DONOVAN: Danielle Smith’s immigration hypocrisy — Alberta quietly flooding rural towns with immigrants

Even as Premier Danielle Smith takes on the role of outspoken crusader against unsustainable immigration levels, her government is running a program explicitly designed to increase the flow of immigrants into rural Alberta.The stated goal of Alberta’s Rural Renewal Stream is to “attract and recruit newcomers to address labour needs and settle newcomers” in small communities.Rural Renewal was introduced along with the Rural Entrepreneur Stream in February 2022, in the waning days of former premier Jason Kenney’s government. At the time, Lethbridge News Now quoted Premier Kenney as saying these new pathways would help to “revitalize rural Alberta” and address “population decline,” which he argued was among “the biggest challenges facing rural communities.”Ever since assuming office in October of that year, Premier Smith has kept up the effort to divert immigration into rural Alberta by keeping the Rural Renewal Stream running. No fewer than 31 “designated communities” have signed up for the Rural Renewal Stream, ranging from Grande Prairie to Didsbury to Rocky Mountain House. In fact, the total number of communities is far higher, as different towns in the same “economic region” can submit joint applications. For instance, the City of Brooks listing also includes the Town of Bassano, the Village of Duchess, the County of Newell, and the Village of Rosemary.There appears to be significant uptake for the Rural Renewal Stream among prospective immigrants. In November 2025, the Smith government imposed yearly caps on all designated communities in the program, citing “endorsement volumes exceeding available nomination spaces” as one of the reasons. A number of towns have already reached their caps and paused their intake for the year, including Westlock and Peace River. .Whether majorities of residents in the communities covered by the Rural Renewal Stream are aware of the program that is boosting immigration into their towns — let alone enthusiastically approve of it — is unknown. Perhaps it may have been more democratic to hold referendums in these towns to allow residents to vote for — or against — increased immigration into their community. This is effectively the choice that will be given to Albertans in the October 19 referendum, which will contain five immigration-related questions alongside questions on independence. If the whole province is given a vote on immigration writ large, why should local communities not be required to hold specific referendums when joining regional immigration programs? The Rural Renewal Stream is structured similarly to the Rural Community Immigration Pilot (RCIP), a federal rural immigration program previously covered in the Western Standard. Both offer newcomers with local job offers a pathway to permanent residency if they settle in specific communities.Both the federal RCIP and Alberta’s Rural Renewal Stream cite labour needs as a justification for immigration. When Ottawa launched the RCIP in January 2025, it claimed rural communities “frequently face unique labour market and demographic challenges.” The Alberta government similarly argues that its Rural Renewal Stream “supports local economic development needs and contributes to the growth of the community” and helps “address labour needs.” Do employers in rural Canada often struggle to staff their businesses? Undeniably. Will many bosses be pleased with programs like the RCIP and the Rural Renewal Stream that divert immigration into rural Canada? Surely..But is recruiting foreign nationals the best or only solution to staffing issues? Surely not. The truth is that Canada does not have labour shortages so much as we have labour misallocations.An excellent paper published in 2013 by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy titled All the Workers We Need: Debunking Canada’s Labour-Shortage Fallacy explodes the underlying myths behind the endless cries of “labour shortage” from Canada’s business lobby.In this paper, academic Kevin McQuillan points out the bleeding obvious: Canada does not face a general labour shortage but rather “a widening imbalance between the skills that the labour market demands and the skills that workers are equipped with, as well as between where the jobs are and where available workers live.”McQuillan recommends provinces “bring some influence to bear on universities and colleges to align their programming, and the incentives to draw students into certain programs, more directly with labour-market needs.” Perhaps fewer gender and migration studies courses and more STEM and Western Civilization? Just an idea.Another idea in McQuillan’s paper is “inducing Canadian workers — through tax holidays or other measures — to move from high-unemployment regions to the provinces where the jobs are.” In essence, encouraging and enabling workers in areas with a surfeit of labour to head to areas with a lack of labour. This last idea can be just as easily applied within a single province. Alberta could keep its Rural Renewal Stream, but instead of a conduit for deracinated overseas labour, it could become a tool for helping Canadians in Calgary or Edmonton to put down roots and raise families in small towns that would benefit from an infusion of entrepreneurs and workers into certain sectors.

DONOVAN: Danielle Smith’s immigration hypocrisy — Alberta quietly flooding rural towns with immigrants

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