It doesn’t take much to see how badly Premier Danielle Smith’s broadside against immigrants in Alberta could go. 

Smith, in case you hadn’t heard, is demonizing immigrants and temporary residents as a drain on the Alberta economy. In classic Smith fashion, she is blaming former prime minister Justin Trudeau for what she calls his “open borders” policy that is now straining Alberta’s health care and educational systems to the max. 

Smith hasn’t backed her claims with any studies or statistics. And as my colleague Max Fawcett points out, she has conveniently forgotten the fact that she herself asked Trudeau for more immigration in 2024.

Across Canada, there is a disheartening turn of public sentiment against immigrants, driven largely by the housing crisis and the unending economic turmoil caused by the US tariff war. Almost three quarters of Canadians now believe immigration should be reduced. 

When the economy is wobbly, food prices are soaring, and housing costs are still out of reach for so many, it might not take much for an even uglier turn. It already has in parts of Europe where waves of refugees have turned the public against migrants and fueled a resurgence of right-wing political parties. 

Closer to home in the US, we are watching a veritable crusade unfold against undocumented migrants, some of whom had been allowed to live and work there for decades. 

Only when two US citizens protesting US President Donald Trump's migrant purge were shot and killed by immigration enforcement agents did the tide start to turn. But for me — and many goodhearted Americans — the arrest of a five-year-old boy was equally hard to stomach.

The Alberta premier's anti-immigrant campaign is an assault on Canada's benevolent national identity. If Alberta wants to benefit from Canada — they are asking for a new pipeline after all — they must act like Canadians.

As incredible as it seems, the preschooler, wearing a fuzzy blue bunny hat and carrying a Spider-Man backpack, was snatched from his home last month by heavily armed, masked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers during a raid in Minneapolis. The boy’s father, a migrant from Ecuador who had come to the US seeking asylum in 2024, was also arrested and detained.

Video shot by witnesses to the arrest caused a national furor and when the case landed before a judge, he pulled no punches in his condemnation of ICE tactics. “Observing human behaviour confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” wrote US District Judge Fred Biery as he ordered the two be released. Those words bear repeating. “Bereft of human decency.”

There is a mean streak of nasty underlying the actions of ICE that emanates right from the president himself. Trump routinely belittles people, particularly women he doesn’t like on the basis of their looks, calling one journalist “piggy” and most recently, chastising another for never smiling. He has denigrated US soldiers who died in battles directed by the US government as “losers” and “suckers.” 

But Trump reserves the very worst of his vitriol for migrants and immigrants, unless, of course, they are white Afrikaners wanting out of South Africa. He leveled a blatantly racist smear against all immigrants from Somalia, labeling them “garbage” who contribute nothing to the US.

Just as a nasty boss inevitably poisons a workplace environment, when a country’s leader unabashedly exhibits such callousness, it gives licence to those who serve him to act the same way. A swan song essay by David Brooks for the New York Times was a lament for the moral dissolution of the US which he believes has become "a sadder, meaner and more pessimistic country.” 

“Trump is nihilism personified, with his assumption that morality is for suckers, that life is about power, force, bullying and cruelty,” Brooks wrote.

This is the antithesis of how we in Canada have traditionally liked to see ourselves — the core of the difference, really, between us and them. So when Trump and US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent say Canadians want to join the US because they “want what the US has got,” I have my doubts.

Canadians have always taken pride in our country’s generosity and kindness. We opened our arms to Ismailis kicked out of Uganda by dictator Idi Amin in the 1970s. We welcomed refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after the end of the Vietnam War. We granted Chinese scholars permission to stay in Canada after the Tiananmen Square massacre and have accepted more than 100,000 refugees from Syria since 2015. Our border services agents do not wear masks. They most definitely do not patrol neighbourhoods with automatic weapons looking for people here illegally. And I like to think most Canadians want to keep it that way.

Smith seems bent on trying to change our benevolent ethos. And I can only hope that with this latest anti-immigrant campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney will draw the line. If Alberta wants to benefit from Canada — they are asking for a new pipeline after all — they must act like Canadians. 

While he can be fairly criticized for some of his policy choices, Carney appears to be a compassionate and decent human being. Now, he must stand up for what is right and call out Smith's anti-immigrant rhetoric as the assault against Canadian values that it is. 

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