Alberta will hold a referendum on whether the Canadian province should wrest control of immigration from the federal government and place strict limits on access to free healthcare and education.
In a televised address on Thursday, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, said that giving “free access to our most generous in the country social programmes to anyone who moves here” was “financially crippling”.
She announced Albertans will be asked nine questions in October, including whether they support new laws that would limit access to free social services to “Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status” and charging fees to “individuals with a non-permanent immigration status” for use of the healthcare and education systems.
The referendum will also include questions on whether Alberta should seek to amend the Canadian constitution, including “to abolish the unelected federal Senate” and “protect provincial rights from federal interference”.
Ms Smith blamed Alberta’s budget deficit on low oil prices and “out of control federal immigration policies”.
Smith criticises Justin Trudeau’s policies
She took particular aim at former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s “disastrous” policies, which “throttled our most important job-creating industries” and “flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms, and social support systems with far too many people, far too quickly”.
An ally of Donald Trump, the US president, whom she has visited at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Ms Smith was the only Canadian premier to refuse to sign a joint statement co-ordinating a response to Mr Trump’s tariff threats last year.
Since being elected premier of Alberta in 2022, the former lobbyist and journalist has railed against caps on fossil fuel production and net-zero regulations.
Leaders of a Right-wing separatist group called the Alberta Prosperity Project recently held meetings with officials from the US state department about the logistics of the province breaking away from Canada, including the possibility of switching to US currency.
Ms Smith does not support the movement, instead saying she wants a “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada”.
Increase fossil fuel exports
The referendum is part of her broader three-part strategy to shore up Alberta’s finances.
While in the long term she hopes to free the province “from its over-reliance on oil and gas revenues,” she is seeking to increase the amount of fossil fuels Alberta sends elsewhere in Canada and internationally over the next 10 years, she said on Thursday.
The short-term plan is to limit spending, implement more income testing for social programmes, and “address head-on the challenge of out-of-control immigration levels”.
“The changes we need to make to immigration are a significant departure from the status quo so therefore I am seeking a referendum mandate to implement them,” Ms Smith said.
Some experts criticised Ms Smith’s broadcast and referendum plans, arguing that the province’s budget issues could not be blamed on immigration.
Gerard Kennedy, a law professor, also told Canadian broadcaster CBC that the constitutional changes proposed by the referendum would require multiple – or, in some cases, all – provinces to agree.
Bradley Lafortune, head of advocacy group Public Interest Alberta, said: “This is a Trump-style, Maga government that is doing their best to imitate the current Republicans in the United State.”