avnish nanda says YES
Lawyer and sessional law instructor at the University of Alberta
Alberta needs immigrants. Our aging population and growing economy has led to labour shortages that only immigrants can fill. This is nothing new. Since its founding, the province has welcomed waves of migrants from around the world to transform us into the economic powerhouse that we are today. Every industry and community—from farms to the oilsands, from High Level to Fort Macleod—has benefited from the sweat and investment capital of immigrants.
Not much is different today. Alberta continues to require migrant labour to till our fields, work our mines, build our homes, treat our ailments and mind our children. Even premier Danielle Smith has acknowledged this, spending $17-million as part of the “Alberta is Calling” campaign to recruit Canadians from outside Alberta to address labour shortages. It’s without dispute that immigration is critical to our future success.
This is why premier Smith’s referendum is so disingenuous. On the ballot are a series of flawed and misleading questions that shift health, education and social policy failures onto immigrants. Smith is asking Albertans whether migrants should pay a fee to access healthcare or education while working here. But those migrants already pay taxes that fund those services. They’re also subject to residency requirements prior to receiving healthcare. Further, delays in processing permanent residence applications mean that economic migrants who’ve earned their place here wait much longer, through no fault of their own, to obtain permanent residency and citizenship.
The referendum makes Alberta less competitive in a global environment where the best and brightest migrants have their pick among countries and provinces desperate for their skills. Alberta’s ability to attract the best is being stunted by a premier who labels these people as threats and is committed to making it harder for them to set down roots and prosper.
Premier Smith is borrowing from the tired playbook of far-right governments of the past century that blamed immigrants for their own failure to invest in health, education and social programs. It is reflective of her administration’s approach to governing, which is marked by punching down and dipping into the public purse to advance her own political ends.
Every wave of migration exposes the limits of the existing system. But instead of investing in hospitals, schools and transit to accommodate growth, Smith is spending taxpayer money to shore up her falling popularity and protect her job. Last spring she gave $100 rebates to millions of Albertans. That $340-million surprise coincided with her popularity plummeting over her insistence that we vote on separation. It will cost a further $100-million to hold this deeply unpopular referendum, all so Smith can try to appease the portion of the UCP that loathes Canada’s pluralist, multicultural values. This money could have increased the healthcare and education capacity that she claims immigrants are undermining.
Immigrants aren’t the reason we lack the hospitals, schools and transit we need. The shortfall persists because our premier’s priority is to secure her power at the expense of all else.
peter copeland says NO
Deputy director, domestic policy, Macdonald–Laurier Institute
Immigration poses fundamental questions about the kind of society we want. The case for more immigration often begins with labour shortages, an aging population, a shrinking GDP. It frames society in terms of outputs and indicators and with a short-term horizon. It thereby misses the point of what a society is: not a machine or amalgam of atomized individuals, but an ecosystem. Like an ecosystem, a society flourishes when its parts are ordered harmoniously. The strength of the bonds between people, families and communities matters most. These take time to develop, so pace, scale and scope of change are all crucial.
Alberta and Canada don’t need ever-higher immigration levels. We need stronger families, higher fertility, deeper social trust and a more productive economy, which all go hand in hand. Mass immigration has too often become a substitute for doing the harder work of rebuilding those foundations.
Immigration has papered over three key failures: economic stagnation, demographic decline and social fragmentation.
Relying on immigration to sustain GDP is like living on sugar: a short-term burst masks a deeper rot. Immigration has covered up anemic productivity, even worsening it by driving down wages through a high volume of lower-skilled migrants. It has propped up failed business models in universities and pressured social services and housing affordability.
When we think of a healthy community, most of us imagine close friendships, loving families, participation in civic associations that connect us, neighbours who know us, social bonds and family trees extending across generations. Yet this is less the reality in Canada today. Immigration was touted as a solution to declining fertility and an aging population, but it’s actually an accelerant: domestic fertility is at an all-time low.
Excess immigration has contributed to a lower sense of social trust and belonging. Canadians’ general trust of others was at around 54 per cent from 2000 to 2013 and has now declined to the mid-40s. Only 47 per cent of Canadians had a strong sense of belonging in 2022, with levels among young adults and urbanites—where diversity is most pronounced—down from 55–65 per cent in the early 2000s. In large metro areas only one-third of residents know their neighbours. Volunteering fell from 41 per cent in 2018 to 32 per cent in 2023, while volunteer hours fell by 28 per cent. Charitable giving also declined.
