For every Albertan, and every Canadian who loves Alberta, before Monday, October 19, 2026
On Monday, every voter in Alberta will be handed a stack of ten coloured ballots. The first one in the pile is the most important: Elections Alberta will give out the separation question first, and count it first (Elections Alberta, n.d.-b). Before you mark anything, I invite you to do what thoughtful people do with any contract: read every line, ask who it affects, ask what it costs, and ask what happens after you sign.
I am a Canadian who was born in Ukraine, and I live in British Columbia, so I will not vote on Monday. But I have friends, colleagues and former students across Alberta, and so do many of you. This is for them. I know what it means when a government asks people to vote on who belongs, and I know how quickly a “temporary” category of people can become a permanent target. I also know that this land had laws, nations and agreements long before any province drew a border on it. And I know that unless you are Indigenous, your family’s Alberta story began the same way mine did: with someone who arrived. That is why my advice to every Alberta voter is clear:
Vote No on Questions 1 to 9. On Question 10, choose Option 1: “Alberta should remain a province of Canada.”
Question 10 has no Yes or No box. Option 1 is the No to separation.
Three things to know before you vote
First, you are being asked to sign blank cheques. No answer changes a law by itself, and poll workers cannot explain the questions to you (Ten Questions, n.d.; Villani, 2026a). Elections Alberta is not permitted to interpret them; questions about meaning go to the government or your MLA (Elections Alberta, n.d.-b). Academics have flagged wording that can make voters stop, reread and reconsider what is actually being asked (Villani, 2026a). When the people who wrote the questions are the only ones allowed to explain them, the wise vote is the cautious one.
Second, the details arrive after your vote, not before. The government says it will not define “Alberta-approved immigration status” until after the referendum, and any new fee would also be set after the vote (The Canadian Press, 2026). You would be approving rules that do not exist yet.
Third, a Yes is a mandate. It will be used as permission. Ask yourself whether you trust a mandate you cannot read.
Look at the receipt
Alberta is a proud province. It built hospitals in the snow, fed the country, and sent its sons and daughters to every hard job Canada had. So it is fair, and even healthy, for Albertans to feel a little ashamed of what this referendum costs and what it buys.
The price. Each question is printed on its own numbered, colour-coded ballot, so every voter receives ten (Elections Alberta, n.d.-b). The 2023 provincial election cost about $37 million and used 1.7 million ballots; Elections Alberta expects to need 45 million ballots for this referendum (Kavanagh, 2026; Thompson, 2026). It needs at least 60,000 workers, which is more than Quebec mobilized for its 1995 separation vote (Alegre, 2026). A former chief electoral officer, Lorne Gibson, estimates the bill could reach $130 million, with ballot printing alone costing ten times what it did in the last election (Bruch, 2026a). To be precise: Elections Alberta has not published an official total, and published estimates range from about $120 million to $134 million (Thompson, 2026). At $134 million, that is about $26.50 for every person in Alberta, babies included (Prairies Exposed, 2026).
What that money could have been. One campaign, Alberta’s Voice, calculated that the same money could pay for 150 family doctors, 188 teachers, 794 educational assistants, or two new 900-student schools (Kavanagh, 2026). Think of the parent in Red Deer with no family doctor. Think of the crowded classroom in Airdrie. Now picture 45 million ballots on pallets.
The government’s own campaign. On top of the vote itself, the province launched a $4 million advertising campaign promoting its position on the ten questions, including a booklet mailed to every household (Alberta Government Launches Ad Campaign, 2026). Its executive council paid $309,300 for the referendum website (Black, 2026), and that contract went to an agency co-founded by one of the Premier’s top advisers from her 2023 election campaign (Former Smith Advisers, 2026). A 2025 amendment to the Election Act removed restrictions on government advertising in a standalone referendum (Challenge Filed, 2026), and the government also removed the $5 million advertising limit for parties, constituency associations and MLAs during referendums (Cogbill, 2026).
Even people who want Alberta to leave Canada are uncomfortable with this. An organizer with Let Alberta Decide criticized the Premier for using taxpayer money to advertise one position instead of remaining neutral (Alberta Government Launches Ad Campaign, 2026). When both the separatists and the federalists say the referee is playing for one team, the referee has a problem.
Where the money did not go. When Elections Alberta’s chief electoral officer asked for an additional $13.5 million to handle recall and citizen petitions, warning that without it his office would likely be unable to carry out its legal duties, the request was denied (Farrell & Johnson, 2025). Money for persuasion; no money for the referee.
What the money says about judgment. Read the ten questions again and ask what each one would actually do. Charge a fee. Make people wait. Cut people off. Demand more papers at the ballot box. Let politicians choose the judges who rule on their laws. Start the process of leaving the country. Not one question asks how to shorten surgical waits, build homes young families can afford, raise wages, attract investment, or train the next generation of nurses and tradespeople. This is a ballot about punishment and control, not prosperity. A government focused on prosperity asks, “How do we grow together?” This ballot asks, “Who can we keep out, and who can we control?”
