Council of Canadians, Red Deer and Area Chapter

09/08/2026

09/08/2026

Here is a piece I wrote with Don Iveson and a number of prominent municipal leaders about the need to reject all of Danielle Smith's referendum questions.

You can find it on the Edmonton Journal website as well as here.

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Opinion:
REJECT REFERENDUM QUESTIONS THAT DIVIDE ALBERTANS

By Rachel Notley, Cathy Heron, Don Iveson, Barry Morish*ta, Karina Pillay, Craig Snodgrass, Chris Spearman, Avnish Nanda

On Oct. 19, Albertans are being asked to vote on 10 troubling referendum questions. We believe the five discriminatory and hateful questions targeting new Albertans deserve more attention, and we are united in calling out the divisive politics and poor leadership behind them.

The question of Alberta’s independence has sucked up most of the oxygen, but the other questions deserve scrutiny for what they reveal about the politics of the day. Rejecting them all, particularly the mean-spirited immigration questions, offers a chance to stand up for a welcoming Alberta within a stronger united Canada.

Four questions seek to treat some immigrants differently, limiting or withholding their access — or, appallingly, their children’s access — to education, health care and other social supports. These questions are framed as fiscal measures, as if human beings are nothing but the cost of the services they use. As elected leaders, we all took oaths to serve and respect everyone who lives here, even our guests.

That used to go without saying. By contrast, the thrust of these four questions would effectively create a caste system in Alberta. We reject that inhospitable worldview — that’s not the Alberta we know.

Another question asks whether folks should have to show proof of citizenship at the time they vote (regardless of whether they are already on the voters list). However, there is not one shred of evidence that anyone is voting illegally. This question is there simply to imply that some immigrants are voting improperly — which has troubling echoes of the American far right’s campaign in the 1960s to keep Black voters from casting ballots, and is making it needlessly harder for all of us to exercise our democratic rights.

(On this point, along with the cumbersome multi-ballot process that will likely create long lines, we strongly recommend eligible voters request mail-in ballots for your own convenience, and to make space at the polls for others.)

Taken together, these five questions are designed to suggest that new immigrants are a problem. We cannot allow this “us-and-them” thinking to infect our province. We need newcomers in our industries, as entrepreneurs, in our public service work forces, and throughout our communities. We need their skills, their passion, and their spirit. To continue to attract newcomers, they will need to feel welcome and safe, not second-class.

The premier is careful not to name specific groups as undesirable, but the anti-immigrant sentiment within her political base reeks of the worst kind of hateful “blame-the-outsider” approach infecting American politics. We have an opportunity to soundly reject this mean-spirited agenda come this fall.

With so much emphasis on the separation issue, it’s worth recalling that Premier Danielle Smith announced the other referendum questions at budget time to shift blame for the then-$9.4-billion deficit. After demanding more immigrants in prior years, she then blamed immigrants for Alberta’s fiscal problems.

Did immigrants somehow raise the price of oil in the last few months, too? So let’s not forget, these questions were cynically framed to distract from the terrible UCP record on finances, education, health care, and affordability.

For instance, Alberta’s public education and public health care are stretched to the limit. Since 2019, the government has underfunded public education such that, as of 2025, Alberta ranked 10th among provinces for per-student funding, and 10th for number of students per teacher. Immigrants didn’t do that; Premier Smith’s government did.

In health care they broke their promise to build hospitals to keep up with population growth. In Edmonton, they cancelled the badly needed southwest hospital, leaving the city with the same hospital capacity since 1988, but now with double the population. They cut programs, funded below inflation and population growth, and wasted resources on reorganizations and privatization efforts. Immigrants didn’t do that; the UCP did.

What immigrants did do, (and will continue to do) is pay taxes. Just like all Albertans. Threatening to charge newcomers extra for deteriorating services won’t fix those same services we all depend on. We need leadership to improve life for all Albertans, not more scapegoating.

The remaining four questions on Smith’s ballot find other scapegoats upon whom to project blame. Ottawa, judges, the Senate and other Canadian institutions are lined up to keep our anger and attention directed away from the Alberta legislature. Like the questions on immigration, we also suggest these should be roundly rejected. Alberta should instead re-focus on asserting our strong and rightful place within confederation, as a constructive and dynamic partner rather than a grievance-wielding complainant.

