Understanding the Immigration Questions

Our immigration system is not perfect. The rapid increase in immigration in the decade leading up to 2024 without building out the infrastructure necessary to accommodate that immigration created challenges for the Canadian economy. While steps have now been taken to reduce the level of immigration to more sustainable levels, it is reasonable to consider other steps that might be taken to reform and improve the system.

In its October 19 referendum, the Alberta government has posed 5 questions relating to immigration. In our view, the proposals put forward in those questions would not improve the system. Rather:

• they would create barriers to mobility in Canada, undermining efforts to strengthen the economy in the face of US tariffs,

• they would exclude some persons lawfully resident in Alberta from accessing basic services, like education and health, contrary to fundamental Canadian values, and

• they would create a barrier to voting by some particularly vulnerable Canadian citizens resident in Alberta.

Creating barriers to mobility within Canada

Question 1: Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purpose of decreasing immimgration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?

This is a complicated question, best understood by considering its constituent parts.

The first part involves the Alberta government taking increased control over immigration. As discussed in more detail in our article Question 1: A Poor Question offering Vague Choices, the Alberta government already has significant influence over economic immigration, including through the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program. It should be noted that Question 1 does not propose any change in the constitutional distribution of authority over immigration; it only contemplates the Alberta government exercising the constitutional authority that it already has. A costly referendum isn’t necessary for a government to continue to do what it is already doing.

The second part of the question involves decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels. As noted above, steps have already been taken to reduce the level of immigration in Canada. As stated by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, its 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan “focuses on a return to sustainable immigration levels through continued decreases to temporary resident arrivals and stabilized permanent resident admissions.” The decrease in the number of immigrants entering Canada actually resulted in a decrease in the population of Canada in 2025, the first time that has happened since Confederation. And the Alberta Economic Dashboard shows a change in net international migration to the province between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 of minus 105.8%. It isn’t clear what steps, if any, the Alberta government proposes to further decrease the number of immigrants coming to Alberta.

The third part of the question involves prioritizing economic immigration. Canada already prioritizes economic immigration. Under the 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan, permanent economic immigration is forecast to reach 63% of all permanent admissions in 2026, rising to 64% in 2027 and 2028. It isn’t clear what steps, if any, the Alberta government proposes to further prioritize economic immigration.

The fourth part of the question involves giving priority to Albertans on new employment opportunities. The temporary foreign workers program already gives priority to Canadian workers; it permits immigration to fill temporary labor shortages when qualified Canadians or permanent residents are not available. The proposal in Question 1 goes further than this by using the immigration system to give priority to Albertans, not Canadians. It isn’t at all clear how this would work. However, if Alberta could somehow use the immigration system to give priority for new employment opportunities to Albertans to the exclusion of other Canadians, other provinces could do the same to the exclusion of Albertans, thereby undermining mobility within Canada.

Quite apart from raising issues under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this proposal would involve erecting internal barriers at the very time that Canada and the provinces have committed to removing internal barriers to strengthen the Canadian economy in the face of the trade war with the United States.

Taking Question 1 as a whole, it is unclear what the Alberta government is proposing beyond what is already being done. What is new appears to be a proposal that would create mobility barriers within Canada.

For these reasons, we are voting NO to question 1.

Excluding some immigrants from access to education, health and other services

Question 2: Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status will be eligible for provincially-funded programs, such as health care, education and other social services?

Question 3: Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to quality for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducting a law requiring individuals with a non-permenant resident legal immigration status to residen in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincial-funded social support programs?

Question 4: Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permnanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with non-permanent resident immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the health care and education systems?

All three of these questions propose excluding some groups of immigrants from access to publicly-funded education and health services. Questions 3 and 4 go further to exclude persons from access to other publicly-funded services. While the category of excluded persons under Question 2 is unclear as “Alberta-approved immigration status” is undefined, all 3 questions likely apply to exclude temporary foreign workers, refugees, and foreign students from publicly-funded services.

Question 2 proposes a permanent exclusion, at least until an individual becomes a permanent resident of Canada. Question 3 proposes an exclusion for one year after an individual moves to Alberta, no matter how long that individual has lived in Canada. Question 4 proposes that services be available only if a “reasonable fee or premium” is paid. Those who can’t afford to pay the fee or premium (in other words, those who are poorest) would be excluded from accessing the services.

To put this in practical terms, these proposals would mean that the eight-year-old child of a temporary foreign worker could be excluded from accessing public education. These proposals would mean that a 70-year-old refugee from Ukraine who is suffering a stroke could be excluded from accessing public health care. These exclusions would apply notwithstanding the fact that the excluded persons were legally admitted to Canada and pay federal and provincial taxes, just like everyone else.

The fundamental objection to these proposals was articulated by Senator Paula Simons in an article recently published in Alberta Views magazine:

“On what planet does it make any sense to prevent refugee and immigrant children from going to school, learning English and integrating? Let’s leave empathy and humanity aside for a moment. Does it make our communities safer or more prosperous to prevent children—including those whose parents are here legally—from acquiring the language skills, academic training and cultural know-how to work and thrive and contribute to our economy and society?”

The same objection applies to exclusion from health care and other publicly funded services. Once an individual has been legally admitted to Canada, that individual should not be denied access to basic social services. Exclusion from access is a denial of individual human rights. It is also detrimental to the growth and strengthening of our society.

On its referendum website, the Alberta government provides three arguments in support of the proposed exclusions.

