Front Burner - The other nine referendum questions in Alberta

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Alberta's referendum is next week and advance voting is already underway. Much of the attention has centred around the separation question. But there are actually ten questions being put to a vote next week.Today on Front Burner, Jayme Poisson speaks with CBC Calgary's Jason Markusoff about the other nine questions: what they mean, why they're being asked, and how the polling shows they could go either way.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts.

The following is paid content for Desjardin. Lately, it feels like everyone has a take on Gen Z. There's a misconception that everybody in our generation wants things handed to them. Which is so unfair. A lot of the circumstances that other generations got to have, we simply do not have. So when Dejordan asked me to go out and hear directly from young people, I was all in. Because between Sky High Rent, $10 Lottes, and the AI Revolution,

got a lot to unpack. We went out to see what Gen Z's reality actually looks like, and we made a web series out of it. It'll be on CBC Gem. It's called Countess In, and honestly, I think you guys are going to love it. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everyone, it's Jamie. The referendum in Alberta is next week. Advance polling has already begun. And we've talked a lot about the separation question on the ballot.

It feels so significant that a whole province is being asked to weigh in on whether or not they want to stay in Canada. But there are actually 10 questions being put to a popular vote next week. So today, we're going to talk about the other nine, what they mean, why they're being asked, and how it is way less clear, which way the results are going to go. Jason Markisoff, always great to have you. Thank you for being here. Great to see you again. Start of a very busy week for you, I'm sure.

Sigh. Let's start at the beginning. Because originally this referendum, it was actually only nine questions. The 10th question, the big one, the one on separation, wasn't added until later. So how did these first nine questions come to be? Well, I mean, I can give you the, maybe a couple. answer is because there's kind of the ostensible answer and then the let's let's face it answer. The let's face an answer was that these were always kind of the undercard, if you will, to the

big headliner question, the one big question to rule them all on independence or should Alberta pursue a future independence referendum. The subtext of all this is that Daniel Smith knows that the separation question is probably not going to win. It doesn't have popular support. But these other ones, she thought, were questions that people could say yes to and endorse her, give her something to do, give her a mandate from the public to take action vis-a-vis Ottawa. These stem from longstanding frustrations Alberta's had with the federal provincial order, but it doesn't have enough powers. And more recently, some disgruntlement about how much immigration there's been, especially with temporary foreign workers, foreign

students and asylum seekers. Right. Last year, Danielle Smith had this Alberta next panel, this series of panels led by her, had toured the province asking people what seemed like very loaded questions on whether they wanted to take action on these things. She found a lot of buy-in for Alberta, taking more control from the feds on immigration, on more constitutional wrangling and temporary residents receiving fewer publicly funded social services and supports. So she thought these were winners, and that's why she put them on the ballot.

The changes we need to make to immigration are a significant departure from the status quo, and therefore I am seeking a referendum mandate from Albertans to implement them. On October 19, 26, we will hold a provincial referendum primarily focused on how Albertans want our government to deal with the issue of immigration, as well as steps we can take as a province to strengthen our constitutional and fiscal position within a United Canada. Right. And I want to dig in to them with you today because we haven't heard a ton about them, probably because the 10th question, the question, as you say, to rule them all, has taken up a lot of the oxygen ever since, right? Absolutely. There are a lot of people out there who might have been surprised when they registered for their mailing ballot that there were nine other questions. Yeah.

That this is a lot to answer. And these are wordy, complicated questions that, according to some experts, are like, at a college graduate level of complex. Number three, assuming that all 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 be resident in Alberta for at least drawn? And they could have very serious implications. They might not look into that in a bit. But to me, it's not surprising that people haven't thought a lot about these questions or talked a lot about these questions. because it's sort of like parents asking, you know, and you and I have brought parents, asking their kids a series of questions. So what do you want to do for dinner tonight?