Civic involvement is how strangers become neighbours. If bonds are already weakening, it’s reckless to assume that rapid population growth and ever-greater cultural fragmentation will somehow generate cohesion on their own. Indeed, a 2020 meta-analysis found a robust negative relationship between local ethnic diversity and social trust in the short term.
It’s unsurprising to see these trends coincide with the rise of immigrants’ share of the population from 15 to 25 per cent from the early 1990s to today. Canada doesn’t need an immigration policy that papers over our failure to form families, raise wages, build homes and renew communities. It needs one that serves those ends. A country that can’t reproduce itself biologically, culturally or socially can’t import its way out of decline.
avnish nanda responds to peter copeland
Peter Copeland is correct; immigration poses fundamental questions about the society we want. But his arguments rest on flawed premises and unfounded conclusions. Immigration doesn’t lead to weaker families, lower fertility, diminished social trust or a less competitive economy. The claim that immigration has undermined our society is absurd, while the assertion that more immigrants has led to a decline in natural birth rates is both false and disturbing.
A more critical examination of the data Copeland relies on is needed. For instance he cites surveys on trust, belonging, volunteerism and charitable giving among Canadians between the 2010s and early 2020s to draw the conclusion that immigration is harming us. What he conveniently leaves out is that the defining event between those years was COVID-19. The pandemic placed an enormous burden on Canadian institutions and strained social cohesion and trust. For weeks mobs of agitators, who refused to acknowledge or abide by public health restrictions, shut down our nation’s capital and wreaked havoc at Alberta’s busiest border crossing. The same people, drawing from a broader far-right populist movement, organized against Jason Kenney and propelled Danielle Smith into the premier’s office.
During that period, Canada relied on migrant labour to ensure our economy and society continued to function. We avoided the worst of the economic slowdown because of immigration; economists are unanimous that without migrants we would have suffered a serious recession. Immigrants staffed our hospitals and long-term care facilities, cleaned and monitored our public and work spaces, and cooked and delivered our food. These essential workers showed up despite the risk. And they sacrificed. The highest rates of COVID-19 in Alberta overlapped with areas with the most immigrants.
Copeland also ignores more recent data on Canadian pride and belonging. In 2025, 78 per cent of citizens reported pride in being Canadian, reflecting a steady rise from pandemic levels. The biggest jump was among immigrants who became citizens: 85 per cent felt proud or very proud to be Canadian (compared to 76 per cent of Canadians by birth). Young Canadians’ pride in their nationality was at 69 per cent, but this represented a rise of 9 percentage points from the year before. Copeland’s conclusions on immigrants threatening social cohesion can’t hold if the factual foundations for them aren’t true.
By every measure immigration to Canada is a success. Immigrants are critical for the economic well-being of this country; they provide the labour and investment capital needed to maintain and enhance our prosperity. They adapt quickly and have a strong sense of belonging and pride in being here. They contribute civically and socially, offering a diverse range of food options and cultural events and through high rates of volunteerism.
The success of the Canadian model of immigration lies in our version of nationalism. Decades ago Canada embraced a form of civic nationalism based on the promise that it doesn’t matter when you came here, where you came from, what led you here or what complexion your skin is. Rather, our identity is centred on shared values, a common purpose and an abiding commitment to each other. Canadian identity encompasses diverse ethnic, racial and faith backgrounds.
Our identity is centred on shared values and a common purpose while encompassing diverse backgrounds.
Civic nationalism has made us remarkably successful at integrating migrants, which has in turn enriched our country. Welcoming newcomers and refusing to erect barriers against them based on birthplace, immigration status or race has made it easier for migrants to contribute and claim this country as their own. Although we have imperfections, Canada and Alberta have seen much better results than other western liberal democracies such as the US, France and the UK.
Alberta’s referendum seeks to undo this understanding of Canadian identity. The fringe movement that elected Smith as UCP leader is demanding less immigration. Smith is delivering, putting questions to voters that vilify migrants. Energized by similar efforts by the Trump administration, this radical movement views a nationalism structured around commitments and values as offensive and wants to reorient it around immutable characteristics such as birthplace, race and religion. This threatens our economic, social and national stability.
