Coyne: Smith and Poilievre find someone to blame for their problems: immigrants

2026/02/27 Leave a comment

While Coyne is still in the “more the merrier” crowd, his points on the crass politics by Smith and Poilievre are valid:

…The point bears repeating: we had just as rapid population growth in some years in the 1950s and 1960s, without any of the problems that are now so recklessly laid at the feet of immigrants and refugees. Why? Because we were building more houses: we had yet to tie the housing market in regulatory knots. Because the health care system had not yet been turned into an ossified, centrally planned monopoly. Because we were investing more, growing more, hiring more. 

Those are the sorts of things conservatives, and Conservatives, used to talk about, rather than the crude hack of letting fewer people in: the economic equivalent of bleeding the patient. Ms. Smith and Mr. Poilievre themselves were advocates, not so long ago, of a pro-growth population policy. 

But how much easier it is, politically, when you’re in political trouble, to deflect public discontent, to blame all their troubles on outsiders, to play to people’s fears and whip up their resentments. Just so no one compares anybody to Donald Trump.

Source: Smith and Poilievre find someone to blame for their problems: immigrants

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John Lorinc: This is the real crisis of Canadian immigration

2026/02/24 Leave a comment

Valid concern although I think Alberta is more open to immigration than Premier Smith calculates:

…Just think about Alberta premier Danielle Smith’s address to the province last week, in which she mentioned immigration no fewer than 17 times, disparaging the “status quo” system, and claiming that current (and significantly reduced) immigration levels are “out of control” and “overwhelming our core social services.” Those are the words of someone making hay.

It is worth noting that Trump hasn’t yet targeted Canadian immigration and diversity policies in his obsessive campaign to subsume America’s closest ally in the name of hemispheric hegemony. Yet. But even a cursory scan of the cultural horizon — Bad Bunny’s Spanish lyrics, Trump’s determination to edit out Black Americans’ experiences in the name of national pride — would indicate we are as just likely to become targets of his white supremacy as Europe.

Culture warriors don’t care about policy or data, and if the Carney government doesn’t get that basic fact, it will lose the existential fight to rebuild public confidence in our migration system, whether or not we continue to tell ourselves that diversity is our strength.    

Source: Opinion | John Lorinc: This is the real crisis of Canadian immigration

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Alberta to hold wide-ranging referendum in October, Danielle Smith says [immigration]

2026/02/23 Leave a comment

As many have pointed out, the Alberta government and Premier never questioned the increases under the Trudeau government and generally advocated for higher numbers particularly for the Provincial Nominee Program. Appears more a deflection technique and perhaps part of a flood the zone to reduce attention to the ill-advised referendum on Alberta separation. May be popular with the UCP base but Alberta has been one of the more welcoming provinces for immigrants:

…Ms. Smith, on Thursday evening, described her immigration proposals as “a significant departure from the status quo” requiring consent from a majority of Albertans.

It’s not yet clear whether the immigration referendum questions would be binding.

The sweeping proposals would dramatically alter how, and if, services are delivered to certain immigrants in Alberta. One question asks if voters support mandating that only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and those with an “Alberta approved immigration status” should be eligible for provincially funded programs, including health and education. 

Another asks if residents support charging “a reasonable fee or premium” for health care and education to people with non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta.

“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 social programs to anyone who moves here,” Ms. Smith said. 

The proposals mark a significant shift in thinking for the Premier who, as recently as two years ago, said her government was preparing to more than double Alberta’s population to 10 million by 2050.

Droves of people have moved to Alberta over the past five years, from inside and outside Canada. 

Alberta’s population hit five million in 2025, up 14 per cent compared with the province’s headcount of 4.4 million in 2020, according to data compiled by the Alberta government, based on federal statistics.

Net migration climbed sharply between early 2021, when it was essentially flat, to peak at around 58,649 in the third quarter of 2023. Since then, Alberta’s net migration has been on a slide. The province absorbed 37,625 migrants in the first three quarters of 2025, down 73 per cent compared with the 140,490 people who came to Alberta in the same timeframe in 2024. 

Just 197 international migrants landed in the province in the third quarter of 2025, a drop of 99 per cent compared with 32,046 in the same quarter in 2024. 

The significant growth was partly abetted by the province’s highly successful Alberta is Calling advertising campaign, which used billboards and transit ads across Canada, tax credits and promises of a lower cost of living in an effort to entice people to move there.

The Premier described the potential program cuts to immigrants as her “short-term plan” as the province works to grow its Heritage Savings Trust Fund to $250-billion by 2050, with the goal of limiting Alberta’s reliance on resource revenues.

Ms. Smith justified the proposed immigration changes as a way to deal with Alberta’s grim economic picture without drastic cuts to social services for all citizens. In November’s fiscal update, Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner projected a $6.4-billion deficit….

Source: Alberta to hold wide-ranging referendum in October, Danielle Smith says

Snyder: How Alberta fell out of love with mass immigration

No serious explanation how it did so but useful list of just how large and multi-faceted reversal:

A few short years ago, before she had proposed a new set of referendum questions on Thursday aimed at curbing rapid population growth, Premier Danielle Smith was actively courting newcomers to the province. Indeed, with the private sector facing a shortage of skilled workers, the premier could hardly bring in enough people to satisfy her appetite.

Smith’s latest referendum push, then, seems like a dramatic shift in policy. Instead, the premier told reporters on Friday, her change in tone is the result of a stark mismatch between Alberta’s efforts to recruit skilled workers and changes to Canada’s immigration system made under former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

“We were doing a very targeted ask to get skilled workers here,” Smith said on Friday. “But as I said, we had no idea that Justin Trudeau was taking all limits off all those (immigration) programs, because they didn’t ask us, they didn’t tell us. They just did it.”…

Source: “How Alberta fell out of love with mass immigration”

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Rob Breakenridge: A debate on immigration will be a welcome distraction for Smith

2025/12/22 Leave a comment

Playing with fire?

