Albertans want more control over immigration and limits on newcomers’ access to social services

More than half the Albertans who voted in Monday’s referendum want more control over immigration to the province and to limit new immigrants’ access to social services.

While the star of the historic vote was the question on whether Albertans wanted a referendum to leave Canada  — more than three-quarters of those who voted nixed that option — nine other questions on the ballots delved into whether Alberta should wrest power away from Ottawa.

Albertans seem to want a say in how many newcomers they accept and appear willing to crack open the Constitution to abolish the Senate and choose their own judges.

Official results, with 86 per cent of the votes counted, show more than 840,000 Albertans voted yes when asked if they support the government of Alberta taking increased control over immigration “for the purposes of decreasing immigration to more sustainable levels, prioritizing economic migration and giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities.” Just over 700,000 voted no on this question.

When asked if they support the government of Alberta introducing a law mandating that “only Canadian citizens, permanent residents and individuals with an Alberta-approved immigration status” will be eligible for health care, education and other social services, more than 736,000 voted yes, and over 592,000 voted no.

Ottawa will consider the vote results in the nine questions, “and look where we can find solutions together,” Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Tuesday morning in Ottawa.

“What I favour is working now pragmatically to common solutions,” he said.

“Constitutional change is difficult. It’s long. We have an amending formula generated originally out of Alberta, and where we can find solutions that work for Canadians, we should find those solutions that work for Canadians.”

Carney pointed out that the federal government “has recognized from the start the need to take back control on immigration, and we’ve done so. You know the numbers, but I think it’s important to underscore them for all Canadians: reduction in asylum seekers of 17 per cent, reduction in temporary foreign worker flows of 60 per cent, reduction in foreign students of 80 per cent over the course of the last 18 months.”

Canada is moving to a “more sustainable pace of immigration now,” Carney said.

“I’m not saying that that stabilization is complete, but where we go from here needs to be established in cooperation with the provinces, and that’s very much the spirit of at least one of the questions.”

More than 705,000 answered yes when asked if they “support the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring all individuals with a non-permanent legal immigration status to reside in Alberta for at least 12 months before qualifying for any provincially funded social support programs.” More than 514,000 voted no.

More than 660,000 indicated they “support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the health care and education systems.”

More than 489,000 said no to that question.

“In large measure, immigration falls mostly within federal jurisdiction,” said Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law.

Immigration laws can be tweaked, he said.

“But as with most things there are trade-offs,” he said. “In some areas, we certainly still need immigrants to keep the population up. Like many countries, we don’t have enough immigration. We don’t have enough workers to operate the economy.”

More than 736,000 indicated they support “the Government of Alberta introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate or citizenship card, to vote in an Alberta provincial election.” More than 418,000 voted no.

MacKay questioned whether the effect would be “more focused on vulnerable groups” who may have more difficulty producing evidence of citizenship. “That one’s a little tricky. You do have to be a citizen to vote, so if they’re upping the requirement to do that, and they do it consistently, then I suppose that’s legitimate.”

More than 570,000 Albertans said yes to whether they support “the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to have provincial governments, and not the federal government, select the justices appointed to provincial King’s Bench and Appeal courts.” More than 527,000 voted no.

Provinces already have “quite a bit of input” into who is appointed to the bench, MacKay said. “Increasingly there are independent selection committees that try to take some of the politics out of this.”

More than 569,000 said yes when asked if they support “the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to abolish the unelected federal Senate?” More than 490,000 voted no.

That would require a constitutional amendment, MacKay said, noting it would take unanimous consent from Ottawa and the provinces. “It’s a pretty high hurdle to meet and therefore might be not a very wise exercise in time and energy trying to do it.”

More than 526,000 voted no when asked if they “support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to allow provinces to opt out of federal programs that intrude on provincial jurisdiction such as health care, education and social services, without a province losing any of the associated federal funding for use in its social programs.” More than 512,000 voted yes on that question.

The vote skewed slightly to the yes side (more than 520,000) when Albertans were asked if they “support the Government of Alberta working with the governments of other willing provinces to amend the Canadian Constitution to better protect provincial rights from federal interference by giving a province’s laws dealing with provincial or shared areas of constitutional jurisdiction priority over federal laws when the province’s laws and federal laws conflict.” More than 500,000 voted no to this question.

That would be “a big reversal of existing constitutional structure, where if there’s valid federal and provincial laws in the same area, the federal one kind of prevails,” MacKay said.

“What they’re really arguing for is a significant round of constitutional amendment giving more power to the provinces and less power to the federal government. And as we know from way back with Meech Lake and all the other various attempts to amend the Constitution, amending our Constitution is a very difficult, lengthy and not very successful process.”

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