Alberta can do better than this, and Albertans know it. That small feeling of shame is not weakness. It is your conscience telling you this province is worth more than a $130 million mandate machine. Vote No.
Question 10: Canada begins with the Treaties
This is the first ballot you will hold, so let us begin here.
Option 2 does not separate Alberta on Monday night. It does something more serious: it starts a legal process that would end in another, binding vote on leaving Canada (Ten Questions, n.d.). Starting that process has costs of its own.
The Treaties came first. Chiefs from Treaties 6, 7 and 8 have said any move toward independence cannot proceed without the consent of the Nations whose treaties predate the province, and Treaty 8 Grand Chief Trevor Mercredi has said Alberta does not have the power to revoke, alter or override those agreements (Schertow, 2026). Their position is simple: the Treaties were made between First Nations and the Crown before Alberta was created, Alberta is not a party to them, and it cannot change them without First Nations’ consent (Steel, 2026). At a unanimous sitting of the Assembly of Treaty Chiefs, the Nations declared they had lost trust in the provincial government, pointing to its handling, and at times encouragement, of separation talk despite their clear opposition (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, 2026).
The courts have listened. In May 2026, a judge quashed approval of a separation petition because the government had not met its constitutional duty to consult First Nations (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation v Alberta (Chief Electoral Officer), 2026; L. Johnson, 2026). In an earlier case, the First Nation reports, Justice Feasby found that Alberta independence would interfere with its way of life and violate the Numbered Treaties (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, 2026; Chief Electoral Officer of Alberta v Sylvestre, 2025).
We are all treaty people. Every farm, every pipeline, every hospital and every home in Alberta sits on land shared under those agreements. A process that begins by setting aside the treaty partners is not a fresh start. It is a broken promise, and broken promises have long memories on this land.
Nobody has shown you the bill. Lennie Kaplan, a former senior manager in Alberta’s Treasury Board and Finance, reports that neither that ministry nor Executive Council has done any concrete analysis of what independence would mean for the economy, despite his repeated access-to-information requests (Kaplan, 2026). He notes that earlier estimates suggested separation could cost Alberta about $130 billion over ten years (Kaplan, 2026). University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, in an analysis for the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, estimates separation could cost up to 175,000 jobs, shrink the economy by up to $62 billion a year, and leave a $9 billion fiscal shortfall (Krugel, 2026b). His analysis also found that one in three Alberta workers would be exposed to trade disruption (Krugel, 2026a). Business groups warn that even the prospect of a separation vote can chill investment, whatever the result (Smith, 2026). The government found $4 million to advertise its views, but Albertans have not been shown a costed plan for the most important question on the ballot. Think of your pension, your mortgage rate and your children’s jobs. Would you sign a home sale without seeing the price?
Choose Option 1. Staying in Canada does not mean giving up on fairness for Alberta. It means fighting for it from inside the strongest partnership this province has ever had.
Remember who came before you
If you are First Nations, Métis or Inuit, your ancestors were here first, and this land was home long before it was called Alberta. For everyone else, including me, the family story begins with someone who arrived. Before you mark Questions 1 to 5, I ask you to think about that person.
Many of them were invited. Between Confederation and the First World War, millions of immigrant settlers came to make new lives in the Canadian West (Gagnon, 2022). That settlement had a cost for the people already here: the same policing that kept settlers safe further dispossessed Indigenous residents (Gagnon, 2022). The Treaties are what made sharing this land possible at all. Remembering that we arrived is not about guilt. It is about humility, and about keeping the promises that let our families stay.
My own people’s Alberta story began in 1891, when two villagers from Nebyliv, Ivan Pylypow and Wasyl Eleniak, came to see the free land Canada was offering (“Canada,” n.d.; Ukrainian Canadian Congress Alberta Provincial Council, 2021). Their reports led to the first Ukrainian settlement in Canada, at Edna-Star east of Edmonton, in 1892, and it grew into the largest Ukrainian settlement in the country (“Canada,” n.d.; “Ukrainian Canadian History and Settlement,” n.d.). In 1947, Eleniak, representing Ukrainians in Canada, was among the first to receive a Canadian citizenship certificate (“Eleniak, Wasyl,” n.d.; Levytsky, 2018, 2020). Think about that: one of the founders of Ukrainian Alberta farmed this land for nearly half a century before Canadian citizenship even existed for him to claim.