Do you want to play hockey or basketball this fall? Do you think we should go to this set of grandmas or this set of grandmas for Christmas? Would you like going camping in the summer? And do you think mom and dad should split up? And it's that record scratch. It's like, you know, should we do these things? And also should we cease to exist as a province in Canada? Right.

that everything basically seems small next to the one giant question that threatens your national existence. It's not where I thought you were going to go with that. I like it. Let's do the other questions. So one to five are mostly about immigration. And you gave us kind of a broad idea of what they cover. But just talk to me more about them. How are the questions framed? Like, if you were to just glance over them, what would your impression be of what they're supposed to address? So questions two through four are kind of specifically all about the same thing. They're all about whether there should be less funding for temporary residents. And that's temporary workers, visa students, and asylum seekers, as well as some 43,000 people who came to Alberta from Ukraine after Putin's invasion.

So these are also people who do not have permanent status in Alberta and would be affected by these. question three would mean that anybody would need to live here for at least 12 months before receiving social support programs like welfare, child care subsidies, student loans if they qualify or disability support payments. A lot of those programs already already have restrictions. But this would make those greater for anybody who's not been here for a while. Question two and four, both basically ask should we cut people off or charge them a fee for social support programs? Question two says you don't get any publicly funded education or health care unless you have this ill-defined Alberta-approved immigration status. And by ill-defined, I should say there's no definition and the government won't define that until after. Right.

What it actually means to have Alberta immigrants. And then question four is suggesting that there be a fee for education and social services, including, and Daniel Smith has floated this idea that there should be a $1900 health fee for. temporary residents. And that's, of course, on top of the taxes they already pay because they pay the same rate of taxes that anybody else and who's a permanent resident or citizen pays. Right. I just want to pause there for a second. If they're paying the same rate of taxes that everybody else pays, what's the problem? What's the issue? A Senate could say that the issue is that there's not, the government isn't being completely upfront about that, that they are, they're already paying taxes and this would be on top of the taxes they pay. In fact,

Danielle Smith has talked a fair bit about the well. We have, I believe it's 246,000 temporary residents. They have 48,000 children in our healthcare system. They're responsible for $1 billion worth of health care and education costs, and yet they only generate 150 million in revenue. No other country does this. Which doesn't include the federal taxes that they pay, that some of the money goes back to health care.

The other argument I've heard that some advocates of what the government's trying to do with these questions is saying is that it's like a bank. you should have to pay into the kitty for a few years before you start getting services withdrawn out of it. And I hear what they're saying, but that's not how it works. I mean, you're a kid, you start paying taxes, you get services. You move here from another country as a permanent resident. You don't have to wait. But, you know, this is feeding into the perception that temporary residents are freeloading.

Daniel Smith has in some of her speeches and commentary said temporary individuals should be treated as that temporary and tourists. Tourists don't get health care. They don't get social services. We should treat them like tourists. I want to read question one to you because there also seems to be a lot of moving pieces in this one. Do you support the government of Alberta taking increased control of immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertan's first priority on new employment opportunities? There's a lot going on there. Not just Alberta taking increased control of immigration, but also to decrease immigration to more sustainable levels. Decrease it from what?

What is more sustainable? what does giving Albertan's first priority on new employment opportunities actually look like? A lot of ill-defined there. You're right to be confused by that. It's not clear. And what's especially confusing about this is that there can be a mission accomplished banner

behind Daniel Smith right now on this because immigration levels are down. Temporary resident levels are down. In fact, lately, more temporary residents are leaving in any given quarter than are coming in. because the federal government, and this goes before Carney to the latter months of the Trudeau government, they were restricting temporary foreign worker programs, really reigning in asylum programs and asylum eligibility, as well as foreign students. So all these categories were being drawn down.

So that's already happened. There is this sentiment out there that, you know, young people especially can't find work, wire their temporary foreign workers working at my coffee shop in my town. You know, and some of that might be racially coded. And it's, you know, this is the one of the five immigration questions. This is the only one that Alberta can't do on its own. Alberta, other provinces do variously restrict service eligibility for temporary residents. Alberta could have done these questions themselves already, but this question one for resting more control from the feds.

