Alberta’s Premier Claims Immigrants Are a Burden. Where’s the Proof?

In February, when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a provincial referendum set to take place in October, she framed immigrants as a burden to Alberta taxpayers.

“Throwing the doors wide open to anyone and everyone across the globe has flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms and social support systems with far too many people, far too quickly,” Smith said during a Feb. 19 provincial address that anticipated a provincial budget $9.4 billion in the red.

The referendum questions intend to poll Albertans on whether non-permanent residents — which include international students, asylum claimants and work-permit holders — should pay a premium to access public health care and education.

But holding non-permanent residents responsible for Alberta’s deficit seems disingenuous in the context of rising income tax revenue.

Since 2022, Alberta’s population has gone up by 11 per cent. That population growth has driven a 34 per cent increase in revenue from both personal and corporate income taxes.

Health-care and education expenses, on the other hand, rose by only 12 and 16 per cent, respectively, across the same time period, according to provincial fiscal planning documents.

Smith provided little evidence to support her claims. Albertans are left ill-equipped to cast informed referendum votes come the fall, because the cost savings of introducing health-care and education premiums for non-permanent residents remain undisclosed.

“We have an information gap in terms of the actual cost savings we are looking at,” said Robert Falconer, a researcher at the University of Calgary’s school of public policy.

To compound the issue, Alberta’s provincial government has failed to acknowledge the potential loss of revenue associated with making Alberta a less attractive destination for an international workforce.

Casting an informed vote in the October referendum, Falconer added, “would entail knowing the complete fiscal picture in terms of both revenues to the province and expenditures related to temporary foreign workers.”

A reality check on temporary foreign workers in Alberta

As of Jan. 1, non-permanent residents represented only 5.4 per cent of Alberta’s population. Most of them are here to work, often to fill a position their employer requested through the federal temporary foreign worker program.

To hire a temporary foreign worker, Canadian employers need to apply for a labour market impact assessment to show that no permanent Canadian resident can do the job required.

Since 2024, some 14,500 employers have requested a labour market impact assessment to fill a vacant position in Alberta with a temporary foreign worker.

The vast majority of these employers sought to hire less than a handful of workers, largely in low-wage occupations in food service and construction, but at least 10 of these employers hired far more than a handful of such workers.

Notably, Altrad Services, an industrial service provider in the resource extraction sector with offices in Calgary, received a series of positive labour market impact assessments to fill more than 1,000 positions with temporary foreign workers.

In Brooks, the meat processor JBS Foods was approved to hire 364 temporary foreign workers, and Cypress County’s Big Marble Farms was approved to hire 343.

None of these companies responded to The Tyee’s request for comment.

A competitive edge

The reasons employers use the temporary foreign worker program are as varied as the nature of their businesses.

For tech companies like MobSquad, a Calgary-based technical and consulting services firm, access to a global workforce is a competitive advantage that enables the company to advance its mission.

“We hire foreign talent when there is little or no supply of local talent with the particular skill sets, experience and expertise that we are looking for,” said Arif Khimani, MobSquad’s president and chief operating officer.

In the last two years alone, MobSquad received 23 positive labour market impact assessments to fill positions through the temporary foreign worker program’s “global talent” and “high-wage” streams.

“Our employees bring unique skill sets to Alberta that don’t exist in the local market, helping upskill the local technology sector and drive innovation and growth,” Khimani said.

Temporary foreign workers comprise about a third of the company’s staff, he told The Tyee, and they hold senior positions in AI engineering, machine learning and cybersecurity.

Local availability to fill such positions is limited, Khimani said. But in looking at the bigger picture of employment in Alberta, roles like those at MobSquad can be essential for the continued diversification of Alberta’s economy.

The Information and Communications Technology Council, a non-partisan research centre headquartered in Ottawa, pegs the unemployment rate in Alberta’s digital economy at 3.3 per cent. By contrast, the unemployment rate in Alberta reached 6.8 per cent in January.

Khimani said he believes that if Alberta were to charge health-care and education premiums to non-permanent residents, MobSquad’s capacity to attract and retain international talent would be significantly undermined.

“Because folks are amongst the most highly skilled individuals in the sector, if foreign workers don’t have access to the same health care and education as permanent residents, they can choose to settle in other provinces,” Khimani said.

