The big questions Danielle Smith poses to Albertans as referendums

Alberta is two and a half years removed from hearing Premier Danielle Smith declare her government looked forward optimistically to doubling the province’s population to 10 million people by 2050.

She also spent part of 2024 repeatedly musing that Red Deer, with its 106,000 residents, ought to swell to one million.

But that was then. Times have changed.

Certainly, the public mood toward immigration has changed, all over Canada, as a recent surge in newcomers (though not quite as aggressive as Smith had fancied) strained housing and some public services.

Alberta’s budget picture has changed, too —  lower than expected oil prices jerking the province from an $8.3 billion surplus in Smith’s more-bullish-on-immigration days to a big deficit this year, and another bath of red ink the premier has forewarned will come in next Thursday’s budget.

She drew a straight bold line between rising immigration rates and her province’s fiscal woes in her televised speech Thursday: “Throwing the doors open to anyone and everyone across the globe has flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms and social support systems with far too many people, far too quickly.”

She’s proposed solutions to this problem she’s cited: trying to restrict newcomers, and the services they received. But rather than act on them immediately, she’ll ask Albertans to ratify her ideas or reject them in referendums this fall.

Smith has now scheduled for Oct. 19 five different ballot questions on immigration — and four more about various constitutional reforms that preoccupied her Alberta Next panels, including on Senate abolition and the province seizing judge-selection duties from Ottawa.

Nine in total, potentially to be joined by a 10th.

That’s the One Question to Rule Them All: whether Alberta should separate from Canada. (This happens if the independence movement succeeds with its ongoing petition drive.) 

Those nine or 10 questions amount to more direct democracy than Alberta has ever reckoned with. Not just in one year — in all 120 years of this province’s existence, there have been eight province-wide referendums (including three in the early days about prohibition, three on daylight saving time, one on electrification and 2021’s question on equalization).

How will all these questions interact, the ones that appeal to Albertans’ abiding interests in immigration and Senate reform with a deeply existential question on Alberta’s future in Canada, which public opinion appears to be sharply against?

One might need a panel of political scientists plus a few psychology professors to determine that.

Plus, there will be eight months of public discussion and debate to come on this assortment of questions, a period that might require Alberta voters to become constitutional scholars and federalism experts to understand the ins and outs and options presented here.