You can't do that without negotiation. Alberta really sees this as the model for this, Quebec, which does. control a lot of its immigration streams that they've negotiated in the past powers that other provinces don't have. So even if Alberta were to vote yes to this question, there would still have to be negotiations with the feds to get this. There's nothing saying that the feds would just give this to them upon a yes vote on this question. Jason, do you have a sense of the levels of support for some of these immigration questions in Alberta? So polling's been mixed on these, certainly more mixed than the separation question, which seems set to prevail according to polls by a three to one margin, like 75, 25, 25 or even more skewed. These ones, there have been a number of polls that have suggested that they have majority support in the 60s, possibly, that there is a sense in the broader Alberta public that they think it's too much and it's causing a burden.

they believe some of these arguments. Yeah, and just worth noting probably when we're talking about burdens here, like we're talking about a very minute part of the health budget, for example. Yeah, temporary residents comprise 5% of the population, and also temporary migrants don't tend to be elderly seniors, so they make up a lot less of the cost of health care and education. I want to ask you specifically about question five, which is part of the immigration section,

but it's about elections and the integrity of elections. It reads, 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? What issue is this question seeking to address, has voter fraud even been an issue in Alberta?

No, it's not been an issue in Alberta or, nationally. I think elections authorities have kind of vanishingly few cases of non-citizens trying to vote. But this is the sort of thing that may be a contagion from American politics and the politics of Donald Trump and his movement, that there is anxiety about non-citizens voting. Alberta has recently introduced a new driver's license combination health card that does have a citizenship marker on. It has a little Canadian flag if you're a Canadian citizen, which is new. A lot of critics argue that this is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. But polling is suggesting this one is also fairly popular that people can make the argument in their heads. Well, yeah, people should be able to prove their citizenship when they're voting.

But this could be a burden. There is some worry among analysts and people who watch this stuff and pro-democracy advocates that there are people who struggle to get property who might be tripped up by this. should this become a rule in provincial elections. Right. Let's talk about the next questions. These all have to do with changing the Constitution, which right off the top is a lot easier said than done.

One of the questions is about appointing judges. One is about abolishing the Senate. One is about allowing Alberta to opt out of federal programs while still getting the associated federal funding. But again, these seem like real long shots. terms of going into effect, even if the majority of Albertans vote in favor of them, given what's required to change the country's constitution. Would that be fair? Yeah. And there's a ninth that's kind of along the same lines. Do you want the provincial

government to have, you know, supremacy over federal laws when the two kind of conflict in certain areas of jurisdiction? To Danielle Smith's credit, they preface all these questions with... Do you support the government of Alberta proactively working with other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution in the following ways. It's a mouthful. But it's also, it's a big step. You can't change the way judges are appointed. You can't change the way federal programs are administered.

You can't change the way we deal with jurisdiction. You can't change the way the existence of the Senate without constitutional reform without changing the Canadian constitution, which as those you with living memories or textbook, history class memories of Meach Lake and Charlottetown Accords, know that that is a very tall order. Some of these take unanimity among the provinces, including abolishing the Senate. That's a tall order. So these are kind of wish list questions, really. They're, you know, do you want us to lobby for these and see if we can find enough provincial buy-in elsewhere to do these? And then we prevail at these that opening the Constitution. It's very, very

improbable to be actually. Just say more for me about why I put them on at all then. These were things that Daniel Smith thought she can get yeses on. There's frustration with how judges are appointed. There is frustration with that Senate is un-democratic. That East Coast has more senators than Alberta. In fact, I'm looking at the government pamphlet. They sent out these to every household, and they complain that the 2.7 million people in Atlanta have 30 senators, whereas 5 million people in Alberta only have six senators.

So they're trying to tap into these grievances. and Daniel Smith is arguing that she wants to have a more stronger negotiating hand and leverage against the federal government to get what she wants and getting a popular mandate that says the Alberta public wants the Senate abolished or the Alberta public is demanding more power for the province and appointing high court judges in its province that she can pressure the government to bend on these or find this magical, critical mass of provinces willing to amend the Constitution.