…There are two sides of this question to consider: the degree to which Alberta wishes to control immigration and the degree to which Alberta wishes to limit immigration.

In her post last week and in an interview with Postmedia’s Rick Bell, Smith went out of her way to float the idea of limiting newcomers’ access to various social supports, based either on immigration status or number of years spent in Alberta.

This may not be hardline enough for the ardent separatists whose manifestofantasizes about deportations in the tens of thousands in their new utopia. But it’s a pretty clear signal that the Alberta government wishes to discourage any further influx of newcomers to this province.

This would seem to be a more recent and strategic pivot from this premier. It wasn’t that long ago that Smith was musing about the possibility of more than doubling Alberta’s population and drafting a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau criticizing federal immigration limits. The “Alberta is Calling” campaign may have originated under the previous premier, but it continued under the current one.

The Alberta government wanted population growth, but they didn’t seem prepared for the possibility that they might get it. The focus on the immigration issue provides a convenient scapegoat for the government’s mismanagement of that rapid population growth.

Pointing fingers at Ottawa doesn’t preclude the need to address these growth pressures. New figures from Statistics Canada show that while Canada’s population actually shrunk in the third quarter, Alberta’s population continued to grow.

But this is a volatile issue at the best of times. The political pressures that have thrust this issue to the forefront for the Alberta government, and their motivations for elevating this to a top priority — alongside a separation vote, no less — create the potential for a divisive and unhelpful debate.

Source: Rob Breakenridge: A debate on immigration will be a welcome distraction for Smith

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Although Canada’s U.S. border has one unlawful crossing for every 10 at the Mexico-U.S. border, our crossings have nearly doubled in the last two years 

2024/12/02 Leave a comment

Some useful data that helps understand USA concerns and provides shared incentives for better managing the border.

…While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not yet committed to a plan for increasing Canadian border security, Quebec’s Premier François Legault has called for one.“I think now’s not the time to play at whether it’s true or not that our borders are not secure. I think it’s important that a plan be tabled,” Premier Legault told reporters.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Trump’s concerns with the U.S.-Canada borders are well founded. Her government may be sending law enforcement to the province’s shared border with Montana to develop a “specialized border patrol.”“Saying we’re not as bad as [Mexico] is not going to fly in this case,” Premier Smith told CTV News.

“Saying we’re not as bad as [Mexico] is not going to fly in this case,” Premier Smith told CTV News.

Border crossings 

In fiscal year 2024 (October 2023 to September 2024), the number of U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) encounters at America’s northern border with Canada was nearly 200,000. Those at the U.S. border with Mexico, meanwhile, were 2.1 million.

There were just over 10 U.S. Border Patrol encounters along the Mexico-U.S. border for every one encounter along the Canada-U.S. border.

Encounters occur when the USBP locates individuals attempting to enter the country, either illegally between border posts or at official crossings without necessary paperwork like visas. It also includes those turned away because of public health rules, such as those put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between 2022 and 2024, USBP encounters at the U.S.-Canada border nearly doubled, increasing 81 percent. Meanwhile, those at the Mexican border declined by 10 percent.

At both borders, single adults are the vast majority of those attempting to enter the U.S. At the U.S.-Canada border in 2022, single people numbered 92,737 or 84 percent of all USBP encounters. In 2024 they numbered 155,214 or 78 percent.

Families attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully have increased remarkably.

At the Mexico-U.S. border, between 2022 and 2024, families rose from 23 to 41 percent of USBP encounters. At the Canadian border in 2022, they were just 13 percent of all encounters. This year they rose to 21 percent.

Who’s coming?

What’s also increased is both individuals and families travelling first to Canada, with the ultimate plan of making it across our southern border to the United States.

“When you see that, increasingly, the open border policies of Justin Trudeau [are] leading to people coming to Canada as a staging area to enter into the United States, to such a point that it has caught [the United States’] attention, we need to address those issues,” said Premier Smith this week.

The increase of USBP encounters at the northern U.S. border, compared to those in the U.S. south, gives some weight to this idea that migrants are increasingly using Canada’s less defended border as a first step to illegally enter the U.S.

As U.S.-Mexico border security has become tighter, human smugglers have increasingly advised clients to travel to the U.S. through the U.S.-Canada border, according to CBC reporting. Taxis services to drive migrants to New York City have reportedly boomed in New York State border towns.

In 2023, Indians were the single largest national group for attempts to cross the Canada-U.S. border, numbering 30,000.

From 2022 to 2023, USBC encounters with Venezuelans along our border increased the most relatively, from 201 to 1,375; followed by Peruvians from 148 to 662; and Mexicans from 3,221 to 11,121. Each relative increase was remarkably higher compared to those at the Mexico-U.S. border.

Other Central and South American nationals like Nicaraguans, Colombians, and Brazilians–whose countries are said to be facing a migration crisis–top the list for 2022 to 2023’s increased USBP encounters at the Canada-U.S. border. In 2023, encounters with Mexican, Nicaraguan, and Brazilian nationals at the Mexico-U.S. border actually declined, as those at Canada’s border rose remarkably.

Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said Canada’s U.S. border presently represents an “extreme national security” vulnerability for his country….

Source: Although Canada’s U.S. border has one unlawful crossing for every 10 at the Mexico-U.S. border, our crossings have nearly doubled in the last two years

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