Are you having trouble making sense of the five immigration questions posed by the UCP government in the upcoming October 19 referendum? If you answered yes, you are not alone.
Collectively called the “immigration questions,” the first five questions on the ballot actually represent separate issues. The first question asks Albertans if the province should take more control over immigration. The next three ask for input into how non-permanent residents receive health, education and social services. The fifth question is not about immigration at all, but about the extent to which Albertans must go to prove their citizenship when voting in provincial elections.
Let’s consider each issue in turn.
Immigration is a constitutionally shared responsibility between provincial and federal governments. Alberta already has an important say in who it recruits and nominates for permanent residence through the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program.
Even now, economic immigration is prioritized, and the province chooses workers based on labour needs and shortages. Existing federal rules also require employers using the Temporary Foreign Worker Program to demonstrate efforts to recruit Canadians and permanent residents before hiring a foreign worker. For most workers hired through this program, employers must first obtain a Labour Market Impact Assessment demonstrating a genuine need for the worker and that Canadians or permanent residents are not available to fill the position.
“The majority of non-permanent residents in Alberta work, spend money locally and contribute to our economy. “
The next three referendum questions refer to services that non-permanent residents receive in Alberta. First, we need to understand that non-permanent residents include a variety of people who are here for different reasons: temporary foreign workers, international students, refugee claimants and visitors. Non-permanent residents make up about 5% of our province’s population, and their numbers are on the decline.
Alberta already has restrictions on services for non-permanent residents. For example, temporary foreign workers are only eligible for health care if they can establish Alberta residency, intend to remain for at least 12 months and have at least six months remaining on an eligible work permit. They are currently not eligible for most social and income-support programs.
The majority of non-permanent residents in Alberta work, spend money locally and contribute to our economy. Even though they are not eligible for all programs, the government collects taxes from them to fund the health care, education and social service systems that all of us in the province use.
We would do well to remember that temporary foreign workers have been invited to work in Alberta by our employers to support agriculture, tourism, food processing, construction and other industries with persistent or seasonal labour shortages. They produce our food, build our houses and care for our children and elderly. They are our co-workers, our neighbours and volunteers in our communities.
It is also important to note that international students pay substantially more toward their education—on average, more than four times the undergraduate tuition paid by Canadian students in Alberta—and their tuition has become an important source of revenue for post-secondary institutions.
When answering ballot Questions 2, 3 and 4, we can consider the people who work and study alongside us, pay taxes like the rest of us and help keep our schools, businesses and communities functioning. What access to services should reasonably accompany their contributions to Alberta?
The government argues that rapid population growth is putting pressure on public services and that Alberta taxpayers should not bear an unfair share of those costs. But Alberta lags behind the rest of the country in per capita school board expenditures ($11,464 vs. $13,692 per student) and in per capita health spending ($5,669 vs. approximately $6,850). Restricting services for a small group of residents will not solve our problems with health-care capacity, classroom size, housing supply and affordability. We have to call upon our elected officials to use the considerable resources of our province to invest in the lives of all Albertans. It is worth asking our MLA and our premier what concrete actions they are taking to produce more family doctors, more affordable homes or lower grocery and household costs.
Question 5 is not about immigration, but about requiring Albertans to show proof of citizenship to vote in provincial elections. Elections Alberta’s records show an extremely small number of non-citizens voting in past elections. Ensuring that only citizens vote is a legitimate objective. The question is whether requiring every voter to produce documentary proof of citizenship is a proportionate response to the problem. What barriers might that requirement create for eligible citizens who do not have a passport, citizenship card or birth certificate readily available at the ballot box?
The referendum questions may be confusing, but three considerations can help guide us: Will the proposed policy improve everyday life for us? Does it treat the people who live and work here fairly? And does it strengthen or weaken our democracy? These are useful questions to carry with you into the voting booth.
By Vamini Selvanandan© 2026. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Photo credit: Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com