The following is paid content for Desjardin. Lately, it feels like everyone has a take on Gen Z. There's a misconception that everybody in our generation wants things handed to them. Which is so unfair. A lot of the circumstances that other generations got to have, we simply do not have. So when Dejordan asked me to go out and hear directly from young people, I was all in. Because between sky high rent, $10 lottes and the AI Revolution,

we got a lot to unpack. We went out to see what Gen Z's reality actually looks like and we made a web series out of it. It'll be on CBC Gem. It's called Countess In. And honestly, I think you guys are going to love it. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often.

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Jason, just on the logistics of these 10 questions, we did this episode on lessons from Brexit last week. And this guy, Ian Cooper of the Brexit Institute in Dublin, he said this to us as sort of, it was sort of an aside at the time. If I may say, speaking as a political scientist, it's crazy to have a referendum with ten questions. That is just way too many questions to put on a ballot to ask people to decide upon in a referendum. And not only are there 10 questions.

Some of these questions, as we have gone through, are complicated, they are wonky, they are long. And are there concerns that this might be a bit confusing for busy people who are showing up to the ballot? box and hoping to be in and out of there pretty quickly? Massively confusing. We've had an inordinately high number of people requesting special ballots, mail-in ballots, to vote in advance. And I think people were baffled that there was so much reading to do with regards to these questions. That is so complex. And there are very complicated issues.

And some of them interact in different ways, especially the immigration question, whether it was restricted services in this way or this way or charge of fee. It's profoundly complicated, and it's never been done before in Scotland, in Quebec or Brexit. The referendum is one question. It's not a series of questions. In a way, this is more akin to the U.S. where they have long, long, long ballots. You know, you can have voter propositions on various things, like in California or in other states you can have. So you can be voting on marijuana legalization and tax measures and abortion. as well as, you know, who do you want your mayor, senator, dog catcher, a general, governor.

And so what happens with a lot of these is in the way it happens in the states is straight line voting. You know, people vote just all Democrat down the road or all Republican. One of the big rallying cries among some of the anti-separatist groups is no to the nine. Yeah. That they are saying just send Daniel Smith a message that you're not happy with the fact there's a separation referendum, and you don't like these other questions, vote no to all nine. And then there's Daniel Speth and not many other people saying vote yes to all nine. The fact is 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's social programs to anyone who moves here. CBC Calgary Commission Janet Brown to conduct a poll about the other nine. And she found that half of people don't know what they're going to do. They were undecided back in September. A quarter people would vote no to the nine. And only about 5% of people said they would vote yes to all nine. So Danielle Smith's a big winner of consensus that everybody was going to rally to these questions that she thought she stress tested before.

that's not the case. Right. And just to clarify here, people are saying no to the nine, the tenth question, the question on separation, is going to be an option between one or two, right? Yeah. There's not so. It's option one is Alberta should remain a province in Canada. Option two is start the process toward a legally binding referendum to leave. Yeah.

In an interview with our former colleague Vashik, Capellos, on the weekend, I heard former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney kind of expressed concern that this many ballot questions could create really long lines to vote in cities. Which will disadvantage federalists. Their support tends to be in the most densely populated areas. The separatist support concentrates in the least populated areas where there would be the lowest, the shortest wait times to vote. What do you make of that? I think it could create confusion in long lines in both areas in cities and in rural Alberta. They've had a bit more trouble staffing. In rural Alberta, I think people are expecting chaos.

