Don't blame your neighbours for broken budgets.

TRUE BUT MISLEADING

Alberta's population has grown by 600,000 in the last five years.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

The number checks out. Alberta grew from about 4.42 million to 5.06 million between 2020 and 2026. What it hides is where the growth came from, and that has changed. By April 1, 2026 the province's non-permanent resident population had fallen 3.7% in a single quarter and new immigrant landings were down 18.2% on the year. The people still arriving are largely Canadians from B.C. and Ontario, encouraged by the UCP's own $5 million 'Alberta is Calling' campaign. Nothing on this ballot can stop them, because interprovincial migration is protected by section 6 of the Charter.

MISLEADING

Approximately $600M annually is spent on education for 45,000 children of temporary residents.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

The arithmetic roughly holds. What the province leaves out is the denominator. Children of temporary residents make up about 6% of K-12 enrolment, and $600 million is about 6% of the K-12 budget, which is what proportional spending looks like. Educating them is also constitutionally required under section 23 of the Charter and section 93 of the Constitution Act, so Question 2 is unlikely to survive a challenge.

UNVERIFIABLE

More than $1 billion is spent annually on provincial programs for temporary residents.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

The province has not published the calculation behind this figure. Take it at face value anyway and it comes to roughly 1% of Alberta's operating expense. Then look at what happened to the deficit it was meant to explain. On August 27, 2026 the province's own first-quarter update replaced the $9.4 billion shortfall with a forecast $2 billion surplus, a swing of $11.4 billion, $9.7 billion of it from resource revenue. Whatever temporary residents cost, it is not what moved this number.

NUMBER TRUE, CAUSE FALSE

Alberta's youth unemployment rate in 2025 was 15.6%, with employers prioritizing temporary workers.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

The rate is roughly right for 2025, when unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds averaged about 16%. The cause is where the claim breaks down. ATB Economics, the province's own bank, puts the rise down to the trade-war slowdown and a youth labour force that grew 6.9% in a year, faster than employers could absorb. Immigration and temporary foreign workers do not appear in its analysis. Alberta also ran double-digit youth unemployment after the 2015-17 oil crash, years before the arrivals the province now blames. The market has since turned: by July 2026 provincial employment was up 91,000 on the year, the largest proportional gain in the country, and the overall unemployment rate had fallen to 7.0% while temporary-resident numbers were dropping.

PARTIALLY TRUE

Ten years of unsustainable federal immigration policy have tripled newcomer arrivals to over 2 million.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

Canada's non-permanent resident population did roughly triple between 2015 and 2023. The bulk of that came in 2022-2024, not in the steady decade-long climb the province describes. The bigger problem with the claim is timing. Federal policy turned in October 2024 and has tightened twice since. The 2026-2028 Levels Plan holds permanent-resident admissions at 380,000 a year and pushes the non-permanent-resident share below 5% of the population by the end of 2027. It is working: Alberta's non-permanent resident population fell 3.7% in the quarter to April 1, 2026, and Canada's total population shrank.

MISLEADING

Requiring proof of citizenship at the polls is needed to protect Alberta elections from non-citizen voting.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

Elections Alberta's public register lists three administrative penalties for voting-eligibility offences since 2013: one US citizen who voted in 2019, and two people who induced or aided an ineligible voter in 2023. The other 200-odd entries are campaign finance and reporting matters. Non-citizens already cannot vote, and Elections Alberta cross-checks the list. The province is also solving this by other means. The new three-in-one licence started rolling out in July 2026, and from late 2026 licences and ID cards will carry a "CAN" marker for citizens, which makes a separate citizenship document redundant for most people who already hold provincial ID.

PROCEDURALLY QUESTIONABLE

The referendum's questions are based on Alberta Next Panel recommendations from extensive provincial consultations.

— albertareferendum2026.ca

The panel was chaired by the Premier and seated three UCP MLAs alongside ten appointed members. It included nobody from the NDP, which holds 38 of the legislature's 87 seats. Three of its online surveys had to be amended partway through after complaints that the forced-choice questions offered only government framings. The in-person town halls drew about 5,000 people in a province of five million.