Alberta’s problem comes from who currently runs it
By Lethbridge Herald on March 4, 2026.
Ken Moore
For the Herald
In the fall of 2022, Albertans were treated to a glossy, multi-million-dollar ad campaign. “Alberta is Calling,” the posters screamed in the subways of Toronto and the SkyTrains of Vancouver, promising a land of plenty, affordable housing, and a world-class “Alberta Advantage.” People listened. They packed their bags and moved here in record numbers, trusting the provincial government’s invitation.
Now, as we approach a series of controversial referendum questions on October 19th, Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet, including our own MLA for Lethbridge East, Nathan Neudorf, have abruptly changed their tune. The guests they invited to the dinner table are now being blamed for the fact that there isn’t enough food.
In a recent televised address that felt more like a campaign rally than a policy briefing, the Premier pointed the finger squarely at immigrants for Alberta’s $5.2 billion deficit and our crumbling social services. It is a classic political “bait-and-switch.” The government spent millions to recruit a population they refused to build infrastructure for, and now they are using those very people as a scapegoat for their own fiscal mismanagement.
The Premier argues that out-of-control immigration is draining our coffers. The logic is as thin as a southern Alberta ice patch in April. Most newcomers are economic migrants. They pay income tax, GST, and fuel tax from the day they arrive. They are the workers building our houses, staffing our service industry, and increasingly, providing the very healthcare we are told they are breaking.
The real reason for our deficit isn’t the person in the checkout line; it’s a series of high-stakes gambles and administrative blunders by this and previous UCP governments. While the Premier blames a 10% population increase for a 100% system failure, she conveniently ignores the $1.3 billion lost on the Keystone XL gamble, the $1.2 billion devaluation of the Sturgeon Refinery, the $80 million wasted on imported Turkish Tylenol that sat in warehouses, the $109 million DynaLIFE debacle and dozens of other needless expenses.
Locally, we are seeing the effects of “ideology over math” in the dismantling of Alberta Health Services. For years, Alberta benefited from a centralized system that had the lowest administrative costs in Canada (roughly 3.3%). Now Premier Smith is spending $85 million to break that system into four separate bureaucracies with four separate executive suites and top-heavy expenses.
For a patient in Lethbridge with complex health needs, this will be a nightmare. Instead of a seamless journey through one system, you will soon have to navigate four different “silos.” This isn’t efficiency; it’s an expensive creation of executive bloat at a time when we can’t even find enough family doctors to keep clinics open. Blaming a newcomer for the ER wait time is a lot easier for the Premier than admitting her refocusing plan is actually creating more managers and fewer bedside nurses.
On the education front, the government’s blame-shifting is particularly egregious. For years, Alberta’s per-student funding has failed to keep pace with inflation, leaving us trailing almost every other province in Canada. To spend millions inviting thousands of families to move here and then acting surprised when schools are full is not a federal policy failure; it is a provincial planning failure.
The true Alberta Advantage is being quietly privatized. While the Premier claims there is no money to address the overcrowding in the public schools that serve 93% of our children, she has presided over a staggering 42% increase in funding for private and charter institutions. This year alone, the province will hand over $460 million to private operators, many of which charge thousands in tuition and retain the right to turn students away.
Even more alarming is the new $8.6 Billion construction plan that, for the first time, opens the door for public tax dollars to build and renovate private school buildings. The message is clear: the public system is being used as a fiscal scapegoat to justify redirecting your tax dollars into exclusive, private institutions.
The proposed referendum questions are a direct attack on the very people the government spent millions to attract. Proposing a 12-month residency requirement for social supports and charging fees or premiums for health and education for non-permanent residents is not just cruel; it’s economically illiterate. If a temporary worker cannot afford to see a doctor for a year, they end up in our already strained Emergency Rooms, the most expensive way to deliver care.
This is Trump-style politics brought to Alberta: find a vulnerable group, blame them for structural problems you didn’t fix, and ask the public to vote on their rights. Smith wants you to be Alberta’s ICE.
It is time to stop the gaslighting. Our schools are crowded because the government didn’t build them. Our healthcare is failing because the government spent five years fighting with doctors and nurses instead of retaining them. Our deficit exists because the government wastes millions instead of diversifying our revenue.
The Premier told the world that Alberta was calling. Now that people have answered, she wants to charge them at the door for the privilege of helping us grow. Albertans are smarter than this. On October 19th, when you see those questions on the ballot, remember who actually holds the purse strings, and who has been letting money fall out of our holey wallet for years.
The problem in Alberta isn’t who is coming in; it’s who is currently in charge.
Ken Moore has a Political Science
degree, worked as a CFAC Television news director and covered municipal and provincial politics.
21-20
Coles Notes Version: Bad UCP. NDP, Gods Gift to Alberta in the waiting, trust us, were better then we used to be, honest !
The Immigration Trap courtesy of your boy Jagmeet and his puppet Trudeau
Ottawa engineered the crisis; Alberta is ending it.
The Stat: The federal government flooded the country with 6 million people in just four years, dumping 600,000 into Alberta and completely overwhelming schools, hospitals, and housing.
The Reality: The legacy media tried to gaslight Smith using her past quotes about population growth against her. She fired back, exposing that Justin Trudeau secretly removed all immigration restrictions without consulting the provinces, deliberately creating an unsustainable burden. Now, Alberta is stepping up to block temporary residents from draining provincial social programs.