Alberta’s population grew at record speed in 2023 and 2024, putting pressure on schools, health care, housing and other public services. The harder question is how much of that pressure can be attributed specifically to the temporary residents targeted by several questions on the Oct. 19 referendum ballot.
The data supports part of the government’s case: Alberta experienced an unusually rapid increase in non-permanent residents at the same time enrolment and demand for public services were rising.
It also shows that temporary residents are only one part of Alberta’s population story. Permanent immigration and migration from other provinces contributed substantially to recent growth, and neither group is targeted in the same way by Questions 2 through 4.
What Questions 1 through 4 ask
Elections Alberta lists four referendum questions dealing directly with immigration or access to provincially funded services.
Question 1 asks whether Alberta should seek increased control over immigration, reduce immigration to what the question calls more sustainable levels, prioritize economic migration and give Albertans first priority for new employment opportunities.
Question 2 asks whether provincially funded programs such as health care, education and other social services should be limited to Canadian citizens, permanent residents and people with an undefined “Alberta-approved immigration status.”
Question 3 asks whether people with non-permanent legal immigration status should have to live in Alberta for at least 12 months before becoming eligible for provincially funded social-support programs.
Question 4 asks whether Alberta should charge a fee or premium to non-permanent residents for their and their family’s use of public health care and education.
All four results are non-binding.
The wording matters because Questions 2 through 4 are primarily about legal immigration status, not a person’s country of origin.
Alberta’s population surge was real
Statistics Canada and ATB Economics both show an extraordinary period of population growth.
Alberta added more than 200,000 residents during 2023 on a January-to-January basis. ATB Economics says annual growth reached about 3.9 per cent in 2023 and 4.7 per cent in 2024 using calendar-year estimates.
The increase did not come from a single source.
International migration was the largest contributor during the peak years, including a sharp increase in non-permanent residents. Alberta was also attracting tens of thousands of Canadians from other provinces, particularly Ontario and British Columbia.
ATB reported that Alberta gained more than 36,000 residents from other provinces in 2024 alone.
That distinction is important because a Canadian moving from Toronto or Vancouver can put the same additional demand on a school, hospital, road or housing market as someone arriving from another country, but the referendum’s immigration questions do not apply to interprovincial migrants.
How many non-permanent residents are in Alberta now?
Statistics Canada estimated 279,477 non-permanent residents were living in Alberta on July 1, 2026.
Alberta’s total population was estimated at 5,101,050 on the same date. That puts non-permanent residents at about 5.5 per cent of the provincial population.
The category includes people with work permits, study permits and their families, as well as asylum claimants, protected persons and related groups.
The number is also no longer rising at the pace seen during the population surge. Statistics Canada reported Alberta’s non-permanent resident population fell 0.6 per cent between April and July 2026.
That does not erase the infrastructure pressure created during the earlier period of rapid growth. It does mean the referendum is taking place after the growth rate of this population has already begun to slow.
What the school numbers show
Schools provide the clearest evidence that rapid population growth has created capacity pressure.
The Alberta government says more than 80,000 students were added to provincial classrooms over a three-year period. Provincial announcements have attributed that growth to both federal immigration policy and record interprovincial migration.
The government has separately estimated that roughly 46,000 to 47,000 students in Alberta schools are children of temporary residents.
Figures provided by the premier’s office in 2026 put the number at 47,389 in 2025. Using an average cost of approximately $12,000 per student, the province estimates spending roughly $600 million a year educating students in that category.
That is a significant cost. But two numbers that appear frequently in the debate should not be treated as interchangeable.
The more than 80,000 figure represents total student growth over several years. The roughly 47,000 figure represents the number of students with temporary-resident status at a point in time.
The province has not published data showing that children of temporary residents account for all, or even most, of the recent increase in school enrolment.
What the health-care numbers show
The health-care case is less straightforward.
The premier’s office has said temporary workers and international students accounted for 1.27 per cent of the direct health-care costs it tracks in 2024.
