The five questions on immigration being put to a referendum in Alberta on Oct. 19 serve to scapegoat newcomers for underfunded public services while giving Premier Danielle Smith common ground with her increasingly separatist base, according to a new report from the Parkland Institute.
The Parkland report, released Wednesday, was written by University of Lethbridge human geographer Bronwyn Bragg.
She told The Orchard that across Canada, attitudes towards immigration have hardened in recent years, but that this has especially been the case in Alberta.
The notion that overcrowded classrooms and emergency rooms are the fault of increased immigration “maps onto people’s lived experiences, because the population of Alberta has grown,” explained Bragg.
“People are experiencing a scarcity landscape, which makes them open to the suggestion that there's a group of people we can blame for that, rather than wondering why our services are inadequate or poorly funded,” she added.
In addition to being asked whether they want to initiate the process of a binding referendum on independence and four constitutional questions the province has no control over, Albertans are being asked on Oct. 19:
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?
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?
Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for social support programs as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially-funded social support programs?
Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent 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 a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family's use of the health care and education systems?
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 provincial election?
It’s impossible to “divorce the separatism question from the immigration questions,” said Bragg.
“Alberta's separatist movement has been promoting an explicitly xenophobic and anti-immigrant political agenda,” she said.
The report notes the similarities in language on immigration between separatist leaders and the premier, although Bragg concedes that Premier Smith’s rhetoric is “washed of perhaps the most xenophobic or racist elements.”
Separatist lawyer Jeffrey Rath, for instance, speaks of Alberta being “flooded with all of these … federal government subsidized, foreign workers.”
In her announcement of the immigration and constitutional referendum questions, Smith spoke of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s “disastrous open border immigration policies,” adding:
Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country through equalization and federal transfers, permit the federal government to flood our borders with new arrivals, and then give free access to our most-generous-in-the-country.
The language of the questions, which use loaded terms like decreasing immigration to sustainable levels and Alberta-approved immigration status, is designed to appeal to the population’s “strongly held emotions” about immigration, said Bragg.
“The way that the questions are phrased leads people to believe that these are sort of common sense, logical positions to hold in the context of an immigration system that has failed Alberta,” she said.
Read the full report here.
Buy the book
This is your regular remind that my book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith is coming out in a month. If you’re in Edmonton, come celebrate its release at the Aviary on Oct. 13.
You can buy tickets here. If you don’t live in Edmonton or can’t make it, you can preorder the book to your local independent bookstore here. Amazon and Indigo both have the book on sale, if that’s your thing.
How desperately clever that a floundering government clutches at referendums to promote their policies. The NDP got lucky in Shaw. If only each referendum question required the mover to pony up an MLA as part of the process.