Rules
Alberta Energy Regulator filings, counting business days in Calgary and Edmonton
AER filing business days Alberta: how the regulator counts submission deadlines against Alberta statutory holidays, with worked examples for Calgary and Edmonton.
What to take away
- Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) deadlines are usually written in calendar days. Business day windows skip Saturdays, Sundays and the nine Alberta general holidays.
- Calgary and Edmonton share one holiday list and one count.
- A window that ends on a closure moves to the next open day. The AER's annual closure notice names the days its offices are shut.
- OneStop accepts a document at any hour, but receipt is logged on the next business day.
Does the AER count deadlines in business days or calendar days?
Most AER deadlines are calendar days. A licensee may have 30 days from an incident, and that clock runs through weekends and holidays.
Business days appear in follow-up submissions and response windows. The term means days the AER is open, and the background definition of a business day covers the same ground.
Read the directive that creates the duty, because the convention sits in that wording. Teams comparing start conventions can work through fifteen worked examples of adding business days.
Where the business day rule comes from
The AER is established by the Responsible Energy Development Act, and each filing duty sits in a directive, an approval condition or a notice. That text controls the count. The AER also publishes an annual notice of office closures on its website, which is the practical authority for open dates.
Check the definitions section of the directive for any stated meaning of business day.
The nine Alberta general holidays that stop the clock
Alberta's Employment Standards Code sets the general holidays for provincially regulated workplaces, and a comparison of public holidays in Canada shows how the provincial lists differ.
[figure 2]
The nine Alberta general holidays
| Holiday | When it falls | Effect on the count |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | January 1 | Midweek date removes one weekday |
| Alberta Family Day | Third Monday in February | Always a Monday |
| Good Friday | Friday before Easter | Easter Monday optional |
| Victoria Day | Monday before May 25 | Always a Monday |
| Canada Day | July 1 | Observed day if it falls on a weekend |
| Labour Day | First Monday in September | Always a Monday |
| Thanksgiving Day | Second Monday in October | Always a Monday |
| Remembrance Day | November 11 | Observed day if it falls on a weekend |
| Christmas Day | December 25 | Observed day if it falls on a weekend |
Easter Monday, Heritage Day and Boxing Day stay optional in Alberta, so a company closure on Boxing Day is not an AER closure.
September 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, is a federal statutory holiday. The list from Employment and Social Development Canada governs federally regulated workplaces, and Alberta has not added it to the general holiday list.
A guide to federal holidays in business day counts covers the wider federal list for filers who answer to two bodies.
How the observed closure day is set
A general holiday on a Saturday or Sunday does not drop out of the count. The AER office is closed on the day named in its closure notice.
Treat that notice as the only authority for open dates. A holiday table borrowed from another province gives you the wrong deadline.
A window ending on December 25 can effectively end on December 26 or 27.
Calgary and Edmonton: same count, different support services
Both cities sit under the same nine general holidays, and neither adds a civic holiday that closes the AER. Edmonton and Calgary face the same closures and the same count.
What differs is everything around the count. Courier cut-offs, legal review and accounting sign-off run on local schedules.
A Calgary team sending paper to the AER's Calgary office depends on a courier. Many couriers follow a federal holiday calendar that includes September 30 and Boxing Day, so a filing can slip while the AER stays open.
Filers with a United States parent work to two calendars, and US and Canada holiday calendars compared shows which list to apply.
Example: ten business days from Family Day 2026
An Edmonton operator triggers a 10 business day window on Monday, February 16, 2026, which is Alberta Family Day. The office is shut, so the count starts on the next open day.
Ten business days from Family Day
- Trigger dateMonday, February 16, 2026. Family Day, office closed, so it counts for nothing.
- Day 1Tuesday, February 17. Days 2 to 4: February 18, 19 and 20.
- WeekendFebruary 21 and 22 do not count.
- Days 5 to 9Monday February 23 through Friday February 27.
- Day 10Monday, March 2, 2026. The window closes at the end of that day.
[figure 5]
Without the holiday, the count would have closed on Friday, February 27. One closure moved the deadline by one business day.
A filing checklist for a window that lands next to a closure
- Record the trigger date and the next day.
- Copy the convention from the directive word for word.
- List every closure in the window from the AER notice.
- Drop weekends and closures, and move to the next open day if the count ends on one.
- Check the courier calendar when paper is required.
OneStop logs receipt on the next business day when a document arrives outside office hours, so a late Friday upload is accepted on Monday.
Contact the AER before the deadline passes if the window cannot be met. No extension backdates an acceptance.
Keep a one page note with the trigger date, the convention, the holiday list and the submission date. Teams that also remit to the Canada Revenue Agency keep a second calendar, covered in how the CRA counts business days for filing and remittance deadlines.
