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Alberta Called, People Came, and Now Cities Are Stuck Carrying the Costs

Municipalities saw populations boom. But the province is scaling back funding

In 2024, Premier Danielle Smith took to the Shaun Newman Podcast to argue Alberta needed to “aggressively” increase its population to fight Ottawa. Alberta should double to 10 million from 5 million, Smith said, to “actually have the political clout in Alberta that we deserve.”

Alberta’s cities have grown, but provincial investment in municipal infrastructure hasn’t

Danielle Smith’s government is ramping up use of municipal taxes to pay provincial bills

Concerns are being raised over how Alberta’s electoral map will be redrawn amid the growth

Programs to entice people were already underway. The Alberta is Calling campaign, started under Jason Kenney in 2022 but continued under Smith, marketed Alberta as a retreat from expensive Canada. If you live in Toronto, Hamilton, or Vancouver, you likely remember the tag line: “Bigger paycheques. Smaller rent cheques.”

Alberta welcomed more than 200,000 people in 2023, and nearly 700,000 moved to the province between 2021 and 2025. Nearly all of these newcomers settled in cities, where eight in ten Albertans live. But provincial investment into city and municipal infrastructure continues to move in the opposite direction. Adjusted for inflation, municipalities have watched government money halved, from $635 per person in 2009 to $327 in 2023. When population increases, the provincial government sees its revenues climb through income taxes, but municipalities experience the opposite—more demand, but insufficient or delayed help, all while inflation only grows. The net result is that many municipal councils have been repeatedly forced to increase property taxes since at least 2019 to maintain basic infrastructure, such as water, roads, and fire halls.

This February, before the United Conservative Party released its 2026 budget—that included a deeply unpopular $9.4 billion deficit to pay for growth yet avoid new taxes—Smith took to the airwaves again for a special announcement. Absent was her earlier call for Alberta to grow aggressively, replaced by grievances. Ottawa had thrown “the doors open to anyone and everyone across the globe,” Smith said, and they had come to Alberta.

She then announced a referendum, in October, that will ask Albertans nine questions about immigration, access to government services for non-permanent residents, and the province’s relationship with Canada. “The fact is, Alberta taxpayers can no longer be asked to continue to subsidize the entire country through equalization and federal transfers, permit the federal government to flood our borders with new arrivals and then........

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