During the First World War and until 1920, Canada interned 8,579 people identified as “enemy aliens,” mainly Ukrainian and German immigrants, across 24 camps (Canadian War Museum, n.d.). Five of those camps were in Alberta: at or near Jasper, Castle Mountain and the Cave and Basin in Banff National Park, Lethbridge, and Munson, and a further 80,000 people were forced to register regularly with police (Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, 2022). As the foundation’s president, Borys Sydoruk, put it, they had been “invited to settle Canada” and were then interned for immigrating with the “wrong” passport (Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, 2022). Canada later chose to remember that injustice, and the Government of Alberta itself approved a statue on the grounds of the Legislature to commemorate it (Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, 2022).
Black families from Oklahoma, Texas and nearby states also answered the “Last Best West” call, founding Amber Valley in 1910 on the promise of free land (Historica Canada, n.d.; Parks Canada, 2017). They were met with petitions from towns and cities across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba demanding their immigration be stopped, and Ottawa prepared an order to ban Black immigration before turning to quieter measures to halt it (Parks Canada, 2017). A 1911 Edmonton petition called their arrival “alarming” and a “serious menace to the future welfare” of the province (Wittmeier, 2020). Today we name parks and stamps after these pioneers. In their own time, they were the people a petition said Alberta could not afford.
The pattern repeats in every generation: newcomers are called a burden, and then their grandchildren build the province. Today 23 per cent of people in Canada are immigrants, the largest share since Confederation, and immigrants accounted for four-fifths of labour force growth from 2016 to 2021 (Robitaille & El-Assal, 2022; Statistics Canada, 2022). Nearly one in three people in the Calgary area (31.5 per cent), and more than one in four in the Edmonton area (26.0 per cent), are immigrants (Rodriguez, 2022; Statistics Canada, 2022).
So before you mark Questions 1 to 5, ask yourself: Would my great-grandmother have survived a 12-month wait for help? Could she have paid a new premium to take her sick child to a doctor? Who would have decided whether her status was “approved”? Vote the way you would want someone to have voted for her.
Questions 1 to 4: The neighbours who are not on the ballot
These four questions are about people who cannot vote on Monday: international students, temporary foreign workers, refugee claimants and their children. They are your nurses’ aides, your truck drivers, your meat plant workers, your children’s classmates. They are today’s version of our ancestors.
Question 1 asks whether Alberta should take more immigration control in order to reduce it. But Alberta already has real power here: through the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program, it nominates immigrants whose skills fit its economy, with Ottawa making the final decision (Firby, 2026). And Alberta’s own employers are worried. The Calgary Chamber of Commerce reports that 65 per cent of its member businesses are already struggling to find workers, and 47 per cent expect recent or proposed immigration changes to hurt their business (Gilligan, 2026; Krugel, 2026c). Economists say the details of a new system would be “nearly impossible” to finalize, and one Calgary business owner called the question “so vague” (Bruch, 2026b). A province short of workers does not prosper by turning workers away.
Ask Brooks. It was the first community designated under the Rural Renewal Stream of the Alberta Advantage Immigration Program, which helps rural communities recruit newcomers to fill labour shortages (Le, 2026). As one Brooks business owner put it, “Our economy doesn’t grow if we don’t have immigration” (Le, 2026). Rural Alberta knows who keeps its clinics staffed and its main streets open.
Question 2 would cut people with temporary status out of health care, schools and social services, unless the province “approves” their status. That definition does not exist yet (The Canadian Press, 2026). A Yes would exclude international students, temporary foreign workers and refugee claimants unless the province approves their status (Ten Questions, n.d.). This is control in its purest form: the government asks for the power first and promises to explain later. Imagine a child with a fever whose parent holds a work permit. Imagine a refugee family fleeing a war like the one my homeland is living through. A public health system that turns people away at the door protects no one; illness does not check passports.
Questions 3 and 4 ask for a 12-month wait for social supports and a new fee for health care and schools. The Premier has floated a health premium of about $1,900 per person (Ali & Dryden, 2026; Danielle Smith Floats, 2026). The Calgary Chamber says businesses fear they would end up paying those fees as employers, raising labour costs after years of unprecedented wage growth (Krugel, 2026c). A fee that drives up the cost of hiring is not a prosperity policy. It is a penalty that lands on employers and workers alike.
The government’s numbers are disputed. The Premier often cites about $1 billion in health and education costs against $150 million in taxes (“What About Alberta’s Nine Other,” 2026). That figure itself admits that temporary residents already pay taxes, so any premium would come on top of what they already contribute. Critics say the numbers do not add up and leave out the economic contributions newcomers make (The Canadian Press, 2026). Numerous studies find immigrants contribute more than they consume over the long term (Firby, 2026). When rights depend on a status that a government will define later, history tells us exactly where that road leads. Vote No.
Question 5: A solution looking for a problem
Only Canadian citizens can vote in Alberta now; this question is only about what papers you must carry to prove it (Ten Questions, n.d.). Albertans already show ID, and Elections Alberta accepts more than 50 forms of it (Lewis, 2026). People who register at the polls must show accepted ID and sign a declaration of Canadian citizenship, and voting illegally can bring fines of up to $50,000 and up to two years in jail (T. Johnson, 2026).
