I call them the noxious nine. Nine disingenuous, malicious referendum questions, push-poll riddles, designed to incite social division and undermine confidence in the courts and the country. While most media coverage and online debate right now is focused on Danielle Smith’s separation question, let’s not forget the other nine nasty questions, which were authored by the UCP government and put on the ballot well before the separatist one.
Ken Boessenkool, a long-time Conservative strategist and one of Smith’s fiercest critics, has dubbed the questions a mix of the racist and the useless. The first five xenophobic questions present some truly vile options—including the idea of banning refugee children and the children of new immigrants from attending public schools, denying free public healthcare to new arrivals, and denying all provincial public services to newcomers until they’ve lived in Alberta for a year.
It is such cruel and petty rabble-rousing. On what planet does it make any sense to prevent refugee and immigrant children from going to school, learning English and integrating? Let’s leave empathy and humanity aside for a moment. Does it make our communities safer or more prosperous to prevent children—including those whose parents are legally here—from acquiring the language skills, academic training and cultural know-how to work and thrive and contribute to our economy and society?
Perhaps the goal is to create a permanent underclass of new Albertans, a generation that can never catch up or hope to do anything but low-paid menial work. Or perhaps the goal is to scare away immigrants and refugees altogether, so they never come here in the first place. Despite the province’s hysterical suggestion that we’re being overrun by immigrants, nothing could be further from the truth. Between mid-2025 and mid-2026 our population grew by 0.9 per cent. In the first quarter of 2026, Alberta actually saw negative immigration—immigrants still arrived, but even more left, a net loss of −648. Without immigrant talent, investment and skills, we will suffer. Whatever the government’s goal, we’re talking about a colossal waste of human capital and permanent impoverishment of our potential.
Let the UCP government know what we think of their spiteful, specious questions.
Then there are the constitutional—or should I say the unconstitutional—questions, including one to abolish the Senate and another demanding that the province have the right to appoint judges to federal courts. (For the record, the Supreme Court has already said that abolishing the Senate requires the unanimous consent of all 10 provinces, the House of Commons and the Senate itself. And Alberta already has extraordinary input into the selection of federal judges for Alberta, who are all Albertans themselves, part of a national network of judges who adjudicate federal law uniformly across the country.)
Yet of all the divisive, performative and needlessly complicated fake questions, the first one boggles me most. Among other things, it concludes by asking whether we support “giving Albertans first priority on new employment opportunities.” Sit with that for a moment. Imagine you’re an employer, running your business or staffing your office, farm or jobsite. How would you feel if the government ordered you to offer jobs to Albertans first? What extraordinary overreach by the government into private-sector decisions. Imagine you want to hire an expert, a star candidate from Toronto or Vancouver. Suppose you need a massive infusion of workers from Atlantic Canada to help you build a pipeline or megaproject. Alberta has a working population of only 2.7 million. Our economy prospers because we can tap skills of Canadians from outside the province.
How do we even define Albertan? How long must you live here to qualify? Would we force employers to discriminate against Scott, who just moved from Moose Jaw, Joe, recently arrived from Moncton, or Marie-Claire, a transplant from Montreal? Two years ago Alberta was literally paying Canadians $5,000 to move to Alberta. Now the government is proposing we legally discriminate not just against refugees, immigrants and temporary foreign workers, but against our fellow Canadians.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, the nine Nazgûls are kings and lords and leaders who have lost their souls in their quest for power and influence. Baleful wraiths, they have great toxic power, but they fear the light. We must turn the light on these nine dark questions that seek to divide and corrupt us, to turn Albertans against the world and against ourselves. Expose these questions to the light of day, to common sense and compassion—and the arguments in favour of them melt away.
On October 19 you may be overwhelmed at the polling station by the bundle of 10 colourful ballots. You may decide the vote on separation is the only one that matters. But Albertans of goodwill need to step up and let the UCP government know what we think of all of their spiteful, specious referendum questions. It’s simple. Vote no to the nine. Reject this small-minded, cowardly vision of an Alberta that slams its door in the face of the future.
Paula Simons is an Alberta senator and a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.
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