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 !
Except for a four-period, the PCs/UCP have been in power since 1971, so of course the situation we find ourselves has been caused by the NDP.
I disagree. We do not have any PCs running the Alberta Government, what we have is Wildrose loose cannons who occupy the extreme right. To offset this we have an NDP party who occupies the extreme Left. In the last 10 years we have experienced both parties. None represent Blue Conservatives or Moderates. Any anti UCP is a vote for a Radical Hard Left NDP. Any anti NDP is a vote for a Radical Hard Right UCP.
And you think our NDP government was the enemy when every conservative MLAs praised them for what they were doing as this article suggests?
“ Rachael Notley Led Like Lougheed “. By conservative MLA Allan Warrack.
Every conservative I knew considered Notley to be a lot like Lougheed and Lougheed’s energy minister Bill Dickie was a brother in-law of one of my uncles. Members of Klein’s own family urged Albertans to vote NDP and kick out Ralph they were so disgusted by what he was doing to us.
So be a hero and tell us who you would have voted for? It obviously wasn’t someone anyone else wanted, was it?
Mr Bremner, the Alberta NDP can hardly be classified “extreme Left”. Perhaps you were thinking of the Federal NDP Socialist Caucus? Currently, there are only two members at large identified as being from Alberta. I shall leave the investigation of the names not associated with a particular province up to you.
https://ndpsocialists.ca/contact/
https://ndpsocialists.ca/
Can you prove how stupid you are any better than you already have?
Ben Matlock is absolutely right, that’s how stupid you Reformers are. After destroying this province financially over a 25 year period, starting with Ralph Klein, you idiots blame Notley for destroying it in only 4 years that’s how stupid you are, aren’t you? What part of this article aren’t you smart enough to understand. It was pointed out to me by a former Conservative MLA friend.
“ Royalties Down 32% Billions in Federal Revenue Lost”
Why is that so hard for you fools to understand?
So who would you have voted for to put a stop to this Reform Party insanity when every conservative I knew chose Notley?
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.
Here we go with the same old, tired disinformation. In the four years ending in 2024-25, a total of 1.9 million immigrants came to Canada. And the number of immigrants who came to Alberta over that period is nowhere close to 600,000.
Between 2021 and 2025, Alberta’s population grew by just under 780,000. For your figure of 600,000 to be correct, immigration would have to account for 77% of Alberta’s population growth. That makes no sense.
Please don’t confuse Bucky with facts. His head will explode.
dennis and buck, utterly fail to acknowledge the facts presented that underscore the failings of the ucp. not only do the massive waste/ negligence/incompetence/pocket lining expenditures pretty much add up to what is the forecast 9 billion plus deficit in the ucp budget, mr moore’s telling numbers do not even include the corruption costs lining big coal pockets – let alone the impending cost of caving to “holdout” northback – nor they take into account the likelihood that we, the tax payer, are on the hook to clean up the sordid messes left by oil/gas robber barons. (mind you, if the ucp ever seem to “care” about the health of the province and clean anything up, you can bet that will be most about more corruption and pocket lining).
so, while the dennis’s and buck’s of our province continue to see the ndp and libs as villains, and continue in their ignorance to see the ucp as amazing, they must look away from the fact that the ucp should have been able to deliver us a surplus. the ucp have proven a massive fail insofar as the hardworking albertan should be concerned, and mr moore’s factual numbers have shown that to anyone that can see past their foolish biases.
Totally agree, some real wackadoos replyng eg. Buckwheat at -24, is self-flagellating every day..
Grow up kal