The Joyful Dinos created a tool to help unpack the referendum questions. Read and share. A downloadable file is below.
Note that the first five questions scapegoat immigrants. And the last constitutional questions are, according to Mount Royal political scientist Duane Bratt, “stealth separation.” That is by answering yest to these questions one is effectively creating separatist initiatives while potentially voting Yes to stay in Canada.
Make copies of our Referendum Question Guide and share with friends.
It is no accident that the first four of the nine UCP Referendum questions scapegoat immigrants.
Do you wonder who is leading this government? Many of the ultra right followers hold White Supremacist views. But the Premier’s Office itself, the center of power, shelters a highly paid UCP worker Bruce McCallister who tweets support for the extremist German AfD party.
The German Chancellor recently accused the AdF of “ethnic cleansing.”
McCallister is on a first name basis with the co-leader of the AdF. Though he claims, after the fact, that he doesn’t support all of the AdF policies. But the AdF economic plan and their immigration policies are intimately linked.
McCallister’s walk back is a bit disengenuous. Imagine someone making laudatory comments about the Klu Klux Klan and then saying their afirmation didn’t extend to their racial policies when their key to their raison d’etre is White Supremacy.
Your tax dollars pay this bureaucrat $188,000. He must be fired or resign. Stay tuned for a petititon to this end.
Don Braid, a Calgary Herald journalist, wrote that a social media post by the Executive Director in UCP Premier Danielle Smith’s office provides:
a “harsh perspective” on these referendum questions. It’s also nostalgic for the glory days of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, a feeling not shared by the French, whose own right-wing leaders have disowned Alternative for Germany. The party is aligned with the Kremlin against Ukraine. Why any Alberta government official would want to tweet into this ideological cauldron is beyond understanding. McAllister, however, offered praise. He even assumes first-name terms with the co-leader of the German party, Alice Weidel. On the weekend, McAllister posted on X: “Finally someone on a major stage saying it out loud instead of hiding behind slogans. Shout it from the rooftops please Alice!” (*Full text of Don Braid’s column below).
Patrick Mercier writes on the Alberta Never 51/Never UCP facebook page:
“What is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s response to her executive director praising Germany’s extremist AFD party?
Bruce McAllister is the Executive Director of the Office of the Premier of Alberta. Not a backbencher. Not some staffer running a social media account. The Executive Director. He draws $188,000 a year from your taxes, and yesterday he used his verified public account to praise Alice Weidel and the AfD.
So let’s be very clear about what the Executive Director of Danielle Smith’s office is publicly celebrating.
The AfD was classified as a “proven right-wing extremist” organization by Germany’s own domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, in May 2025. Not by activists. Not by political opponents. By the agency whose job is to identify threats to Germany’s constitutional democracy.
Björn Höcke, one of the AfD’s most prominent figures, has been convicted and fined twice for using a banned SA slogan at party rallies. The SA was Hitler’s paramilitary. German courts found he used the phrase deliberately. Twice.
Alexander Gauland, former AfD co-leader, publicly called Hitler and the Nazi era “just a speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”
In November 2023, senior AfD officials attended a secret meeting in Potsdam where the agenda included mass deportation of immigrants and German citizens of immigrant descent. Correctiv, one of Germany’s most respected investigative outlets, broke the story. It put over a million Germans in the streets in protest.
The party’s official platform declares “Islam does not belong in Germany.” Not radical Islam. Not Islamist terrorism. Islam.
Alice Weidel, the leader McAllister is praising by name, defended her own past reference to immigrants being “disposed of.”
This is not a conservative party. This is a party that Germany’s own government surveils as a threat to democracy. A party whose leaders use Nazi slogans from the podium and shrug off the Holocaust as a footnote.
And when Andrew Coyne pushed back, McAllister didn’t pause, didn’t clarify, didn’t walk it back. He doubled down and dismissed the criticism as “Laurentian elite” posturing. The same deflection this government reaches for every single time someone gets caught saying the quiet part out loud.
