ONCE WELCOME, NOW WORRIED
Separation dominating conversation, but Alberta's immigrants are feeling xenophobic chill from some of the other referendum questions
Gurdwara Millwoods chairperson Surinder Singh Hoonjan (from left), along with volunteer Surinder Bar and Avnish Nanda, founder of the Our Alberta Advantage campaign, at a voter information booth at the Gurdwara Millwoods in Edmonton.
EDMONTON — When Gurmam Singh Dood came to Canada in 1976, he landed first in southern Ontario, where his brother lived. At the time, the province was mired in the era of stagflation, and it was difficult to find work, but he had some friends living in Edmonton, and asked for their advice.
“Come to Alberta,” they told him. It was a land of opportunity. The economy was booming, bolstered by soaring oil and gas prices. Dood could surely find multiple jobs within days. With that in mind, he packed his bags and headed west, looking to put down roots on the edge of the Canadian Prairies.
Nearly 50 years later, that proved to be a wise decision. Dood raised hard to succeed in his new home, moving from his first minimum-wage job to a successful career with Edmonton’s public transit commission. He started a family, gave back to his community and became, in all ways, a very proud Albertan.
At the turn of the millennium, eager to do his part in the province’s public life, he joined what was then Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party, and became a loyal member of Ralph Klein’s friend, and helped get him into office.
In 2014 he even ran for the PCs in his provincial riding of Edmonton-Meadowbrook — narrowly, to the Liberal candidate, but though never ran for office again, he remained active in the party. So, in 2022, when Danielle Smith was elected leader of the newly formed United Conservative Party after the ouster of premier Jason Kenney, he reached out to Dood for help.
“She was happy that I had grown to more than 40,000 people. He took her to Nagar Kirtan, an annual celebration of the faith’s holy scripture held at Edmonton’s Gurdwara Millwoods. He helped campaign for her in Edmonton and Grande Prairie.
He never imagined that, just four years later, Smith would be stoking anti-immigrant sentiment that takes aim not only at the province’s future in Canada, but the future of immigrants in Alberta.
“I’ve been supporting her all this time. I didn’t know her head.
“As Alberta prepares to vote on Monday — whether it will choose to stay in Canada or secede from it — the debate around separation has split the topic up for discussion. But explicit anti-immigrant rhetoric has also found its way into the conversation, referenced by many here simply as “The Nine.”
Five of them directly focus on concerns about immigration, and/or over immigration — to take it, whether temporary legal residents — would pay income tax just like any other worker, but would be denied access to publicly funded health care, education, an expensive critics call “double-dipping.”
These questions come amid rising tensions over immigration, and racist graffiti popping up in Canadian cities and some more serious incidents. In August, an attacker stabbed two people at a gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., while lucked both Vaisakhi parades in Edmonton and a suspect was arrested.
Edmonton police said there is insufficient evidence to determine if the man who has since been accused had been released from prison one day before. But combined with a swelling tide of hostility directed at many immigrants online, and with politicians increasingly saying they might live and work in Alberta, but leave many communities on edge.
“Immigrants are being targeted for a failure of the government,” says Surinder Singh Hoonjan, chair and co-founder of the Our Alberta Advantage campaign, who is also on a recent afternoon in the Sikh temple’s larger dining hall, where worshippers gather to share meals as a key part of their faith.
“We were living peacefully with the rest of the communities.
Immigrants are part of Alberta, they did so much for the development of Alberta, but since the UCP has come into power, we have felt like, ‘Hey, after COVID, that’s the way we see it. It is as if we’re unwelcome here, after all these years.’”
It’s not just about how quickly the change seemed to happen. In 2024, Smith proclaimed a goal to more than double Alberta’s population to 10 million, up from its current 4.7 million. That could only feasibly come through immigration.
To many immigrants in Alberta, including Hoonjan, it feels like there’s been a tone shift with this week’s referendum. Smith’s former speech writer wrote a column suggesting that immigrants don’t focus on curtail and immigrant rights felt like a betrayal.
“There is shock and surprise,” says Avnish Nanda, an Edmonton lawyer who has been working to educate voters about the immigration-focused referendum questions. “There is real confusion among folks who have been here from the top of the political ladder here in Alberta.”