We affirm that our province (and Canada) is built on a history of welcoming people, including newcomers, and of respecting and celebrating different languages, creeds and spirituality. Part of the magic of the Alberta we love is that we’ve delivered this promise of welcome and opportunity so successfully here. We have prospered because we worked together across our many differences. We shouldn’t throw that away.

Next to our welcoming Indigenous brothers and sisters, let’s remember that our families are all relatively recent newcomers here. Think of those Ukrainian settlers who arrived with nothing in the late 1800s and literally carved their first homes out of the sod east of Edmonton. They survived those first hard winters trading with Nehiyaw (Cree) neighbours. Ukrainians, again recently, and people from other troubled parts of the world, have all contributed immensely to making this one of the best places in the world to share with our fellow Albertans.

Here, we share, regardless of how long a family has been here.

In Alberta, we don’t win by excluding, by dividing or by turning inward. Those approaches are driven by fear. But that’s not who we are. We have long been an open place because we are optimistic, energetic, and we know how to work together to make good things happen.

In promoting these five questions, Danielle Smith wants us to reject our proudest traditions and values, including hospitality and welcome for everyone. We urge you to turn up and say No to the Nine and Yes to Canada. Reject the questions designed to divide us; defend Alberta values that bring us together as part of a stronger Canada.

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Rachel Notley was Alberta’s premier from 2015-2019; Cathy Heron was mayor of St. Albert from 2017-2025 and president of Municipalities Alberta from 2021-2023; Don Iveson was Edmonton’s mayor from 2013-2021; Barry Morish*ta was leader of the Alberta Party from 2021-2023 and mayor of Brooks from 2016-2021; Dr. Karina Pillay was mayor of Slave Lake from 2004-2013 and is now a family physician in Calgary; Craig Snodgrass is mayor of High River; Chris Spearman was mayor of Lethbridge from 2013-2021; Avnish Nanda is a human rights lawyer in Edmonton and founder of Our Alberta Advantage, a campaign opposing the five immigration questions.

07/03/2026

STATEMENT: Canada was built by workers with the promise of a fair shot at a good life, decent wages, real pensions, with rights that working people fought hard to win. This Canada Day, that promise is under threat, and we won't pretend otherwise.

Smith unilaterally put a separatism referendum on the ballot. She can unilaterally take it off. Albertans don’t want it. Labour doesn’t want it. Business doesn’t want it. It is divisive and destabilizing. Working families are already struggling - the last thing we need is more instability.

Separatism is a direct threat to jobs, wages, and pensions. Albertans' standard of living already isn't good enough, and separatism makes it worse. It's not just about leaving Canada; it's a con aimed at making Alberta the 51st state. That’s a real threat to the wellbeing of workers.

Albertans are proud to be Canadian. Proud of Medicare. Proud of our public schools. Proud of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our democracy, and the idea that we all do better when we look out for one another. Canada is one of the safest, freest, and most welcoming countries in the world. That's not something to walk away from - it's something worth fighting for.

We're saying no to separatism, and no to the status quo. We can build a country that delivers on its promise - decent wages, real pensions, strong public services, and a fair shot for every worker. But only by coming together, not by dividing.

So, this Canada Day, let's say it plainly: don't let this be our last Canada Day, Alberta.

🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦 🇨🇦

07/03/2026

In a healthcare emergency, wait times can be a matter of life or death. A recent visit to the emergency room highlighted the degree to which the Alberta government's policies - meant to fix health care - have only served to exacerbate the crises in the system.

07/03/2026

Alberta is steamrolling ahead with healthcare privatization, creating one system for the rich, and another for the rest of us, in flagrant violation of the principles of the Canada Health Act. The federal government must step up to protect public healthcare before it's too late, write Andrew Longhurst and Dr. Paul Parks.

Read more

06/25/2026

Opportunity to have your say.

Share your thoughts on the potential for a new dam and reservoir on the Red Deer River.
With work underway on the Ardley Reservoir scoping and feasibility study, Albertans can review some of the study’s initial findings and share their thoughts on this potential project.

In-person engagement session:
• Tuesday, July 14 at 6 – 8 p.m. Holiday Inn & Suites Red Deer South, Red Deer County

Facilitated webinar:
• Thursday, July 16
• 1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Feedback from Albertans, Indigenous organizations, municipalities, industry and other stakeholders will inform the government’s decision to move forward to the detailed engineering and regulatory approvals stage.