So here’s the question Danielle Smith needs to answer: what is the Executive Director of your office doing publicly endorsing a party that Germany classifies as extremist, and what are you going to do about it?
Because silence is an answer too. If McAllister still has his job tomorrow, Albertans are entitled to ask whether this reflects a staff problem or a values problem in the Premier’s Office.
Last year Bruce McCallister made shameful comments and cut the microphone to a young Albertan respectfully raising a question at the UCP “consultative” travelling panel
Student Silenced at UCP Town Hall What were they thinking? Danielle Smith’s UCP government is being roasted after a high school student had his mic cut at an Alberta Next town hall. Even worse, moderator Bruce McAllister suggested the student should be spanked (seriously). Thoughts? WATCH THE FULL SEGMENT: https://rtrj.info/100125ABNext Subscribe to Real Talk Ryan Jespersen on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. #abpoli#ableg
Well, this puts Premier Danielle Smith’s immigration referendum questions in a harsh new light.
The executive director of her office, Bruce McAllister, has praised and cheered a far-right, anti-immigrant party in Germany.
After swamping a state election, Alternative for Germany stands on the verge of gaining national power.
Among many other things, this party proposes mass deportation of immigrants.
It’s also nostalgic for the glory days of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, a feeling not shared by the French, whose own right-wing leaders have disowned Alternative for Germany.
The party is aligned with the Kremlin against Ukraine.
Why any Alberta government official would want to tweet into this ideological cauldron is beyond understanding.
McAllister, however, offered praise. He even assumes first-name terms with the co-leader of the German party, Alice Weidel.
On the weekend, McAllister posted on X: “Finally someone on a major stage saying it out loud instead of hiding behind slogans. Shout it from the rooftops please Alice!
“You can’t run a welfare state, bring in millions who need support and keep energy prices this high without the books blowing up.
“It’s also tearing up the social fabric and native culture. People are waking up.
“Now watch the mainstream media ignore all of it — while twisting themselves into pretzels labelling her alt-right.”
We don’t have to twist very hard. Alternative for Germany is half-Nazi on its own record.
The party calls for mass deportation under the name “remigration.” It aims to end “illegal, culturally alien and anti-indigenous mass immigration.”
In this case, “indigenous” is best defined as “good German.”
U.S. President Donald Trump was pleased. Various MAGA figures were delirious. Elon Musk celebrated the victory.
Then there’s the Alberta guy who runs many of Smith’s public relations drives and has significant influence on government policy.
To be clear, McAllister doesn’t endorse these extreme immigration policies, but he echoes the lingo and repeats the trope about immigrants wrecking the social order.
His comment — “Tearing up the social fabric and native culture” — sure doesn’t refer to First Nations.
Immediately under attack, McAllister dismissed critics as the “Laurentian elite.”
In response to one, he said, “I pointed at unsustainable welfare, mass migration and energy prices. Call me out on those points if you like, but please, no need to hyperventilate.”
We are entitled to a deep breath, at least.
The referendum set for Oct. 19 features four tough government questions aimed at limiting immigration and curbing costs.
First, the UCP asks if Alberta should gain control of all immigration.
Next, Albertans are asked if rights to health care, education and other social services should be taken from those who aren’t Canadian citizens, permanent residents or holders of Alberta-approved immigration status.
Another question seeks support for denying provincial programs to non-permanent residents living in Alberta for less than a year.
Finally, the UCP floats charging fees for non-permanent residents to access health care and education.
All this is a reaction, as McAllister himself suggested, to the absurd open immigration policy of former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
That put serious pressure on budgets and fostered ill-will toward many immigrants.
The hyper-immigration period is over, but it leaves behind bitterness that the UCP is exploiting with these referendum questions.
Businessman and philanthropist Brett Wilson tweeted what I believe is the long-standing view of many Albertans.
“Immigration is a wonderful way for the world to mingle — to educate — and help others. Not for invasion.”
The issue is delicate and divisive. The referendum questions already raise doubts about the UCP’s deeper intentions. For instance, are they meant to please the separatists in Smith’s party?
Painting an extremist German party as part of the answer is both revealing and deeply troubling.