Longtime United Conservative Party member Gurmam Singh Dood supported now-Alberta premier Danielle Smith when she ran for party leadership this week; he officially resigned his UCP membership.
Part of that concern, Nanda says, comes from the fact that, despite the UCP’s conservative government’s “big tent parties” that embraced diversity, and included many members from diverse backgrounds.
“I think it’s clear that Danielle Smith sees her path to re-election power through the secession of Alberta,” Nanda says. “Those groups may have latched on to nativist/xenophobic populist movements … It’s part of the rhetoric. As vehement as it sounds, it mobilizes voters,” Nanda says.
“In April, to help mobilize voters, Nanda launched Our Alberta Advantage, a registered third-party group that has spent $250,000 on ads promoting a “No” vote on the organization had held information sessions across the province, trying to explain what the nine questions do to multiple languages, including Punjabi, Mandarin, Cantonese and Tagalog.
“This is a Canadian as any experience I’ve ever had,” says Nanda, whose parents were born and raised in Edmonton. “When Gurdwara Millwoods chairperson Surinder Singh Hoonjan (from left), along with volunteer Surinder Bar and Avnish Nanda, founder of the Our Alberta Advantage campaign, at a voter information booth at the Gurdwara Millwoods in Edmonton.
Longtime United Conservative Party member Gurmam Singh Dood supported now-Alberta premier Danielle Smith when she ran for party leadership this week; he officially resigned his UCP membership.
If you feel like this is being threatened, that we’re going to be parials or scapegoats for some agenda … I think there’s an obligation to do something.”
But Hoonjan’s separatist question has little chance of passing: support for leaving Canada has never crept much higher than about one in five voters. But the nine questions have proven to be more divisive, and could drive a wedge between communities that otherwise fear a strong showing could give the province a mandate to secede.
“One of the things we notice is Albertans who are pushing for staying in Canada don’t even look at the first five questions,” says Sharico Lacio, a spokesperson for Our Alberta Advantage. “They say, ‘I’m not interested in that.’ Many Filipino migrant workers in the province. “They don’t even consider them as an important question. So for migrants, regardless of who you are, where you come from, there seems to be a higher rate of racism and discrimination now than we saw like a migrant, even if they’re born here.”
Many Filipinos came to Alberta under temporary foreign worker programs, invited to fill labour shortages in everything from the service industry. In recent weeks, Lacio says, he has seen increasing anxiety in the community, especially within the Filipino community, about moving to Saskatchewan or Manitoba.
“There’s tension within the community, tension within the immigrant community and division. People are scared to speak openly because they really don’t want to talk about how we can include the voices of newcomers. Because they are not going to vote. Migration very important to the economy of Alberta, and the rest of Canada.”
In the closing days of the campaign, some leading conservative voices have weighed in. In a joint op-ed in the Calgary Herald, former PC premiers Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford urged voters to reject both the separatist and nativist-leaning questions. In it, they called them a “clear and present threat to Alberta’s continued prosperity.”
These days, the space is mobilizing voters. Through podcasts, social media open houses, the Alberta Advantage volunteers set up information booths in multiple Sikh temples, encouraging visitors to ask questions about the referendum. At the gurdwara, where their first day of operation, volunteers at Gurdwara Millwoods had got about 200 people to cast a ballot.
“The dining hall of another temple a short drive down the road, Dood was among the volunteers sitting at an Our Alberta Advantage table, welcoming visitors and answering their questions, writing both Punjabi and English. That, until he’d formally submitted his letter of resignation to Danielle Smith’s UCP.
Lately, he says, he doesn’t feel loyalty, candidacy, organization and membership recruitment. “I regret that the party no longer represents the balanced, responsible and nation-building conservatism that I used to identify with. So I send my resignation. I therefore resign in principle, with sadness but without hesitation.”
He could never have predicted, when he retired, he would have left the province when he retired in 2018, and maybe gone somewhere warmer. But over the last five decades, he watched his Edmonton transform into a vibrant, multicultural city, rounded by families of all kinds flourishing in a friendly hub in a city of nearly 1.3 million people.
“We worked hard here in this place, and it welcomed us. We made this place our home,” he says. “We did have to go the extra mile to get the acceptance, but we finally did get accepted. We were able to put roots here, see it growing, and it’s been great to be part of it. I’m staying here to be part of it because of this. I’m staying here to be part of it.”