation and into STANDATA bulletins. The amended regulation itself came into force on 1 December 2022.
B44-19: the edition in force today
The 2019 edition was declared in force on 1 December 2022 and has not been replaced since. Everything below this line is about an edition that never arrived and one that has not arrived yet.
The 2022 edition reaches the public, and Alberta starts reviewing it
Alberta noted that the 2022 code was completed in December 2022 and made available to the public on 20 September 2023, and said it would work with stakeholders and the Safety Codes Council to decide what, if anything, Alberta needed to change. The same notice records that Alberta is a signatory to the Construction Codes Reconciliation Agreement, which exists to harmonise codes across Canada. Worth holding in mind against what happened next.
The 2022 edition is pushed to October 2025
Municipal Affairs set the effective date for the 2022 edition at 1 October 2025. The stated reason was specific: stakeholders supported the change but said they needed more time for the retroactive door lock monitoring requirements, which would have applied to elevators already in service.
The 2022 edition is cancelled outright
A year later Alberta reversed course entirely. The notice states plainly that ASME A17.1:2022 / CSA B44:22 “will not come into force in Alberta” and that the 2019 edition “will remain in force until further notice.” Municipal Affairs had heard concerns over requirements that would reach existing devices, and decided the better course was to “forego adoption of the 2022 edition and proceed with preparations for the next code cycle.”
The 2025 edition is published
ASME A17.1-2025 / CSA B44:25 — the twenty-fourth edition of the code — was published on 30 January 2026, and Alberta scheduled it to come into force on 1 February 2027.
Two editions of change arrive together
Alberta confirmed in April 2026 that it did not adopt the 2022 edition and plans to transition directly to 2025. Because each edition builds on the last, the 2025 book already carries the 2022 changes inside it. Alberta’s own notice puts it as “building on the changes introduced by the 2022 edition.” So skipping the 2022 book did not remove its requirements; it deferred them. If the 2025 edition is adopted as anticipated, all the new requirements introduced in both the 2022 and the 2025 editions become enforceable on the same day. From the 2022 edition that includes door lock monitoring extended to existing elevators, hoistway lighting, pit ladder safety switches, ladder dimensions, escalator handrail height, hoistway door safety hardware, cybersecurity measures and remote interaction operation. From the 2025 edition it adds cartop fall protection, counterweight protection, rules on openings in overhead machine rooms, emergency responder radio coverage, elastomeric buffers, revised seismic provisions and substantial changes to inspection, testing and maintenance. This date is scheduled, not yet in force.
What a refusal actually looks like
Provinces skip editions all the time. British Columbia has skipped three in a row and never announced it. You find out by reading the regulation and noticing what is not there. Alberta did something different: it set a date, moved it, then published a notice saying the edition would not come into force at all, and why.
That matters for anyone trying to work out what applies to them. A silent skip leaves you inferring. A written refusal gives you a document to point at. In this case it also gave warning well over a year ahead. The refusal itself came seventeen months before the 2025 edition’s scheduled date; the notice spelling out that the changeover would be twice the usual size followed in April 2026, ten months ahead.
It also sits awkwardly against the Construction Codes Reconciliation Agreement, which Alberta has signed and which exists to reduce differences between provinces. Alberta’s own 2023 notice cites that agreement, and its own 2025 notice declines an edition. Both things are true at once, and the notices say so.
What else Alberta adopts
The core code is one of four books in force in the elevating devices discipline. The other three moved on their own schedules, and three of the four changed within the last two years.
How Alberta compares to the other provinces
Alberta and Ontario are on the same edition right now: both run the 2019 code. British Columbia does not: it has been on B44-16 since 2020, an edition neither of the others has ever adopted. Three provinces, three different ways of handling the same code.
Alberta’s own pattern is the most regular of the three: 2000, then 2007, then 2013, then 2019, with 2025 scheduled (roughly every other edition, at a steady interval). See Ontario’s elevator code adoption timeline, BC’s elevator code adoption timeline, or all three provinces side by side.
Every source behind this page
All of these are Government of Alberta documents. Several are notices rather than the regulations themselves. Where that is so, the notice states the regulation number, and the regulation is the binding instrument.
- This record starts in 2003, not at the beginning. Alberta’s published bulletins reach back to AR 240/2003 and no further. Editions before B44-00 were certainly in force in Alberta; we have not found documents that date them, so this page does not guess. Ontario’s record reaches back to 1954 and BC’s to the 1990s — Alberta’s does not.
- 1 February 2027 is scheduled, not law. Alberta’s April 2026 notice says “if the 2025 edition is adopted as anticipated.” The 2022 edition also had a date once. Treat it as a plan until a notice says it is in force.
- The list of what changes in 2027 is Alberta’s summary, not the code. The requirements above are the highlights Municipal Affairs published. They are not a substitute for the code text, and the published list is explicitly a summary.
- Approval and in-force are different dates. AR 62/2009 was approved in March 2009 and bound from May. Where Alberta’s documents give both, this page uses the in-force date and says so.
- Alberta’s documents are hard to reach by design of the site, not by policy. The notices are public but sit behind a search on open.alberta.ca rather than being linked from the codes page. Every source above is linked directly.
Working to the escalator code on the job?
Escalator Field Command carries the Escalator Field Guide: the escalator code in plain English, searchable and offline. It does not cover the adoption history on this page.