Anti-immigrant arguments in Alberta are about more than just ensuring we have the resources to accommodate more citizens. They’re about fundamentally reorienting what it means to be Albertan and Canadian, and aligning this province with the nativist, anti-immigrant nationalist projects of the US and other countries, undermining the core of our collective identity.
peter copeland responds to avnish nanda
Avnish Nanda reminds us of the many contributions immigrants have made and will continue to make. The question isn’t whether immigrants as a whole are good or bad, or whether Alberta should have some immigration or none at all. It is a matter of how much immigration, what kind, at what pace, for what purpose and in light of what understanding of the common good.
This is where Nanda’s argument falls short. He treats seemingly ever more immigration as necessary to a narrowly conceived, short-term objective of economic prosperity. But Alberta is unlike most provinces in that it’s a net recipient of internal migrants, so it’s least in need of external migration to cover labour market gaps. Be that as it may, his argument reflects a myopic view that distorts Canadian immigration policy: a focus on high immigration at the expense of neglecting deeper trends that overreliance on immigration has worsened, including demographic decline, lower social trust and social cohesion and less long-term economic sustainability.
Labour shortages aren’t, by themselves, an argument for ever-more immigration. They’re often signs of deeper problems, which in Canada include weak productivity, declining wages (further depressed by low-skill migration), housing scarcity due to excessive regulation, and flawed business models. Universities depend on international students to plug funding gaps; employers rely on cheap labour rather than raise wages, train domestic workers or improve productivity. We need immigration, yes, but less of it, and the right kind: more-skilled migrants, better integration, and policy that doesn’t distract from housing reform or Canadians’ desire to have more children.
Nor is it persuasive to say that critics of immigration simply “blame immigrants” for failures in health, housing or education policy. The critique is directed at the policy and those who defend it. The responsibility lies with governments, employers, universities and policy elites who treat immigration as a substitute for policy reform.
It is also wrong to label criticism of multiculturalism and immigration as “far right.” This is an ad hominem. Mark Carney’s government already reduced permanent and temporary resident figures considerably and touted shrinking international student levels by 60 per cent. Disagreement and rejection of pluralism or multiculturalism isn’t “far right” either, as the policy is historically and globally anomalous, even today. Wanting lower immigration, a better policy framework and a stronger emphasis on integration and common culture is a normal position across much of the democratic world. Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway and France place far greater emphasis than Canada does on integration, language acquisition, civic responsibility and the obligations of newcomers and governments alike.
More cultural homogeneity builds trust, better public services and stronger welfare-state legitimacy.
Canada’s so-called pluralist and multicultural values have, like any part of our history, always been contested. Multiculturalism initially stressed integration, as the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism report leading to the policy explicitly stated. That commitment waned, leading to the problems we have today. We too often assume integration happens automatically, or that shared national culture is unnecessary. This is no doubt due in part to a now debunked view that immigrants arrive as blank slates and quickly adapt to local culture, and that host societies remain unchanged by large-scale migration. In fact, most immigrants retain their cultural patterns well into the fourth generation, especially levels of trust, views on government regulation, personal responsibility and the role of the state.
Culture is deep, shaping habits, expectations, family patterns, trust, co-operation and social behaviour across generations. That’s why the pace, scale and scope of immigration matter immensely. Cohesive societies have a common language, shared norms, high institutional confidence and strong expectations of mutual obligation. But Canada has become fragmented and fragile. Mistrust and loneliness abound in precisely the cities that receive the most immigration. Conversely the high degree of cultural homogeneity found in Denmark and Scandinavia bears, as its fruits, higher trust, better public services, stronger welfare-state legitimacy and greater everyday co-operation. We’d do well to adopt their approach to immigration: less of it, and more focus on integration.
A society isn’t a labour market or “economic zone.” It’s a web of relationships, loyalties, obligations, shared habits and inherited and common practices. Close bonds, shared meaning and purpose, and participation in a common culture are central; humans need somewhere to belong, not merely inhabit. Canada doesn’t need an immigration policy that papers over our failure to form families and communities. It needs one that serves our renewal.
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