KAPLAN: Danielle Smith wants a referendum on temporary residents without showing Albertans the math

Lennie Kaplan is a former senior manager in the fiscal and economic policy division of Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance, where, among other duties, he examined best practices in fiscal frameworks and program reviews.The Alberta government has identified the costs of supporting non-permanent residents (NPRs) over the past five years as a significant public policy issue, sending it to a public referendum this fall. But the government has still not provided Albertans with an estimate of the full fiscal impact of NPRs on its finances. Premier Danielle Smith and Finance Minister Nate Horner both say that the Alberta government has not fully quantified the costs it has incurred from accommodating NPRs over the past five years. NPRs represent the number of “persons who are lawfully in Canada on a temporary basis under the authority of a temporary resident permit, along with members of their family living with them. NPRs include foreign workers, foreign students, the humanitarian population and other temporary residents. The humanitarian population includes refugee claimants and temporary residents who are allowed to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds and are not categorized as either foreign workers or foreign students." Premier Smith has now given Albertans some assistance in helping to quantify the government’s estimate of the full fiscal impacts of NPRs. In a news conference, the Premier noted that Alberta’s population rose by 600,000 people between 2021/22 and 2025/26, and at an average of $15,600 per person in program spending, this equates to about $9 billion in additional costs added to Alberta’s total program expenses over the past five years. The Premier also recently said it costs the Alberta government $600 million annually, or $13,284 per student, for the 45,000 children of NPRs in Alberta’s K-12 education system, and $1.9 billion annually, or $6,800 per person, for the 282,000 NPRs in Alberta’s healthcare system. .Applying the Premier’s methodology to examine the full fiscal impacts on the Alberta government’s finances from funding all programs and services for NPRs in Alberta over the past five years (using Alberta Annual Population Reports and Alberta Budget documents as a reference), I estimate that the Alberta government has broadly assessed the costs of NPRs on its finances at about $13.4 billion, or 4% of the $339.6 billion in total program expenses incurred by over five years. However, this is a very high case estimate, as it does not account for the fact that some NPRs in Alberta are not even eligible for a number of government programs and services. The Alberta government has various options to seek reimbursement of the costs it has incurred from funding programs and services provided to NPRs over the past five years, including approaching the federal government as the Quebec government has done. In November 2025, the Quebec government threatened to cut social assistance to asylum claimants if the federal government did not reimburse the provincial government for the associated expenses. The Quebec Minister of Immigration apparently sent a letter to the federal government requesting reimbursement of the expenses incurred over the past few years. In this vein, I suspect that if the Alberta government has identified the costs of funding NPRs over the past five years to be an issue, it has likely already sent a letter to the federal government demanding reimbursement. If the Alberta government deems the costs incurred on its finances from NPRs to be a significant policy issue, then let’s put the full and accurate fiscal impacts on the table for all Albertans to see and have a robust discussion. The Alberta government should release the letter it has sent to the federal government requesting reimbursement and show Albertans the full analysis done by the Alberta Productivity Review Cabinet Committee (PRCC) program review files on the full fiscal impacts of NPRs in Alberta. Lennie Kaplan is a former senior manager in the fiscal and economic policy division of Alberta’s Ministry of Treasury Board and Finance, where, among other duties, he examined best practices in fiscal frameworks and program reviews. In 2019, Mr. Kaplan served as executive director to the MacKinnon Panel on Alberta’s finances — a government-appointed panel tasked with reviewing Alberta’s spending and recommending reforms.

KAPLAN: Danielle Smith wants a referendum on temporary residents without showing Albertans the math

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