How Canada’s fractured immigration consensus is starting to show up at ballot boxes

It’s no secret the long-held Canadian consensus on immigration has fractured — pulled apart by a rapid increase in new arrivals post-pandemic and growing affordability challenges. Now, that fracture is starting to show up at the ballot box.

The Parti Québécois won a minority mandate in Quebec on a platform that included promises of tighter immigration controls, which the party linked to protecting French culture and easing pressure on public services and housing.

And when Albertans head to the polls Monday to vote on whether to hold a future referendum on separation from Canada, they’ll also be answering five separate questions on immigration being pushed by the government of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

Those questions include:

— Should the province should have more say over economic immigration?

— Should provincially funded services should be restricted to citizens, permanent residents and those with “Alberta-approved” immigration status?

— Should non-permanent immigrants should be charged a fee for accessing health care and education services?

— Should non-permanent residents should have to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for provincially funded social supports?

— Should voters should have to present proof of citizenship when voting provincially?

Jason Kenney, a former Alberta premier and federal immigration minister, said Canada needs a broader debate on immigration policy based on facts.

“We do need a serious debate on immigration because demography is destiny. There are very few things that are more important,” Kenney told The Canadian Press in an interview.

“But we have to do it in a disciplined and respectful, thoughtful way, as much as possible, based on evidence and data and experience around the world.”

Kenney warned that debates on immigration policy can easily become sidetracked by more extreme political views — by accusations of racism from the far left and by actual racism on the far right.

While Kenney said he doesn’t see the immigration questions on the Alberta ballot as race-based or xenophobic, the Alberta separatist movement itself is something else entirely.

“If you listen to the key separatist leaders like Mitch Sylvestre, who’s the leader of the primary separatist organization, he says that in his republic of Alberta, no one will have citizenship unless you’re born there,” Kenney said.

“So I do think there are some currents on the extreme right of Alberta politics that we should all be concerned about. I do not think that necessarily means we cannot have an adult, grown-up conversation about immigration policy.”

But the immigration questions on the ballot are not sitting well with some diaspora communities in the province.

Lawyer Avnish Nanda, co-founder of the advocacy group Our Alberta Advantage, is campaigning for people to vote “no” on the immigration-related questions.

He said reactions to the questions from Alberta’s cultural communities and from individuals who have considered running for the United Conservative Party have been overwhelmingly negative.

“They view these questions as targeting them, their journey here and the roots they’ve established over the past 60 years,” he said.

“There’s fear, there’s confusion and anger at this government. They think this is not necessary. They think it’s wrapped up in the separatism effort. They think that Danielle Smith is scapegoating them to continue to maintain the support of the more extreme separatist elements that brought her to power.”

Nanda said the referendum is bringing out some ugly undercurrents in Alberta. He said his parents were recently “jeered by a couple of white guys in a car” while out for a walk — something that had never happened to them since coming to Canada in the 1970s.

“There’s a notion that it impacts us all, whether you’re a citizen or not, these questions,” he said. “Because the people who are mobilized around this issue, in support of it, a lot of them don’t differentiate between people who have been here 40 years [and] people who came here a week ago, because we all look the same to them.”

Nanda said if the immigration ballot measures pass on Monday, they could undermine Canada’s multicultural identity, while restricting access to provincial services would make it harder for newcomers to integrate.

Across the country in Quebec, the new minority Parti Québécois government campaigned on a promise to tighten immigration controls. Quebec has maintained far more control over the immigration system than other provinces since 1991.

The PQ immigration platform included, among other things, promises to reduce annual permanent resident admissions from 45,000 to 35,000, to impose a moratorium on permanent immigration from outside Quebec, to prioritize permanent status for temporary residents already in the province, and to tighten the selection criteria for temporary workers.

Catherine Xhardez, a political-science professor at the University of Montreal, said the outgoing Coalition Avenir du Quebec government politicized Quebec’s immigration debate by introducing restrictions the new government now wants to strengthen.

“Before that, they have kind of a consensus between political parties, how migration is good for the economy … good for demography, but even for French language,” she said.

Xhardez said before 2018, Quebec’s main parties generally agreed on the positive role immigration played in strengthening francophone culture by prioritizing certain immigrants.

“But then (the CAQ) broke this consensus between the parties by saying it was too much, too quickly, they needed less,” she said.

Xhardez said there’s a key difference between the Quebec and Alberta immigration debates — the debate in Alberta is built around populist pushback blaming social service shortages on immigrants, while the debate in Quebec puts identity and culture at the forefront.

She added immigration has also become a bargaining chip for the Quebec government in its engagements with Ottawa.

Premier Smith wants a bargaining chip of her own. In a video released Wednesday, Smith encouraged Albertans to vote in favour of the nine immigration and constitutional questions in the referendum to “send Ottawa a message.” She said the goal of one question on the ballot is to “give us the same power as Quebec to recruit economic migrants.”

During a pro-unity campaign stop in Calgary on Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney urged his audience to vote “no to the nine” — repeating a phrase that has become a rallying cry among those opposed to separatism.

Kenney said he’s a “skeptic when it comes to greater provincial control” over a “sensitive” matter like immigration policy. He said provincial governments lack the federal government’s ability to detect fraud and are inclined to focus solely on local issues — not on how immigration affects the national economy.

“In the western provinces, very typically, the permanent residents that they recommend have been low-skilled temporary foreign workers who they’re flipping into permanent residency because the local MLAs get tired of being browbeaten by the Tim Hortons franchise owners,” Kenney said.

Reflecting on his time as Alberta’s premier, he said “certain premiers” told Ottawa after the COVID-19 pandemic that their biggest priority was to increase immigration — despite early evidence of the housing and youth unemployment challenges currently driving the immigration debate.

“When you don’t have social permission to discuss these issues, again, that creates the kind of conditions where popular opinion gets totally detached from elite opinion. And if you want to know what that looks like, look at the politics of Europe today,” Kenney said.

“So if you want to avoid (Alternative für Deutschland), Front National, U.K. Reform-style politics, then yes, we need a proper, open debate about these issues.”

Xhardez, who is originally from Belgium, said the Canadian political scene is very different from Europe and the U.S. — Canada has no mainstream anti-immigrant political party at the federal level. But public feelings about immigration have shifted — and no one knows for certain how that will affect Canada’s politics going forward.

“Canada is maybe not so exceptional, we don’t know. Or maybe it will become exceptional as being just less politicized, but it’s not true that there is still this consensus and strong public support,” Xhardez said.

Nanda said some of the loudest voices opposing the immigration questions in Alberta have been chambers of commerce, which represent businesses that have been struggling to recruit staff.

He said someone in politics needs to champion the idea that immigrants lift up economies, expand the tax base and help to fund social programs and services.

“What they’re experiencing in their communities around affordability is because of failed government policies around investing in education, investing in health care, and the same immigrants that people are scapegoating as their reasons [are] a way to reverse that,” he said.

“If you go to rural Alberta hospitals or long-term care facilities, most nurses and support staff are immigrants because we can’t find local workers to work there. The same is true in many educational facilities.”