The first is that the cost of delivering these services to these persons is estimated to cost Alberta taxpayers more than $1 billion per year. No authority is cited for that number. Nor does the website state the amount of taxes paid each year by these persons.

In any event, even if costs incurred exceed taxes paid by these persons, the right of an individual to access basic services in our province has never been based on whether the taxes paid by that individual exceed the cost of services accessed by that individual. In other words, access to services has never been based on whether an individual is a profit centre for the province. That isn’t who we are as a society. Indeed, those that most need publicly-funded services, like the elderly or persons with disabilities, are often those with the least income, and therefore those paying the least taxes. Accepting the argument that access to publicly-funded services by an individual should be based on a comparison of costs incurred versus taxes paid would set a very dangerous precedent for all Albertans.

The second argument made by the Alberta government is that past immigration policies have led to rapid population growth in the province, which has put “pressure on Alberta’s health, education and other social services, resulting in delayed access to health care for Albertans, larger classrooms for students and unaffordable cost pressures to social services overall.”

What this argument does not mention is that the rapid growth of Alberta’s population arose from both internal migration and immigration and was the result of the conscious policy of the Alberta government. On a podcast in January 2024, Premier Danielle Smith expressed the goal of more than doubling the population of Alberta to 10 million people, using internal migration and immigration. In pursuit of population growth, the government introduced the Alberta is Calling campaign to encourage people from across the country to move to Alberta. And in March 2024, the Premier sent a letter to the Prime Minister, requesting the federal government to double the allocation of places for immigrants to Alberta under the Provincial Nominee Program and under the Ukrainian refugee program.

The cause of the strain on government services is the implementation of the policy to pursue rapid population growth without investing in the infrastructure necessary to support that growth. One example of that failure is the strain on hospitals in Alberta. In Edmonton for example, the population of the city has doubled since 1988 when the last new hospital was constructed.

The problem isn’t limited to physical infrastructure. It also extends to failure over the years to invest in additional spaces for training professionals, like doctors and nurses, needed to meet the growth in population promoted by the province. In 2023, we saw a hopeful sign with the announcement of provincial funding for additional seats in medical and nursing schools and for additional medical residency places. Given the time required to complete this training, the impact of that additional funding has yet to be felt.

At best, it is disingenuous to blame the strain on schools, hospitals, and other facilities on temporary foreign workers, refugees, and foreign students. And the solution to that strain is to build the infrastructure needed to support the population, not to exclude categories of immigrants from accessing publicly-funded services.

The third argument made by the Alberta government is that youth unemployment in Alberta is high (at 15.6%), suggesting temporary foreign workers are taking the jobs of young Albertans. No evidence is cited in support of this suggestion. In a report issued in July 2026, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses disputes the alleged link between youth unemployment and the hiring of temporary foreign workers, arguing that “the jobs most commonly filled by Temporary Foreign Workers are exactly the ones that young Canadians are least willing to take.”

In any event, even if the Alberta government could establish some link between youth employment and hiring temporary foreign workers, the solution to youth unemployment is not to deny access to health, education, and other publicly-funded services to temporary foreign workers, refugees, and foreign students legally admitted to this province.

For these reasons, we are voting NO on questions 2, 3, and 4.

Creating a barrier to voting by vulnerable Albertans

Question 5: Do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta election?

This question isn’t whether the right to vote should be limited to Canadian citizens. That is already the law. Rather, the question is whether individuals should be required to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote. And as only Canadian citizens are allowed to vote, the question is whether Canadian citizens should be required to provide proof of their citizenship before being allowed to vote.

The rationale for this question, presumably, is to avoid non-citizens from voting by pretending they are citizens. There is no evidence that this a problem.

In fact, this question comes directly from the MAGA playbook. President Trump has announced that his first legislative priority is the passing of the so-called SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. This piece of legislation has been passed by the House of Representatives but has been blocked in the Senate. In August 2026, President Trump unsuccessfully demanded that the Senate’s August break be cancelled until it passed this Act. He also unsuccessfully demanded that the filibuster power in the Senate be terminated in order to pass this Act. This legislation is strongly opposed by civil rights groups across the country.

In the United States, as in Canada, there is no evidence of wide-spread voter fraud by non-citizens. A requirement to produce proof of citizenship is a solution in search of a problem. And it is a solution with potentially serious side effects.

The objection to the requirement of proof of citizenship as a condition of voting is that it has the effect of disenfranchising some of the most vulnerable members of society.

One third of Canadian citizens do not have passports. To state the obvious, those without passports are those who are not travelling outside the country. And those who are not travelling outside the country, on average, are less affluent than those who are travelling outside the country. For more affluent Canadians holding passports, producing proof of citizenship isn’t particularly burdensome. For less affluent Canadians without passports, producing proof of citizenship is more challenging.

Question 5 proposes birth certificates or citizenship cards as alternatives to passports for proving citizenship for the purpose of voting. But not everyone has their birth certificate readily available. And obtaining a citizenship certificate (citizenship “cards” referred to in Question 5 are no longer issued) requires a birth certificate for those born in Canada and additional documentation for those born outside Canada.

Again, for some of the most vulnerable individuals in our society, including those who are unhoused, the requirement to produce this documentation may present a barrier to voting.

As there is no evidence of wide-spread fraud involving attempts to vote by persons who are not Canadian citizens, there is no justification for requiring Canadian citizens to produce documentation proving their citizenship as a condition of voting.

For this reason, we are voting NO on Question 5.