Why is the UCP pushing this idea that immigrants need to be charged a fee for using public services?

So this is really a little bit nuanced and complicated, like, why are they doing it would be a good question for them.

I argue in the report that this is really about shifting responsibility onto migrants, so it's a s- a strategy of scapegoating, not unique to Alberta, certainly not new, but a kind of age-old strategy of blaming outsiders, blaming others for the social and economic political challenges that we're facing as a province.

So there's, there's a perception that this is, like, immigrants or refugees or whoever people kind of imagine as, like, others who are f- newcomers from outside are taking up all of our healthcare and our education and-... on our social services.

But what, if you read these questions carefully, they're actually specific to temporary residents, and so the premier has called them most recently guest workers.

Uh, el- elsewhere she's called them tourists.

Um, the emphasis on their temporariness in the province is kind of foregrounded here.

Can you tell me a little bit more about the ecosystem of these myths in Alberta and the relationship between these ideas being put forward within the Alberta government and outside of it?

What did I miss?

Yeah, some really important points there.

I, I think I just wanna step back and, and sort of s- like s- try to like frame out like what is the problem that this question is trying to address, right? So, I mean, it's a three-part question, as you articulate, so there are sort of maybe three problems put into it.

But the first is this idea of increased control over immigration, suggesting that immigration is out of control.

And as I identify in the Parkland report, um, this is, uh, not really supported by evidence in the sense that the provincial government's kind of effort to take more control over immigration is aligned with the current posture of the federal government, which has become much more restrictive around immigration.

And that has resulted in declining immigration levels numbers, declining number of temporary residents.

So that's kind of like the first piece to be aware of, is like the whole premise for this referendum is that we are living in a period of, quote-unquote, unchecked migration or, quote-unquote, open borders, um, that like sort of l- started under Trudeau and have continued into the present.

So first of all, I'd ask you, is this government overreach? Is this outside of the Alberta government's jurisdiction?

Do they stand up to scrutiny?

Uh, well, in the report, we go through some of the most problematic elements of the questions, and I think, you know, question one, which you just read, is a really good example of some of the, the highly problematic underpinnings of these questions, which are...

All of the questions are problematic.

This one, we- if we just look at it in a little bit more detail, the government suggests that Albertans are to vote on whether we support the government taking increased control of immigration for the purposes of decreasing immigration.

This is, on its face, very complicated.

Immigration is a shared jurisdiction between the federal and the provincial government, but a lot of Alberta's population growth that's come through immigration is what we call secondary migration.

So this is when someone arrives in another city like Toronto or Vancouver and then decides to move to Alberta.

Does that square with reality?

So can you tell me what you know about what the organized resistance to the anti-immigration questions is? and the sort of overall climate of anti-immigration sentiment looks like in Alberta?

I mean, it's such an important question.

I just want to dial in on one thing you said and then get back to the kind of resistance to this.

It kind of feels like we're living in the upside down here sometimes because on the one hand, we're having this referendum and the provincial government is telling everybody that we're living in this period of unsustainable, unchecked migration over quote unquote, open borders, like that is the language of the premier.

At the same time, most of us engaged on questions of immigration are looking at what's happening federally.

And it is a period, like I said earlier, of intense contraction and actually limiting services and supports for newcomers broadly, like cuts to settlement programs, cuts to language programs, but also to migrants, specifically hearing meaning temporary foreign workers, international students, We've seen through Bill C-12 that was brought in by Carney earlier this year, the real restrictions on asylum seekers.

And we've seen increased collaboration, ironically, between the federal government and provincial services.

People

And she studies immigration issues in neighborhoods just like this.

This is a neighborhood that has a long history of welcoming newcomers.

So you've got your mix of like small so-called ethnic businesses, right? Like Lebanese grocery stores, tons of Vietnamese food, kebabs, a lot of liquor stores.

And then also a lot of like folks that are street involved and low income.

And so Forest Lawn also has among like the highest density of service provider organizations, like things like food banks.

supports for people who live in low income, for single parent families, language programs like training, that kind of thing.

So you have kind of that whole

Bronwyn Bragg, the immigration expert, she thinks the questions around restricting access to social services miss a key fact about a majority of these people.