Alberta referendum pitches more control over immigration. Here's what you need to know

People make their way to work in downtown Calgary in this file photo. (Evelyne Asselin/Radio-Canada)Social SharingAlbertans will head to the polls on Oct. 19 to cast their votes on 10 questions put forward by the provincial government.

You’ve probably heard of the one related to separation. The other nine have received far less attention.

Five of the questions in the referendum will address immigration policies and could lead to major  changes for newcomers to the province.

But both the questions and the process citizens face on voting day are unprecedented in Alberta and, it’s been argued, are also unfamiliar and complex.  

CBC News is breaking down the referendum questions and providing some important context so you feel better prepared to vote.

The first immigration-related ballot voters will see is: “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?”

Let’s delve deeper into what the question is asking, how we got here, and what the full picture looks like when it comes to immigration to Alberta. 

If you come away from reading the 34-word question confused, you’re not alone. There are several aspects to that one sentence, so let’s break it down, bit by bit.

First, there’s the heart of the UCP government’s proposition: It’s asking you, the voter, whether the Government of Alberta should take increased control over immigration. 

Immigration is a shared jurisdiction of the federal and provincial governments with federal paramountcy, so what’s implied here is that the province would have more say when it comes to newcomers entering Alberta.

Then, there’s this next bit: "for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels."

So, it seems the province wants to see fewer newcomers move to Alberta. But what exactly are the “sustainable levels” of immigration it’s trying to achieve?

When asked to define the phrase, Sam Blackett, the premier’s director of media relations, said: “Alberta supports balanced and sustainable immigration levels that maintain a strong focus on economic immigration to address skilled-labour shortages. Immigration levels should be responsive to our province’s current and future economic needs.”

The province hasn’t provided exact immigration targets it would consider “sustainable,” and experts tell us it’s a hard term to define. More on that later.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during a news conference on the October referendum in Calgary on May 22, 2026. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)Let’s move on to the next point in the referendum question: “prioritizing economic migration.”

When the province says it wants to prioritize economic migration, it means it wants to attract skilled workers who already have the training and abilities to fill the specific needs of Alberta’s economy. 

Those immigrants would take on skilled positions that are not being filled by Albertans or Canadians, the province clarifies in the FAQ section of its official referendum website.

Lastly, the referendum question suggests Alberta wants more control over immigration for the purpose of giving “Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities.”

The critical question here is: who is an "Albertan"?

The definition of "Canadian” is straightforward enough, because having citizenship determines whether someone is legally Canadian. 

But the definition of "Albertan" is trickier to spell out. Canadians and permanent residents can move to Alberta from another province at any time and establish residency for health care and driving purposes after living in the province for 90 days.

When asked, the province did not define who it views as the “Albertans” who would be given priority for new employment opportunities, should the question receive a majority.

So, the first referendum question on immigration is a hefty one that comes with a complex history. Let’s get into that next.

Over the past decade, Alberta has experienced a period of rapid growth. Its population increased by roughly 600,000 in the five-year period from July 2021 to July 2026, according to Statistics Canada. 

Last year, the province crossed a total population of five million.

Two-thirds of that increased population comes from international migration (408,000) and 20 per cent from people coming to Alberta from other provinces (122,000), according to the federal agency.

Compared to the other major provinces (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia), Alberta reached the highest growth rate over that period, which was in line with a national increase as the country welcomed more immigrants.

Alberta is still growing the fastest among the major provinces, though population growth has slowed down significantly.

In the five-year period of rapid growth, Alberta made efforts to bring more people into the province.

In 2022, the Government of Alberta under former premier Jason Kenney launched its “Alberta is Calling” campaign, initially aimed at attracting skilled workers from Toronto and Vancouver. In March 2023, it rolled out a second round of the ad campaign, this time targeting skilled workers from Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

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And then there’s the provincial nominee program that allows the province to nominate people for permanent residence, including skilled workers, entrepreneurs and others, based on economic priorities. Nominees may also include temporary foreign workers who already work in Alberta, as a way to transition them to permanent residency.

Each year, the allocation target is different. In 2026, it was 6,600 people.

