This is truly scary
Remember: Remain in Canada + No to everything else
I don’t believe it.
I know the questions are deliberately worded to be ambiguous and leading, but every single one is clearly a racist dogwhistle. For all of the redneck shitheads emboldened by our government of bigots and traitors, I don’t think the majority of Albertans are that bad.
Guess we’ll see.
I don’t think the majority of Albertans are that bad.
Alberta is difficult to underestimate.
The last Federal election was about sovereignty. 92% of Alberta ridings elected a pro MAGA party.
There’s definitely a divide between Edmonton (at least the city center & university area & few other ridings) and the rest of Alberta, which is unfortunate. Edmonton has genuinely good urban policies but the you see pee is making it harder to live here every day…
Even the smaller cities have good people in them, but they mostly have these rural-urban mixed ridings to make them appear to ride or die conservative.
I think that alternate mapping that was recently proposed had a ton of them.
Anti-immigrant rhetoric is a pretty mainstream position nationwide at this point.
Mostly targeted at one group as well. It’s sickening.
No way, our bigots hate Asians and brown/middle east people! Their bigotry is truly multicultural.
Our immigrants also seem to dislike immigrants… Nothing like pulling the ladder up after yourself.
Which is very unfortunate for this country
If you’re in Alberta, apply for a mail-in ballot on the referendum questions so you can examine them and send them in at your leisure. It’s going to be a shitshow at the polling stations.
https://www.elections.ab.ca/resources/media/news-releases/2026-referendum-special-ballot-requests/
Also, just to be clear: I do not support these questions. I’m voting remain and no on everything else
Unsurprising given the state of things.
And also unfortunate. Immigration is a strength of Canada. The problem is we didn’t build enough infrastructure and housing to support newcomers.
Still, the solution isn’t to turn on migrants. It’s to build more homes and support our services so everyone can thrive
For sure but isn’t an anti-immigrant sentiment surge inevitable until we’ve built out our material base to support the larger population? In my mind, we have a material base shortage. That makes people’s lives worse. They connect the dots, want less immigration till the problem is fixed. I think that also neatly gives the solution to the anti-immigration sentiment - fixing the material problem as you suggested. Fix that and people would welcome immigration again.
That’s a red herring.
Housing prices went up because since COVID most companies have been making record profits. These all went to shareholders/hedge funds who are flush with cash and bought up all the properties. They’re doing it because “it’s good to own land”. In Ottawa, in most neighborhoods, the cost of the empty lot is the same whether or not there is a house on it.
This is combined with the inflation and layoffs that affected the regular people who aren’t shareholders. Politicians have been freezing or cutting municipal taxes rather than keeping them tied to inflation to “try to help the little guy”. Unfortunately that benefits the rich more than anyone else.
Without strong tax revenues our cities have been cutting back on public transit, amenities, and even road maintenance.
This happened regardless of immigration.
The only way to fix our material base is to tax the rich and reinvest in cities, and public housing to drop housing prices. But the middle class sees housing as “an investment” instead of “a place to live” and would rather their 3br townhouse be worth a million bucks than have their kids and grandkids be able to afford a house. So anytime the government talks about public housing they lose the election.
Immigrants would be a huge asset if we wanted to fix the problem because they’re significantly overrepresented in the trades we need to build our way out of this if we find the political will to do so.
Think about it from a different point of view. If you had a big piece of land and a bunch of construction workers asked to live on it with you, wouldn’t say “we can’t invite you in until we build you a house first” you’d say “here’s some lumber, get cracking”. We haven’t fixed the base capacity problem because we (the rich and to some extent middle class boomers) don’t want to.
I agree with almost everything you said. I’m not saying immigration is the cause or is a primary driver to the material shortages people observe. I’m saying there are real shortages, in healthcare capacity, in transportation capacity, housing probably less an actual shortage but that too. And then people read about immigration numbers, see the new people around them, waiting in the ER, on the barely crawling highway, in the packed subway, etc. They see those new people and they make the obvious, surface level conclusion that they’re suffering because there’s more people using these resources. I’m saying this is an easy conclusion to make, not that it’s the right one. It’s also easy to make because it’s valid if one freezes all other variables, like the ones you mentioned. Worse, to my mom, those variables just don’t exist. They’ve never been in her consciousness. And then there’s PP and Trump assuring her that the simple explanation is the right one. They’re Occam’s-razoring her. I’m just explaining the process of anti-immigrant sentiment surge. I think given how easily it emerges from our material conditions, it can’t be waived away by the people who believe immigration is a net positive and especially by such politicians. It has to be taken into account and the root causes solved, like doing most of what you suggested. Otherwise I think we’re going down the same path the US and Europe is going down, no matter how nice and immigration-friendly we’ve been so far. I think fixing the shortages would halt and even reverse that, calling people bigots (not saying you’re doing that) would work for some but probably not most.
I do believe provinces should have more control over immigration ( from outside Canada, not interprovincial). Every thing else on that referendum is junk. Then again the way even immigration control question is, it could mean interprovincial migration or simply a province to say we will only allow certain race in.
SO NO to everything on that referendum.
That doesn’t even make sense. Once you’re immigrated to Canada you can just change provinces.
What if Newfoundland said “fuck it, we need people, everyone in” then they’re just Canadian immigrants who can live anywhere in Canada completely undermining more restrictive provinces and making a mockery of the system. Unless you’re suggesting immigrants should be second class citizens bound to their province of arrival like medieval serfs?!?!?
And provinces do have power to shape immigration programs, like Quebec has a special fast pass for French speakers. But nothing keeps you there.
That’s what I meant by it’s ambiguous. There is no policy or clarification and I am not suggesting a policy. Everything you said is perfectly valid and no immigrants should not be bound to.province of arrival, maybe for certain number of years if it comes down to that.
