Do Alberta’s temporary residents pay little tax, reap lots of benefits? We asked economists

The province has been sharing a lot of big dollar figures in the lead-up to the Oct. 19 referendum — many of them supporting the claim that temporary residents pay little in taxes compared to what they get out of provincially funded public and social services.

“For every $1 of taxes a guest worker generates, taxpayers are covering $10 in services. This is not sustainable,” one social media post from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith reads.

The provincial government says it estimates the total provincial taxes paid annually by temporary residents to be $150 million. It estimates the same group costs the province over $1 billion annually in health, education and other social services.

The province clarified to CBC News via an emailed statement that the $150 million figure only reflects the income taxes paid to the province by non-permanent residents in Alberta. 

But since that figure does not include federal income taxes paid by non-permanent residents, economists specializing in tax policy and public finance say that calculation doesn’t capture the full picture.

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Gillian Petit, an economist at the University of Calgary, studies tax and transfer policies in Canada and Alberta, focusing on groups that are overlooked in tax discussions. She says it’s critical to consider federal income tax contributions in these comparisons because Ottawa gives a portion of federal income tax to the province through federal transfers, which then help fund public services.

Crunching the numbers herself, Petit estimates that in 2025, non-permanent residents in Alberta paid at least $835 million in provincial and federal taxes.

And Petit says $835 million is likely a conservative estimate, because it only accounts for working age, non-permanent residents and relies on 2020 incomes and 2020 dollars (so it does not include wage growth or inflation since then).

Gillian Petit, an economist at the University of Calgary, studies tax and transfer policies in Canada and Alberta, focusing on groups that are overlooked in tax discussions. (Submitted by Gillian Petit)

Her calculation also leaves out payroll taxes such as the Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance contributions, and sales taxes such as the GST, fuel and other commodity taxes, and property taxes, which non-permanent residents also pay.

“I think people need these numbers … to be able to make a good decision on the referendum,” Petit said. “Social media posts are only so long and you can [only] stick so much in them. It's really important to qualify a lot of those numbers.”

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Ron Kneebone, a professor emeritus in economics at the University of Calgary, says it’s also important to remember that temporary residents are subject to the same tax rules as Canadian citizens and permanent residents, under Canada’s progressive income tax system.

“The tax system is blind to your religion, your skin colour, your date of arrival in Alberta,” Kneebone says.

That means tax rates are split up into income brackets. The higher a bracket someone is in, the more in taxes they pay — and that’s true regardless of immigration status.

Ron Kneebone, a professor emeritus in economics at the University of Calgary, pictured here in 2018. (Robson Fletcher/CBC)

“When the government tells you that newly arrived immigrants are paying much less in taxes than they are receiving in terms of government services, I just want to emphasize to you that that's true for every single adult Albertan,” Kneebone said.

He said the government’s messaging is “a little bit disingenuous.” 

The premier’s office did not respond to CBC’s question on why temporary residents' federal tax contributions are not included in the province's estimates.

How much do temporary residents cost in public, social services?

Then, there’s the $1-billion figure: the provincial government’s stated cost of providing health, education and social services to temporary residents.

Using Statistics Canada data, the province based its calculations on having an estimated 281,857 non-permanent residents in Alberta as of the fourth quarter of last year. This number has since been updated by the federal agency to around 292,000.

Alberta Education estimated “the operational cost of providing education to the approximately 45,544 children of temporary residents to be $600 million.”

The remaining $400 million is attributed to health care, but the government’s referendum website notes “health costs are less precise to track.”

The province arrived at that number by reviewing “direct costs they track and found that 1.27 per cent of costs was for temporary workers and international students,” who make up the bulk of non-permanent residents. 

Non-permanent residents made up about 5.8 per cent of Alberta’s total population at the end of 2025.

The “non-permanent resident” category includes those on work, study and other temporary permits, plus asylum seekers — the latter group receives limited access to health care through a federal program, not a provincial one.

Are ‘guest workers’ getting $10 in services for every $1 they pay in taxes?

On the province’s claim that taxpayers cover $10 for every $1 a “guest worker” pays, a government spokesperson said it included “increased capital costs such as [school] spaces for approximately 45,544 children of temporary residents” in its calculation.

“For example, the province is spending $8.6 billion to build and renovate more than 100 schools across the province,” the spokesperson said.

“Given 45,000 additional students of temporary residents have [come] to our province, this requires larger spending on school capital needs.”

For every $1 of taxes a guest worker generates, taxpayers are covering $10 in services. This is not sustainable. Albertans have paid into their schools, hospitals and services their whole lives. It should be there for them when they need it. That is why Albertans are backing our referendum questions on changes to immigration. This poll shows a supermajority now want Alberta setting its own immigration levels and ensuring that guest workers contribute to the costs they incur in our health care and education systems. Just as any Albertan would expect if they were a guest in another country. Read the fully story: https://t.co/VjYEpLKn2J

—ABDanielleSmith

Petit says the challenge in quantifying how much non-permanent residents reap in services is that the exact data on costs is not publicly available — if it is collected at all. But, she says, the numbers can be put into context.

For example, temporary residents typically skew younger than the rest of Canada’s population, so “it's also likely that their use of health care is lower than Canadian citizens, again, on a per person basis,” Petit said.

Statistics Canada reported about 60 per cent of non-permanent residents were between 20 and 34 years old, based on the 2021 census.

Petit points out that non-permanent residents are not eligible for all the same provincially-funded social support programs that citizens and permanent residents are, and are therefore paying into a system that does not allow them to access certain supports. Take Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped and Family Support for Children with Disabilities as two examples.

And while work and study permit holders and asylum claimants may be eligible for the Alberta Child and Family Benefit, they must first qualify for the federal Canada Child Benefit, which requires that someone has lived in Canada for 18 consecutive months, according to Petit’s report with the Muttart Foundation.

“Roughly speaking, our income taxes that we pay in Alberta cover about half the cost of health care. So again, am I [a Canadian citizen or permanent resident] somehow a slacker because my taxes don't cover the cost of health care, never mind education, social assistance?” Kneebone said.

“No, that's just the way the system is set up. And we are fortunate in Alberta and able to access a lot of oil and gas royalties that can pay the difference.”