Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s promise to hold a referendum that will give her province a chance to demand greater control over immigration is the latest episode in the long-standing, ever-evolving drama between the provinces and Ottawa over immigration jurisdiction.
The October referendum will ask nine questions, including four on constitutional issues. But the major spark igniting a firestorm of debate across Canada is the five immigration questions.
What Ottawa isn’t saying about immigration
If you listen to Ottawa’s statements on immigration, you’ll get the impression that Canada has reversed course on the loose policies of the Trudeau years.
You’ll hear that Canada is getting its temporary resident numbers under control, and will reduce the number of permanent residents. And that priority is being given to the world’s top talent, which will help grow Canada’s economy.
However, the reality is more complicated, if you look at what the Liberal government is actually doing – and what it saying about how the immigration system truly operates today.
Due to mass migration, we can expect a disordered democracy and a permanent security crisis on the horizon.
On February 28, a major military conflict erupted in the Middle East. The primary actors in this war are the United States (US) and Israel on one side, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (along with its regional proxies) on the other. This black swan event will have catastrophic cascading effects that Western powers do not seem to understand, especially because mass migration and the rise of caliphates in the West raise serious questions around the national interests, political process, and security. Even if a change of regime were possible, it would be hard to imagine it would result in a very pleasant liberal democratic progressive utopia when every other regime change has delivered an ISIS, Alqaeda, or Muslim Brotherhood-controlled hellscape.
(Incognito)
The Liberals’ newcomer apocalypse has finally turned into their worst political problem. Hospitals are overburdened, schools are struggling with second-language students, job prospects remain poor, birthright citizenship continues to exist and judges routinely help criminals and fraudsters remain in-country.
None of this will go away by nibbling away at the edges of immigration law, which is all the Liberals plan to do with the bill they’re pitching to Canadians as the solution: C-12.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government dismisses legitimate criticism of Canada’s immigration and refugee policies as racism, it is essentially calling most Canadians racist.
This is nothing new for the Liberals.
It was the same tactic the Justin Trudeau government employed.
The parliamentary budget officer (PBO) predicts Canada’s rate of population growth will remain flat in 2026, mainly due to cuts to non-permanent resident admissions in the latest federal Immigration Levels Plan.
This would be the second year in a row with zero population growth in Canada, which follows several years of above-average growth, including the record-breaking years of 2022 and 2023.
Statistics Canada reported flat growth in 2025, with the PBO report finding any gains were offset by a decline in the non-permanent resident population of 382,000 people.
An insider report authored by a former director of policy at Immigration with the Canadian government has shown that, for nearly a decade, Canada let in 25,000 asylum seekers without any of them ever being properly vetted.
The report, by the Toronto-based C.D. Howe Institute, and authored by James Yousif, who is the former director of policy at Immigration, noted how the federal government “slashed all its usual controls to weed out fraudsters, human traffickers and terrorists” in letting these people into the nation.
From crumbling healthcare to the housing crisis, Canada’s refusal to control its borders is a recipe for social collapse and the bureaucracy is to blame.
Mass immigration is threatening the social and economic well-being of the entire Western world. One needs only to look at the catastrophes in Europe, as decades of unchecked immigration have led to entire sections of cities becoming unhabitable to locally born citizens, while race riots and demonstrations choke cities regularly. Integration has become nearly impossible as migrants cluster into introverted communities of their own and refuse to adapt to cultural norms within the democracies they entered.
(Incognito)
The sheer amount of extortion attempts and extortion-related shootings in British Columbia has commanded national and international attention. It is not surprising to see more than half of British Columbians (56 per cent) saying they have followed news related to this situation “very closely” or “moderately closely” over the past month.
At this moment, respondents of South Asian descent are more likely to be captivated by this story (67 per cent) than their counterparts whose heritage is Indigenous (59 per cent), European (56 per cent) or East Asian (55 per cent).
Biden’s border chaos wasn’t accidental—it was a political strategy to reshape America’s electorate and expand left-wing power.
Why would any president destroy the U.S. southern border?
The Left typically “pounces” on anyone daring to suggest that the Biden administration had green-lighted illegal immigration to gain new constituents for agendas that otherwise were without broad public support.
The Left smears critics of open borders as racist conspiracists spreading the “Great Replacement Theory.”
Yet for years, Democrats and leftists themselves had written triumphalist books with titles like “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” And often they crowed that “Demography is Destiny.”
‘Enough is enough’: Canadian intelligence experts to focus on extortion crime, federal minister says
The federal finance minister visited Mississauga, Ont., Thursday to announce dedicated financial intelligence experts who will focus on extortion crime targeting Canadian businesses and households.
The move comes as Brampton and Caledon, Ont., mayors called on the federal government to help create a multi-jurisdictional strategy to combat what they say are rising extortion threats towards businesses in their cities, particularly South Asian ones.
It also follows a pair of summits in Brampton and Surrey, B.C., to hear about how threats of violence are affecting communities.
Premier Danielle Smith wants to hold a referendum in October on measures to limit immigration to Alberta and changes she believes would give the province more rights under the Constitution.
In a 13-minute televised address Thursday evening, Smith said she wants Albertans to vote on nine questions on Oct. 19. She said the subject of each question was based on what the Alberta Next Panel heard the most when consulting with Albertans during town halls and through written submissions last year.
“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,” Smith said.
I am honoured to speak directly with Albertans about the road ahead for our province, the choices we face together, and how you will have the final say in shaping Alberta’s future within a strong and united Canada. pic.twitter.com/rAyK0awCvM
— Danielle Smith (@ABDanielleSmith) February 20, 2026
Contrast Smith with Doug “My Buddies Need Cheap Labour from 3rd World Dumpsters” Ford.
Coyne gets his ass kicked as always.
This is utterly unhinged. https://t.co/Lo7ADE4ZS0
— Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪🇲🇩 (@acoyne) February 20, 2026
CALGARY — Premier Danielle Smith’s Chief of Staff, Rob Anderson, says Smith will address staggering immigration numbers on Thursday in a televised address to the province.
Anderson was reacting to a post by David Coletto on X, CEO of Abacus Data Canada on Wednesday.
Watch the tv address of Premier @ABDanielleSmith to Albertans tomorrow.
This absolute insanity needs to stop. It will. https://t.co/iCjlOHF9ld
— Rob Anderson (@FreeAlbertaRob) February 18, 2026
Rupert Lowe deals in the politics of return: illegal immigrants are going back, and so is Britain. The Great Yarmouth MP, formerly of Reform UK, has now launched Restore Britain as a new political party, and on Wednesday evening claimed that it had passed 70,000 members. The launch announcement was marked with a stirring video of Lowe in his farmer’s get-up, as well as a series of semi-ironic nationalist compilations presumably made by Restore’s Zoomer footsoldiers. In one of these, among nostalgic nods to Geoff Hurst and Zulu, 1997 is invoked as the year when everything started to go wrong. Speaking over grainy images of a lost Britain, Lowe sums up his political outlook: “I think the state is bad, and I think the individual is good.”
One area where the state has undoubtedly failed, in Lowe’s eyes, is on the matter of immigration. While Reform has pledged to deport all illegal immigrants, Restore wants to go further. Lowe has promised to scrap the asylum system entirely, also stating last week that “legal immigration will almost come to a complete halt.” The goal is not just to halt migrant influxes but to reverse them. “Net zero immigration is weak, weak, weak. It is insufficient and it is too late,” he said in the speech with which he launched the party. “The barbarians are already in the gates.”
I prefer both his trustworthiness and his policy to Farage.