In 2024, the allotment was closer to 10,000. In a letter that year, Smith called on former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government to double the number of Alberta's federal immigration allotments to 20,000 and add 10,000 on top of that for Ukraine evacuees.

The province now says the current immigration level isn’t sustainable. And as with so many things, there's a mix of politics and policy at play.

The UCP government blames Trudeau’s “open border” immigration policy for bumping the number of newcomers, including “millions of individuals without the skills needed to fill our nation's and province's specific economic needs,” it says on its referendum website.

In 2024, Canada admitted 483,600 immigrants as permanent residents — the highest annual number recorded by Statistics Canada since 1972. The preliminary number of non-permanent residents living in Canada peaked at 3,149,000 on Oct. 1, 2024, according to the agency, which will update the number in September.

It wasn’t just Alberta pointing the finger. Trudeau-era policies have been widely criticized for an immigration increase, especially in the number of temporary foreign workers and international students (who largely make up the non-permanent resident pool) admitted to Canada.

But to say Trudeau had an "open border" policy isn’t accurate in the literal sense. That term typically refers to the free movement of people across international boundaries with minimal restriction — something the Liberal government of the day did not allow.

Another claim Alberta is making is that some employers have relied "far too heavily on temporary foreign workers to fill employment positions without giving Albertans and other Canadians adequate opportunity to secure those jobs first," according to the province's referendum FAQ online.

It’s important to remember here that in order for a Canadian employer to hire a temporary foreign worker to fill a position, they have to fill out a labour market impact assessment first to prove there are no Canadians available to take on that job.

All in all, the province says Ottawa’s “unsustainable” immigration policies have had a negative impact on Alberta’s ability to fund and deliver social services like health care and education, "directly impacting Albertans' access to these services and costing taxpayers billions of dollars."

For many Albertans grappling with the growing pains of a rising population, that message resonates.

Polls commissioned by CBC News in 2025 found over 60 per cent of Edmontonians and Calgarians felt their city was growing too fast.

Some have pinned the blame more directly on immigrants. At one of the province’s Alberta Next Panel events last year, the Lloydminster crowd cheered at the idea of mass deportations. 

A recent poll commissioned by CBC News also found more than half of Albertans want the province to take a more active role in setting the rules for immigration.

Christopher Worswick, a labour economist and professor at Carleton University whose work explores the economics of immigration, said the policies that allowed the surge in temporary residents and immigrants to Canada have turned public sentiment against welcoming newcomers.

“I think that there was a sense that came out of that that the housing implications in particular, but also the health-care implications of providing services to this rapidly growing segment of the population under the immigration/temporary migration categories, sort of led people to think that this was too much,” he said.

“And so you started to see public opinion shifting away from … unconditional support for immigration.”

Data shows immigration is already on the decline, due in large part to the federal government.

That’s the first thing people need to know before answering the first question on the October ballot, according to Ethel Tungohan, an associate professor of politics at York University in Toronto.

“[Canada has] gone down from an expected 500,000 [permanent resident] admissions in 2025 to 395,000 admissions to now in 2026: 380,000 admissions. So already we are cutting back on immigration,” said Tungohan, the Canada Research Chair in Canadian migration policy, impacts and activism.

While Alberta is still growing the fastest amongst the major provinces, fewer immigrants are moving to Alberta. The number of immigrants who moved to the province in the first quarter of 2026 (11,100) fell by about 18 per cent from the same time last year, according to Statistics Canada.

Preliminary Statistics Canada data shows more temporary residents left the province than arrived over the past year, contributing to Alberta’s population growth slowdown.

Temporary residents are non-permanent residents, including international students and temporary foreign workers.

This past year, the province saw its lowest increase in population since 2021, at 0.94 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

As of June, Alberta has about 260,000 temporary residents. Of those, 66 per cent were work permit holders (including some who also have a study permit). A little more than 14 per cent of Alberta’s non-permanent residents only hold a study permit, down from 27 per cent about five years ago.

Ottawa’s 2026-28 Immigration Levels Plan reduces the temporary resident target by almost half, from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 in 2026, and 370,000 in 2027 and 2028.

Back to that question about "sustainable" immigration.

Kevin McQuillan, a research fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, says it’s a concept that’s not easy to define.

As Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has made a “jarring cutback” to immigration through its policy changes, McQuillan reminds us that not everyone wants or benefits from lower immigration numbers.

Take universities and colleges, for example.

Last November, the University of Calgary told CBC News it was losing an estimated $34.7 million in 2025 due to the decline in international student enrolment. 

Many post-secondary institutions built new residences or expanded programs, in part, for the large influx of international students who pay higher tuition than domestic students, McQuillan said.

Now, those institutions are "feeling a pinch," he said.

“The idea of ‘sustainable,’ I think in principle is a good one, but to translate that into exact targets I think is difficult."

University of Calgary faces $34.7 million shortfall amid more international student cuts

According to Worswick, “sustainable” is a fairly new term being used in immigration policy discourse to describe provincial and federal immigration targets.

“In the past, people would talk about absorptive capacity with respect to immigration,” he says. 

An example of absorptive capacity is if Canada identified highly skilled immigrants who it thinks would likely find success in the labour market, the country may consider whether it can build new homes fast enough to house the new migrants, or if the health care system can be expanded quickly enough to absorb the additional load, Worswick explained.

A spokesperson for Lena Metlege Diab, the federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, says, “Our government and that of Alberta both agree on the need to restore sustainability to our immigration system and that’s exactly what Canada’s new government has been doing,” citing slowing population growth.

“We recently expanded the Provincial Nominee Program, giving provinces more control over the selection of immigrants. And, using existing powers, Alberta has already launched pathways for health-care workers, rural communities, law enforcement professionals, and entrepreneurs.”

At the heart of this question is a tug of war between federal and provincial control over immigration.

Voting "yes" to the first referendum question means supporting Alberta's pitch to exert more power over how many newcomers — and which kind — are welcome to the province.

For Worswick, the question signals that Alberta could be looking to develop a more independent economic immigration program, akin to Quebec.

That province has a special agreement with the federal government that asks skilled workers who want to become permanent residents to apply to the Quebec government first, allowing the province to set immigration targets.

But Tungohan said a "yes" vote could have enormous implications, creating a "chilling effect" that drives residents, and subsequently businesses, away from the province if they view Alberta's heightened immigration control as creating a "hostile" environment.

"It is going to turn our backs away from Alberta's long and storied history of being a place ... of settlement and immigrant innovation."

Already, the question has raised concerns among established immigrants in Alberta about whether they are welcome in the province they’ve called home for years.

Worswick said a “yes” vote could mean the public sentiment that has turned against newcomers could eventually turn again with a “stable, steady inflow” of immigrants and temporary residents. 

But, he cautions that it largely depends on how the provincial government develops that policy if the referendum receives a majority.

In an online analysis of the referendum questions, the Alberta branch of the Canadian Bar Association notes that, "Giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities is legally problematic. All individuals (not only citizens) have equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that prevent discrimination in hiring."

A “no” vote on the first referendum question means the voter would prefer to keep decision making on immigration primarily at the federal level, Worswick said.

“For example, if you're a resident of Alberta and you're not confident that the [provincial] governments that you see elected are going to do a good job of this, you might vote ‘no’ to say ‘I'm comfortable leaving this as a predominantly federal jurisdiction.’”

Ethel Tungohan, left, is an associate professor of politics at York University in Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Canadian migration policy, impacts and activism. Christopher Worswick, right, is a labour economist and professor at Carleton University. (Submitted by Ethel Tungohan, Christopher Worswick)But he reminds voters that “the province deals with the problems” related to an increased population, not Ottawa.

“The province … should provide social housing and social assistance [and health care], and the federal government may or may not transfer funds,” Worswick said.

“A lot of these issues and housing all fall within either provincial or municipal levels. They're not really federal jurisdictions.”

Rukhsar Ali is a multiplatform reporter with CBC Calgary. She has previously reported for The Globe and Mail, CTV News and Global News, as well as produced on CBC Radio's Cross Country Checkup and Just Asking. Rukhsar holds a Master of Journalism from Carleton University and was a 2023 recipient of the CBC Joan Donaldson Scholarship. Want to share a story tip? You can reach her at rukhsar.ali@cbc.ca.