And that would be “to the detriment of Alberta, as they won’t contribute to the local economy with their skills and taxes.”

The Alberta Treasury Bank estimates that the Prairie province’s nascent tech sector contributed $12 billion to Alberta’s GDP in 2025, and it’s growing faster than all other industries.

What happens if the referendum question passes?

Should Smith’s referendum question on public health-care and education premiums for non-permanent Alberta residents become legislation, companies hiring temporary foreign workers would have to absorb the cost of these premiums to remain competitive, said Catherine Connelly. She’s a professor of human resources and management at McMaster University and director of the McMaster Centre for Research on Employment and Work.

Because Alberta is a province that prides itself on keeping the lowest tax rates in Canada, introducing new costs to be shouldered by businesses relying on an international workforce appears to be an ideologically incongruous move for a United Conservative Party pledging to ensure “that the regulatory environment does not create barriers to investment, economic growth or innovation.”

While many employers in Canada are known to abuse the temporary foreign worker program, alongside the workers they hire largely through the program’s low-wage stream, there are benefits that lawful employers do reap.

“A lot of people assume that companies hire temporary foreign workers just to save money,” Connelly said. “But it’s more than that. When the program works as intended, it’s a win-win-win.”

Because the temporary foreign worker program requires a costly process, employers typically apply to it when they are certain that hiring a temporary foreign worker will add value to their business and drive productivity, rather than simply lower staffing costs.

“Financially, you can almost guarantee that when you hire somebody whose salary is $100,000, they are bringing $500,000 in value to the company,” Connelly said.

Making it harder for Alberta businesses to reap the benefits of having access to an international workforce seems to be the UCP government’s goal, rather than protecting foreign workers from abuse.

On April 1, the province introduced a bill that, if passed, would require employers to register — and pay a fee — prior to requesting a labour market impact assessment, all in the name of increasing provincial oversight on immigration and “restoring trust.”

But not all Alberta employers can absorb the cost of health-care and education premiums, nor of additional administrative fees. In the face of staffing challenges, some employers could be forced to reduce their scope of services or turn down new contracts, limiting the revenue they can send into the provincial coffers.

“From a societal standpoint, we like it when companies pay taxes,” Connelly said. “If a company is missing a vitally needed worker, they can’t expand; they can’t sell in new markets; they can’t train their incoming employees.”

Businesses employing workers in low-wage occupations could respond to the increased cost of hiring foreign workers by automating their workforce, Connelly added, pointing at the uptick of self-ordering kiosks in fast-food restaurants, or self-driving tractors in agriculture.

“Automation could reduce the amount of staff employers need, as well as training costs,” she said. “Because workers would interact less with customers.”

A paradoxical question

Back-of-the-napkin calculations suggest that, if implemented, the UCP government’s referendum proposal could save Alberta taxpayers about $415 million in health-care expenditures — a drop in the bucket relative to the province’s roughly $75 billion in revenue.

“The average refugee claimant uses about $1,600 of health care per year,” University of Calgary public policy researcher Falconer told The Tyee, noting that migrant workers tend to be much healthier than the general population. “By comparison, the average Canadian citizen uses between $9,500 and $9,800.”

While the cost savings introduced by Smith’s referendum questions seem negligible in the grand scheme of things, Keyli Loeppky, director of interprovincial affairs for the Alberta region at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, warns that upping costs for employers could ultimately affect Alberta’s economy.

“If Alberta becomes less competitive in attracting talent, small businesses will lose out to other provinces,” she told The Tyee. “If businesses can’t find workers, they can’t grow, and if they can’t grow, Alberta’s economy will suffer.”

Representing 95 per cent of Alberta’s private sector, small businesses consistently contribute to roughly a third of the provincial GDP.

When reached for comment, Hunter Baril, press secretary at the Alberta Ministry of Jobs, Economy, Trade and Immigration, issued a statement to The Tyee.

Repeating Smith’s talking points against “out-of-control immigration,” he noted that the referendum questions give “Albertans an opportunity to have their say on establishing a more economically focused immigration system that balances population growth with workforce demands.”

Baril did not answer any of The Tyee’s questions regarding the issues raised by researcher Falconer, employer Khimani and advocate Loeppky.