Is there a problem? Elections Alberta says there is no evidence that ineligible voters are a growing problem (T. Johnson, 2026). Since 2020, its records show four letters of reprimand to people who voted when not qualified (Elections Alberta, n.d.-a). Four people, against a referendum that may cost more than $120 million.
So who would this really stop? The rural senior whose passport expired in 1998. The Elder born at home with no birth certificate. The student whose papers are in a drawer three provinces away. Political scientist Lori Williams warns that setting the bar too high in proving citizenship could prevent some people from voting (Lewis, 2026). Democracy is protected by bringing citizens in, not by building new doors to keep them out. Vote No.
Questions 6 to 9: Rewriting the country with no blueprint
These questions ask Alberta to recruit other provinces to amend the Constitution. Questions 6, 8 and 9 need Parliament plus seven provinces with half of Canada’s population; abolishing the Senate needs Parliament and every province (Ten Questions, n.d.). Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt says the constitutional questions feel like an afterthought, and NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi argues the Premier wants the other provinces to say no (Farrell, 2026). If these are not meant to pass, ask why Albertans are paying to vote on them.
Question 6 (judges). Alberta already appoints a majority of the province’s judicial decision-makers (Villani, 2026b). This question would hand the politicians who pass laws the power to choose the judges who rule on those laws. Judicial independence is what protects you when you challenge the government, and Treaty rights, too, are defended in courts. Keep the referee separate from the team.
Question 7 (the Senate). The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that abolishing the Senate requires the unanimous agreement of Parliament and every provincial legislature (Canadian Lawyer, 2014; Reference re Senate Reform, 2014). Alberta Senator Paula Simons notes that no referendum was ever needed for a premier to try, and that senators are there to represent regional interests and protect constitutional rights (Fleming, 2026). This is a question with no road, printed on millions of ballots.
Question 8 (opt out and keep the money). Experts interviewed by CTV News called this impossible and warned it could open a Pandora’s box of problems as provinces seek changes for their own benefit (Osborne, 2026). National standards exist so that a Canadian is a Canadian wherever they get sick.
Question 9 (provincial law over federal law). Richard Mailey, director of the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta, explains this would replace federal paramountcy with a blanket rule of provincial paramountcy, and University of Lethbridge political scientist Megan Aiken warns of unpredictable consequences, noting that immigration is an area of shared jurisdiction (Wachter, 2026). It also raises a question no one has answered: the Crown’s treaty obligations run through federal law. A rule that lets provincial law override federal law in shared areas puts those obligations at risk.
The strongest Yes case, and why it still falls short
Thinking voters weigh the other side at its best. Supporters say Alberta has real grievances with Ottawa. The Premier has called the immigration changes “a significant departure from the status quo” that needs a referendum mandate, and says the constitutional questions are meant to strengthen Alberta within a united Canada (Mason, 2026). She has argued that government advertising is justified because the questions are government-sponsored (Cogbill, 2026), and the Education Minister has defended the spending, saying the province is “moving ahead aggressively in investing in the services that Albertans need” (Kavanagh, 2026). A co-lead of Let Alberta Decide, Keith Wilson, says the Calgary Chamber is “measuring fear, not opportunity” (Toneguzzi, 2026). It is fair to say that Ottawa badly mishandled immigration after the pandemic (Firby, 2026), and a University of Calgary law professor notes the province is technically free to run its health care system as it likes (“What About Alberta’s Nine Other,” 2026). Polls show majorities support some of these proposals: Leger found 63 per cent support for a fee or premium for temporary residents (Gervais, 2026; Leger, 2026), and Research Co. found 66 per cent support for proof of citizenship to vote (Research Co., 2026).
Those frustrations are real. But a real concern needs a defined policy, a costed plan, a willing partner and respect for the Treaty Nations. None of the ten ballots offers any of these. When a question cannot tell you who it covers, what it costs, or how it could ever pass, No is the responsible answer.
Before you go
If you vote in Alberta: read the ten questions at home, bring your ID, and talk to one neighbour who has not decided. Then, on Monday:
No on 1. No on 2. No on 3. No on 4. No on 5. No on 6. No on 7. No on 8. No on 9. Option 1 on 10: Alberta remains in Canada.
If you love someone in Alberta: call or text them before Monday. Ask what their great-grandmother needed when she arrived. Then ask them to vote for her.
Vote for the neighbour who cannot vote. Vote for the ancestor who once arrived with nothing but hope. Vote for the Treaties that made this province possible. Vote for a government that spends your money on doctors and teachers, not on ballots about who to punish. Vote for the country that holds us all.
Love ❤️ Care 🫶 Share 🔁
Sasha
References
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