You know, not only are these 10 long questions and lot to read, they're all on 10 different pieces of paper that you have to put in 10 different ballot boxes and they've color-coded them. There's 10 different boxes. There's 10 different ballots and 10 different boxes. So the mailing people, you had 10 pieces of paper. And this is the other upshot of something that the UCP government and Daniel Smith have done is that normally when you have these super long U.S. election ballots, you have, you know, dog catcher, attorney general, three sets of congressmen, five different questions on various issues. It's all on one form and it's electronically tabulated. Of course, there are a lot of issues and controversies, especially among conservatives in the states, with the very very. of electronic tabulators. That mentality crept up in Alberta, and the UCP pushed Daniel Smith to

ban electronic tabulators. So all these votes have to be hand-counted. And the most simple way to hand-count votes is if they're all each on one piece of paper. So 10 ballots and 10 boxes. We're talking on Tuesday, and it's the first day of advanced voting ahead of next Monday's referendum. And yeah, we're anticipating massive lines. And part of that is the reason that people decided to have mail-in ballots. Nearly a quarter of Alberta's entire electorate requests of special ballots, which is way beyond anything that we've seen before.

Imagine our producer just dropped in the chat here that elections, Alberta has ordered 45 million ballots. So to state the obvious here, we might not have a result Monday night. Oh, it's all but guaranteed that we're not going to have a result on Monday night on all the questions. What they're going to do, though, is I think elections Alberta has a sense of what people really want to know.

And they're going to start counting the question 10, the separation question that night. Got it. So we'll all be on TV and waiting on tender hooks that night. And we should know that one, the question 10, whether Alberta was going to remain or start a new process to leave. The other nine, they actually have overnight and next day counting teams to one by one count all these other nine question ballots. We're not going to have the final results in the rest of them for at least a few days. Okay. You know, just as people are trying to make their decisions here, get prepared to walk into the voting booths with their 10 ballots, I can't.

I actually can't get over that. I did not know that. What kind of campaign or public education has the Smith government been doing to inform people what the questions entail and what they mean? The provincial government, led by Smith, has spent $4 million on a promotional campaign for, mostly for the nine questions explaining what they are. And not saying directly people should vote X, Y, Z, but pushing strongly people to vote to keep immigration sustainable and support health and education funding is one of their rallying cries. They've had commercials.

Albertans are frustrated. Short-sighted federal policies have caused unsustainable population growth. driving up the cost of living, putting pressure on our schools and housing, and overwhelming our hospitals. The October 19th referendum is our chance to make immigration levels more sustainable. A mailer to everybody's home, like a multi-page booklet, web ads everywhere. But what's interesting is that Daniel Smith and her UCP, her conservative party, have not been, like, really rallying. They've not held events. They've not done targeted door knocking or get out the vote measures. the sort of thing you normally would have in a campaign.

A large part of that is that they know that the separatism is the big question. Separatism question is the big one. And they know that that really divides their party base. So they don't want to be out there too much pushing, especially because Daniel Smith and her party is officially anti-separation. There have been some of the separatist groups have been saying, yeah, you should vote for these nine questions. A lot of the leaders of the separatism movement say it's a gimmick, it's not necessary.

or they're saying these are offensive. They're actually just trying to get in the way of our separate questions. So they're rallying cry in some cases, is ignore the nine. Besides the government promotion of these, that's really led to almost unopposed arguments from the no side, saying don't vote for these. They're racist or don't vote for them.

They're impossible to amend the Constitution. You've seen groups like the Copy Chamber of Commerce say, immigration is important for us. Yeah. You've seen Catholic and Anglican bishops putting out promotions, not saying how people should vote. That would be unusual for major churches to do that, but saying immigrants are our neighbors. Immigrants, you know, leaning on scripture saying, like, we support the sojourner and the stranger. Yeah.

We shouldn't be scapegoating. And then you have like some, and the NDP is pushing hard on these. We'll see. I mean, it would require epic levels of polling error for question 10, the separation question to lead. to a separatist referendum. The pro-Canada side seems to set to win the Atlantic side. These other ones, though, it's a bit of a jump ball. Okay.

Jason, this is really interesting. Thank you, thank you. And we'll see you. Well, we'll see you this weekend because we're coming out to Edmonton. And of course, you'll be with us on Monday night. All eyes on Berta. Thanks, man. All right, that is all for today.

I'm Jamie Pueblood. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.