Premier Danielle Smith's government will pose nine referendum questions, including four on the subject of immigration, to Albertans later this year.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Christopher Worswick is a professor of economics at Carleton University and an external fellow of the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration, University College London.
As Alberta moves closer to a referendum on separation, Premier Danielle Smith, accused of stoking such sentiment, is preparing a referendum of her own.
Ms. Smith has announced a set of nine government-sponsored referendum questions to be posed later this year. The first four questions – nearly half – relate to immigration.
The first: “Do you support the Government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities?”
This question has a lot packed into it, but it seems clear that the Government of Alberta is floating the idea of a much more independent economic immigration program, perhaps along the lines of Quebec’s program.
Whatever the intentions of Ms. Smith, who has reaped political benefits from fighting Ottawa, giving a province more control over immigration is not as radical as it might seem. Some good might come out of Ms. Smith’s playing with constitutional fire.
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Let’s consider the Trudeau and Carney governments’ experimentation with radical changes to both immigration and non-permanent migration over the past decade.
First, the federal government shifted the emphasis away from skill-based economic immigration toward categorical selection intended to prioritize types of immigrants who would not otherwise be admitted based on their skills alone. For example, the francophone targets in the federal immigration program for immigrants settling outside of Quebec – 8.9 per cent in 2025 with a target of 10.5 per cent by 2028 – are lowering the average scores of the immigrants admitted and lowering their expected labour market earnings.
The second radical experiment of the Justin Trudeau government was the very high level of international migrants. The level of immigration peaked at 471,800 in 2023 and the stock of non-permanent residents peaked at 3,149,131 in the fourth quarter of 2024, the highest levels on record in each case. The recent Auditor-General report flagging “critical weaknesses” in IRCC’s integrity controls related to the international student program further raises concerns about the management of the non-permanent resident population in recent years.
These moves by Ottawa have damaged Canada’s immigration system and its economy. They have turned public sentiment against welcoming newcomers.
Arguably, that has led directly to the second through fourth referendum questions, which relate to whether the Alberta government should be allowed to either restrict access or charge fees for health, education or social services to non-permanent residents in Alberta.
Those are valid questions. Most Canadians are no doubt uncomfortable with the idea. But admitting extremely high levels of new non-permanent residents can put an unreasonable strain on the provincial governments providing services to these new residents, who often need more support than the average person in the province.
What should be done? The federal government should not simply wait for the referendum to play out. It should proactively treat this crisis as an opportunity.
Giving a province like Alberta greater say over the number of immigrants admitted to their province under the federal economic program does make sense. The province understands the skills valued in its labour markets and also the strains that rapid population growth can place on the provision of health, education and social services, not to mention housing.
Rather than just select some of the new economic immigrants, the receiving province should have a say on how high the target level of total economic immigration should be for the province – a step toward the full autonomy model of Quebec.
In addition, provincial governments should, for the first time, have a say in determining the level and selection of non-permanent residents coming to live in their provinces given that they will be left holding the tab for the services for both groups of newcomers.
A new model of shared federal-provincial management of international migration could be the foundation for a much more effective system of setting levels and selection criteria for immigrant and non-permanent resident admissions to Canada. Requiring a consensus between the federal government and each provincial government on the parameters of the economic international migration system for the province would create greater stability by limiting the extent to which any one government might pursue grand experiments with limited accountability.
Under such a system, the divisive second, third and fourth referendum questions – related to restrictions on newcomers’ access to government services – may no longer be seen as needed.