Albertans react to looming referendum during weekend rally, call-in radio show

EDMONTON — Some callers to Danielle Smith’s provincewide radio show expressed support for a referendum the Alberta premier announced this week, while others at a rally outside the legislature said they’re disheartened with the direction Smith is taking.

One caller congratulated Smith on her morning radio show for her speech on Thursday announcing the Oct. 19 referendum, which is to include questions about whether social services should be restricted for newcomers.

“It reflected what many Albertans wanted to hear,” the caller told Smith.

“You’re on the right track and I’m so thankful you’re the premier at such a time as this,” another caller told her.

Later in the show, one person said that as an immigrant, he supports Smith.

“New immigrants need to pay their own way, just like all the rest of us older immigrants did,” he said.

In the same hour, dozens gathered in freezing temperatures outside Alberta’s legislature in Edmonton to express their frustration with the referendum and separatist sentiment in the province.

They carried signs, including one calling Smith’s United Conservative Party the “United Corrupt Party” and sang “O Canada.”

“We’re moving backwards. It’s got to stop,” said Keith Weir, a retiree who attended the Edmonton rally Saturday with his son.

“I’ve worked in many provinces, and I know people from coast to coast to coast. Canada is the greatest country in the world. This government in place right now, they’re slowly deteriorating what this country provides. It’s disheartening.”

Smith has said Albertans will be responding to nine questions in the referendum.

One, for example, asks whether to restrict social services from some immigrants and charge a fee to non-permanent residents to access health and education. Another asks whether immigrants should be required to live in Alberta for one year before qualifying for certain social programs.

Some questions focus on constitutional amendments.

On Saturday, Smith again defended her government’s decision to make more than half of the questions about immigration, saying she wants to reign in the bubbling population of non-permanent residents which she says has become financially unsustainable.

“This is an emerging problem,” she said. “We don’t have any control of any meaningful measure over economic migrants.”

She said after she got elected in 2022, her government began trying to attract skilled workers. But at the same time, the immigration process changed, she said.

“Justin Trudeau took all of the restrictions off all of the temporary migrant programs, whether it was temporary foreign workers, international students, asylum seekers, and we just got flooded with newcomers over four years,” she said.

“So when you have those kind of new and emerging issues … you really do have to, I think, go back to the people for a mandate, and that’s what I’m looking to do with the referendum in the fall.”

On Friday, Smith was unable to say if controlling immigration would be enough to eliminate what’s expected to be a multi-billion-dollar deficit this year. And she didn’t provide a total estimate for health-care and education savings.

“We’d have to do the figuring out,” she said.

Marilyn Gaa, a spokeswoman for the Edmonton Raging Grannies group, said at the Edmonton rally that Smith is scapegoating immigrants to distract people from her government’s mismanagement.

“She’s put a whole lot of attention on things that are irrelevant to our well-being,” Gaa said.

“For instance, health care is a disaster, education is a disaster. So many of the priorities ordinary people consider at the top of their list are being ignored.”

She said she was born in the United States, but later moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen and renounced her American citizenship a few years ago.

“All the grannies here today, except one, are immigrants who made a deliberate choice to be Canadians,” she said.

David Shepherd, an NDP member of the legislature representing Edmonton-City Centre, said Smith’s referendum was pitting communities in Alberta against one another.

“If this government wants a vote, if they think they need a mandate, then let’s have a damn election.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 21, 2026.

–With files from Lisa Johnson and Jack Farrell

Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press