On October 19th, Albertans will be asked a complex (and confusing) series of questions in a provincial referendum. In these questions, and the discussion around them, Albertans are being told a story about unfairness, deprivation, and a concerning take on national identity. The way that we respond to these questions will tell us about our sense of justice, belonging, and moral obligation.
What are the questions (really)?
The first five questions deal with matters of provincial policy, seeking legitimation for several of the current provincial government’s objectives that they will likely attempt to take on unilaterally (though, each of them stand some likelihood of being challenged in the courts should they do so).
The next four questions seek a mandate from Albertans for the provincial government to pursue amendments to the Canadian constitution, all of which are unlikely to succeed since they would require the support of a strong majority of (and, in one case, all of) the other provinces as well as both houses of the federal Parliament.
The tenth question—the one getting by far the most notice both inside and outside of Alberta—is about whether the provincial government should initiate the process to hold a “binding referendum” on whether or not Alberta should remain in Canada.
Questions 2, 3, and 4 impact non-permanent immigrants in Alberta, which includes anyone residing, studying, and working in the province who isn’t a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. This includes international students, participants in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, and many refugees and asylum-seekers and other immigrants, including many children and other dependents. If the proposed policies are enacted, these migrants might be denied access to provincially supported programs (including healthcare, education, and other social services) or charged an additional fee or premium for those services beyond what they already pay in provincial taxes. Non-permanent residents who work in Alberta pay provincial taxes at exactly the same rates as citizens and permanent residents.
Citizens for Public Justice (CPJ) has been advocating for the rights and interests of refugees and migrants for decades, including for their access to essential services (such as healthcare) that are primarily provided by provincial governments. These actions by the Alberta government would constitute a major step backwards in guaranteeing equal rights and protections for all of our neighbours—and so, speaking from decades of research and advocacy, CPJ urges its members to oppose these actions and vote “No” on these questions.
The concerning story that we’re being told
Taken all together, these ten questions also reflect a “story” about Alberta that conflicts with CPJ’s faith-grounded vision of public justice for all. The narrative behind the referendum goes something like this: Alberta, its resources, and the wealth that those resources create belong to “us” and there’s not enough of it to go around. Migrants are a threat or a burden, imposed on us by the federal government who take up scarce resources and contribute little to our communities. The rest of Canada is also a burden and a drain on “our” wealth, as we (allegedly) pay more in Federal tax than “we” receive back in federal transfers or services. And so “we” need to push back: we need to take control of immigration (and the courts that protect the rights of immigrants), restrict it, keep our scarce public services out of the hands of immigrants that “we” don’t approve of, and force immigrants to pay more so that they don’t take what’s ours (never mind that virtually no Albertans actually pay more in provincial taxes than they receive in services). And we need to ask whether we are getting “full value” for our contributions to Canada—and maybe get out if we’re not.
In this story, allowing non-permanent residents to access provincial services on equal terms (services that they are paying for with their provincial taxes, mind you), or possibly even staying in Canada and “subsidizing” other provinces via our federal taxes, would be a kind of generosity that “we” can’t afford. These attitudes have a history in Alberta. Jason Kenney, upon becoming leader of the United Conservative Party in 2017 famously said that Albertans are people who understand that “in order to be a compassionate and generous society, you must be a prosperous one first.” On this view, protecting what’s ours and overcoming all scarcity amongst ourselves takes precedence over welcoming migrants on equal terms or sharing the wealth we “create” with the rest of the country.
But this story, as encapsulated in Kenney’s dictum, is wrong in at least three ways.
First, if you have to be prosperous before you can be generous—if you have to overcome all scarcity internally before you can give out of your surplus—you will never get to generosity. We are not called to give only out of our surplus, but because we are members of communities and communities “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). Alberta is the richest province in the country; how rich do we have to be before we stop grudging our contributions?
Secondly, contributing to provincial services in other provinces via equalization and providing our own provincial services to migrants isn’t a matter of “generosity” but of justice. CPJ has adopted a “rights-based approach” to policy analysis because respect for the dignity of all, including of refugees and migrants, requires recognizing that we have duties towards them. In scripture, God does not suggest that maybe it would be nice to care for the widow and orphan and to welcome the stranger as if they were one of them (Leviticus 19:34) or suggest that bearing each other’s burdens in community would be alright if you weren’t getting “ripped off.” God commands these things and reminds His people that they were once strangers and dependents, and that they were once enslaved.
Finally, the “we have to be prosperous before we can be generous and we’re not prosperous enough” narrative, even when we feel inclined to generosity, implies that what “we” have—the land, its resources, the wealth that results from these—is simply “ours” to have, use, and dispose of however we wish. It seems to imply that, if we want to withhold them from “others”, or even take them and leave, that’s just up to us. But, as CPJ’s advocacy work has been reminding us, this is Treaty land: if we have any rightful claim on it and on its wealth, that is only in Treaty partnership with First Nations. Settler Albertans like me don’t just get to decide unilaterally to take our ball and go home if we don’t like how the game is going.
A better story—one that builds on CPJ’s faith-informed vision of public justice—sees our presence here as a partnership and a community (with First Nations, with the rest of Canada), our wealth as entrusted to us as stewards not sovereigns, and our immigrant neighbours as rights-bearing, image-bearing, co-contributors to our shared life. In the light of that story, the questions before Albertans look very different.
