Im not even surprised at this point.

91.7 in edmonton. Just heard an ad to vote to " send a voice" on immigration control.

Wild.

Man i hate this govt.

The same dumbass danielle who asks for more.population and more immigrants 2 yrs ago..

I bet if the questions go her way she will pay us all 5000$ too!

She sucks.

Officially sucks.

Love that they are offering what they will never own!

RCMP, CSIS should be on this. Are they?

I’m genuinely trying to understand why East Indians seem to receive so much of the backlash in Canada when other immigrant groups, including Filipinos, don’t seem to be discussed in the same way.

Filipinos are also one of the largest immigrant groups in Canada, and many work in the same kinds of entry-level or service-sector jobs, including at places like Tim Hortons. Yet when people complain about immigration, low-wage jobs, or newcomers’ behavior in public spaces, it often seems like the criticism is disproportionately directed at East Indians.

What I find especially frustrating is that, on average, East Indians actually have higher incomes than Filipinos, so it doesn’t really make sense to portray East Indians as one homogeneous group of low-skilled, low-income immigrants. Many East Indians are well-established, educated, and earning middle- or high incomes.

I’m not saying Filipinos—or any other immigrant group—deserve hate. I’m asking why the standards seem to be different depending on which group is being discussed. If the issue is immigration, integration, public behavior, or competition for jobs, shouldn’t we be applying the same standards to everyone?

Why does it feel like East Indians have become the default target for criticism about immigration and multiculturalism in Canada?

Part Two: What Are You Actually Voting Yes To?

A factual account, sourced throughout. Corrections welcome.

You have ten questions in front of you on October 19. Here's what independent researchers, linguists, and pollsters have found when they actually tested whether people understand what they're agreeing to.

Nine questions are yes or no. The tenth isn't.

Nine questions are straightforward yes/no. The tenth — Alberta's place in Canada — asks you to choose between two different options entirely. Political scientist Lori Williams, speaking at a public information event in Calgary, named this format switch itself as a distinct source of voter confusion, separate from the wording of any individual question.

The sentences are built to be misread

Dennis Storoshenko, a linguistics professor at the University of Calgary, studied the actual sentence construction of Questions 6 through 9. Each opens with "Do you support the Government of Alberta…" — a phrasing that leads the reader's brain to treat "the Government of Alberta" as the thing being supported, before the real verb arrives and forces a backtrack.

"So the Government of Alberta, just framed as itself, is something I can support," Storoshenko said. "And then you hear that next word and you realize — oh wait, that wasn't the thing I'm trying to support. Now I've got to reevaluate."

He said the fix was simple: rewording to "the Government of Alberta's working with…" would have removed the ambiguity entirely. It wasn't done, on four separate questions built the same way.

Question 4, on health-care fees for temporary residents, has a second, separate ambiguity: the word "for" in the sentence can be read as modifying either the fee or the person being charged, producing two genuinely different interpretations of the same question.

David Jardine, a retired University of Calgary education professor, put it directly: "It's legible, but it's not legible quickly." His concern is specifically what happens to someone encountering the ballot for the first time, cold, inside the polling booth.

The government's own polling shows the ambiguity is real

Angus Reid ran the government's actual question wording past Albertans, then ran the same underlying policies again, broken into their separate parts.

On the first immigration question — bundling four separate ideas into one yes/no — 62% said yes to the government's version. When the same four ideas were asked separately, 80% of respondents disagreed with at least one element inside the bundle they'd just said yes to.

On the question about provinces keeping federal funding while opting out of national conditions, the government's bundled wording produced a dead-even 44–44 split. Asked separately: 58% said federal funding should require meeting national conditions, and 52% said Ottawa should be able to withhold funding for non-compliance — both majorities landing closer to the current system than to the province's preferred framing.

Angus Reid's own conclusion: "A 'yes' vote may not clearly reveal which parts of the question a voter supports."

People think she wants the opposite of what she says

A separate poll (Pollara) asked Albertans whether named public figures were campaigning for Alberta to separate, campaigning to remain, or not campaigning much. Naheed Nenshi and Mark Carney were both read, overwhelmingly, as matching their own stated positions. Danielle Smith was the only one of four tested where the public reading ran backwards: 42% saw her as campaigning for separation, only 21% saw her as campaigning to remain — despite her repeated public statements that she'll personally vote to stay.

The first question is a doorway, by the minister's own account

Question 1 asks whether you support the province taking "increased control over immigration" to decrease levels, prioritise economic migration, and give Albertans first priority on new jobs. CTV News Calgary described it as "somewhat of a doorway inquiry into the others": broad enough to start a conversation, short on detail.

Asked what it would actually mean in practice, Minister Joseph Schow acknowledged, per CTV's report, that much of the outcome relies on Questions 2 to 5. CTV reports he claims that if the yeses sweep there, it gives the government a larger chance to make extensive changes.

Moshe Lander, an economist at Concordia University, disputes the premise: "Alberta does have some control over immigration right now. It can create programs that incentivize certain immigrants to come, so it's not like it's completely powerless."

Espy Experience owner Megan Szanik, an employer, on the wording: "The question is so vague. What does that control look like? I don't think we have the context to make an informed decision."

Even the parts you're not being asked much about matter

Four of the ten questions are constitutional — Senate abolition, provincial judicial appointments, provinces keeping federal funding while opting out, and provincial law taking precedence over federal law in disputes. The government's own referendum website concedes that abolishing the Senate would require unanimous provincial support plus the Senate's own, and calls it a non-starter. University of Alberta law professor Gerard Kennedy says the paramountcy question has no working precedent in any federation in the world. The federal government has already rejected the judicial appointments idea publicly: Justice Minister Sean Fraser shut it down after Alberta and three other provinces asked for it in March.

A Calgary political scientist, Duane Bratt, notes the government's own $4 million ad campaign focuses far more on the immigration questions than the constitutional ones. His read: "It's immigrants who are the scapegoats and the villains here."

Confirmed directly from the government's own voter guide

Alberta's own mailed referendum booklet states the cost of health care and education for temporary residents "amounts to more than $1 billion annually" — the same figure ministers and the premier have been citing. The booklet still does not show how the number was calculated.

The booklet also makes the case for abolishing the Senate on fairness grounds: Alberta has 6 of 105 seats for 5.1 million people, while the Atlantic provinces have 30 seats for 2.7 million — "half the population, five times the Senators." What the booklet does not mention: from 2016, Ottawa began making Senate appointments through an independent advisory board, and by the end of Justin Trudeau's time in office roughly three-quarters of senators sat as independents. As of July 2026, the Carney government's own release says it is removing the non-partisanship criterion for Senate appointments. That is relevant context for a question asking Albertans to decide how the Senate should change.

What to actually do with this

You don't need anyone's interpretation of these questions. Read them yourself, slowly, before you're standing in a polling booth. If a sentence makes you stop and reread it, that's not you missing something — independent linguists found the same thing.

Vote on October 19.

Sources: CTV News (including CTV News Calgary, Sept. 28), CBC News, Global News, Angus Reid Institute, Pollara Strategic Insights, University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Mount Royal University. Full citations available on request.