As the Trump administration continues its unconstitutional assault on immigrants and spirals ever-closer to full-blown fascism, Canada’s premiers have pulled together in order to face down the growing threat it poses. Well, most of them have. Not content with one national unity crisis, it seems, Danielle Smith has decided to provoke yet another one with a series of referendum questions, four of which will directly measure the amount of empathy Albertans are willing to extend to immigrants. If there’s a Pandora’s Box she hasn’t opened yet, it’s not for a lack of trying. 

Thursday’s Premier’s address to the province featured the usual firehose of half-truths and exaggerations about oil and gas, and it very predictably blamed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who, remember, hasn’t been in power for more than a year — for her province’s troubles. But there was something new in it as well: some very Trumpian language about “open-border immigration policies” and their supposed impact on Alberta. “Although sustainable immigration has always been an important part of our provincial growth model,” she said, “throwing the doors wide open to anyone and everyone across the globe has flooded our classrooms, emergency rooms, and social support systems with far too many people far too quickly.”

Rather than facing down the very real threat of Trumpism, her province will now spend the next eight months discussing all the ways that Canada and its immigration policies have........

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