Using a Canadian Institute for Health Information estimate of $31.8 billion in Alberta health spending, the premier’s office estimated the cost at just over $400 million.
For comparison, Statistics Canada estimates non-permanent residents represented roughly 5.5 per cent of Alberta’s population in mid-2026. The populations and years are not identical, so that comparison should not be treated as a precise utilization rate, but it does show why claims that temporary residents are the main driver of Alberta’s health-care pressures require more evidence.
AB Post could find no published Alberta analysis that isolates the effect of immigration status on emergency-room wait times, surgical waits or access to family doctors.
Those problems are affected by population growth generally, but also by staffing, hospital capacity, an aging population, primary-care access and how quickly admitted patients can move out of emergency departments.
The government’s $1-billion estimate
The Alberta government has said temporary residents cost the province more than $1 billion annually in health care, education and other social services.
Premier Danielle Smith has also said temporary workers generated about $150 million in provincial tax revenue in 2025.
Those figures have become part of the government’s argument for Questions 2 through 4.
But the tax figure cannot currently be independently verified from public provincial tax records, because Alberta does not publish personal income-tax collections by immigration status.
There is also a basic arithmetic problem with a stronger claim Smith has made publicly: that taxpayers provide $10 in services for every $1 in taxes generated by temporary residents.
If the two government figures are used as stated — $1 billion in costs and $150 million in taxes — the ratio is about $6.67 in spending for every $1 of provincial tax revenue, not $10.
The premier’s office has said additional capital costs, including school construction, are part of the broader burden. Those capital costs are not included in the simple $1-billion-to-$150-million calculation.
There is therefore no single publicly documented figure that resolves the total fiscal effect of temporary residents on Alberta.
What the referendum could change — and what it cannot
The questions can ask Albertans whether they support restricting access, imposing residency requirements or charging premiums.
They cannot change the fact that Alberta’s recent growth came from several sources.
Permanent residents would continue to qualify for provincially funded programs under the wording of the referendum. Canadian citizens moving to Alberta from other provinces would also remain fully eligible.
Questions 2 through 4 therefore target a group representing roughly one in 18 Alberta residents, rather than the full population increase that put pressure on schools, hospitals and housing during the past several years.
That does not determine whether the proposed restrictions are good policy. It establishes the size and scope of the population the questions actually address.
What the numbers do not tell us
Several important questions remain unanswered.
How much would the proposals save? Smith has acknowledged that the government cannot yet quantify the savings from the referendum proposals.
How much recent school growth came specifically from temporary residents? The province publishes the number of temporary-resident students but has not published a breakdown showing their share of the total enrolment increase.
How much do temporary residents contribute in all taxes? The $150-million figure cited by the government concerns provincial revenue and its methodology has not been published in enough detail for independent verification. Temporary residents also pay GST, property taxes indirectly through rent, fuel taxes and other levies.
Would restrictions materially reduce health-care waits? No published Alberta analysis reviewed by AB Post establishes that link.
What does “Alberta-approved immigration status” mean? The phrase appears in Question 2 but is not defined in the ballot wording.
The question underneath the numbers
The evidence supports two conclusions at the same time.
Alberta’s rapid population growth put genuine pressure on public services, and non-permanent residents were one important part of that growth.
But temporary residents were not the only source of population growth, and the available data does not show that restricting their access to services would, by itself, resolve crowded classrooms or long health-care waits.
That is the narrower question voters are being asked to consider on Oct. 19: not whether rapid population growth strained Alberta’s services — it did — but whether changing the treatment of non-permanent residents is an appropriate response to that strain.
For the exact wording of all 10 referendum questions, see Alberta’s 10 Referendum Questions, Explained.
Sources: Elections Alberta; Statistics Canada; ATB Economics; Government of Alberta; reporting and figures supplied by the Premier’s Office; Canadian Institute for Health Information.