Online engagement is open until July 30: https://www.alberta.ca/ardley-reservoir-study-engagement

06/25/2026

It was long overdue, and began with a promise: It might start small, covering just a few common drugs, and expand until Canadians without benefits were no longer struggling to afford medication prescribed by doctors under our universal health care system. Less than two years later, however, the prog...

06/25/2026

Her name is Joni Mitchell.
She was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, in 1943. Her family moved to Saskatchewan when she was a child. She grew up in North Battleford and Saskatoon.
She had polio at age 9. She spent months in a hospital. She learned to walk again. She never fully recovered the use of her left hand.
This is important because she would become one of the greatest guitarists of her generation — using non-standard tunings that she invented partly to accommodate her weakened hand.
She left Saskatoon as a young woman. She studied at the Alberta College of Art. She started performing in Toronto coffeehouses in the early 1960s.
In 1965, she moved to the United States.
She became one of the defining voices of the 1960s and 1970s folk and rock movements.
She wrote "Both Sides Now."
She wrote "Big Yellow Taxi."
She wrote "The Circle Game."
She wrote "A Case of You."
She wrote "Free Man in Paris."
She wrote "River."
She wrote "Woodstock" — about the famous music festival she did not attend, but watched on television while writing one of the most-covered songs of the 20th century.
Her 1971 album "Blue" is widely considered one of the greatest albums in the history of popular music. Rolling Stone has ranked it as one of the top three albums ever recorded by anyone.
She was known for refusing to play the music industry game. She was known for refusing interviews. She was known for refusing to compromise her artistic vision. She was known for being difficult, brilliant, and irreplaceable.
She painted. She did her own album covers. She gave interviews to Rolling Stone that became famous for her sharp intelligence and her unwillingness to be patronized.
In 2015, she had a brain aneurysm. She nearly died. She lost the ability to play guitar. She lost the ability to speak for a long time.
She recovered.
In 2022, she performed publicly for the first time since the aneurysm at the Newport Folk Festival. She sat in a chair. She sang for over an hour. The audience wept.
In 2023, she received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize — the most prestigious lifetime achievement award in American songwriting.
She accepted it.
She gave a short, quiet speech.
She thanked Saskatchewan.
She thanked Canada.
She thanked the country that had given her, as a child, the prairie skies and the long winters and the music of her grandmother's piano in a small house in North Battleford.
She is 82 years old.
She still lives in California.
She has not lived in Canada for 60 years.
But every Canadian who follows music knows that the voice that wrote "Both Sides Now" came from a small girl in Saskatchewan who survived polio in a Saskatoon hospital.
Every Canadian who listens to "Big Yellow Taxi" hears the prairie sky in her voice.
Every Canadian who has loved someone and lost them has, at some point, listened to "River" and known that the woman singing it was from the same country.
Joni Mitchell is, by every reasonable measure, one of the most important songwriters in the English language in the second half of the 20th century.
She is also Canadian.
She has been honoured with the Order of Canada. She has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. She has been named a Companion of the Order of Canada — the highest level.
She represents Canada to the world without ever needing to live here.
A girl from Fort Macleod. A young polio survivor in Saskatoon. A voice that crossed an ocean of cultural influence and became one of the defining sounds of an entire generation.
The country that grew her.
The country that watched her leave.
The country that has, every day for 60 years, been listening to her sing about ourselves back to us.
Joni Mitchell.
A Canadian.
The whole world knows her name.
We should make sure we never forget that she came from here. 🍁
Share if Joni Mitchell deserves to be remembered. 👇

05/29/2026

05/29/2026

Today, First Nations along the Central Coast of British Columbia, Parks Canada and Government of British Columbia, announced Mia-yaltwa Ha'lidzogm hoon (Realm of the Salmon, Home of the Salmon).

This important step reflects the leadership and generational stewardship of Wuikinuxv, Nuxalk, Kitasoo Xai'xais, Heiltsuk, Gitxaała and Gitga'at Nations, alongside Canada and British Columbia.

These waters support salmon, herring, eulachon, kelp forests, deep-sea coral and sponge reefs, whales, and the coastal communities and cultures connected to them. Protecting ocean habitats like these helps keep the ocean abundant and supports healthy fisheries and strong coastal livelihoods — today and for children and grandchildren along the coast.

Learn more: https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2026/05/backgrounder-mia-yaltwa-halidzogm-hoon-a-collaborative-approach-to-marine-protection-announced-for-the-central-coast-of-british-columbia.html