Newcomers vs. born-and-raised Albertans: Turns out, they're not all that different

Amid a population surge last fall, Premier Danielle Smith delivered a televised address to the province, in which she rolled out the welcome mat — with a caveat.

"Alberta has always welcomed newcomers," Smith declared, "who possess our shared values."

The second part of that line drew some criticism as at the time, in the context of her government's simultaneous opposition to a federal plan to locate asylum seekers more evenly across the country, including more in Alberta. Smith was accused, by some, of "fuelling xenophobia" and "stigmatizing newcomers."

Regardless of how you view that particular line in that particular address, Smith's comment touches on a longer standing view among many Albertans, dating back to population booms of decades' past.

Conservatives have long fretted that international and interprovincial migrants will bring with them a tidal wave of views — and votes — at odds with traditional, right-leaning Alberta values. Some progressives, meanwhile, have been wishing and hoping for the day that happens.

So far, it hasn't.

And it likely won't, says pollster Janet Brown, even with the latest wave of people moving to the province.

"It's a widely held belief that newer Albertans are different, but the data has never borne that out," said Brown, who recently conducted a wide-ranging survey for CBC News that examined the beliefs and perspectives of people in this province.

The results were in line with polls she had done in years past; overall, Brown has found very little difference in opinion between Albertans who have lived all or most of their lives in the province and those who have moved here from elsewhere.

When it comes to many beliefs, in fact, the two groups are virtually indistinguishable.

Value statements

This most recent poll asked Albertans whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of value statements on a range of topics and issues.

You can see for yourself in the chart below just how similar the responses were.

Albertans who have always or mostly lived in the province are seen in the left-hand column, while Albertans who moved here from elsewhere are in the right-hand column.

These results may come as a surprise to many Albertans, but not Brown.

As a pollster, she says the lack of difference between these two groups has been apparent for some time, even if others didn't believe it.

"In the past I'd have liberal friends and they'd say, 'Well, if we just wait for enough people to move from Ontario, then Alberta will become liberal,'" Brown said.

That has yet to materialize, she said, because "the people who move from Ontario aren't a random, representative sample of people who live there."

"Sometimes we find that new Albertans are more stereotypical than people who were born here," Brown said.

'Middle of the road'

Faith Zachar didn't know much about Alberta when she moved here from Ontario in 1968, apart from the fact that it sounded like a more conservative place than she was used to.

She had met a born-and-raised Albertan, who would later become her husband, in Guelph, Ont., where he was studying veterinary medicine. She later moved to be with him in Nanton, Alta., where he had opened up a practice.

In 1969, the couple moved a bit further south, to Pincher Creek, where they still live and run the practice to this day.

When they first met, she says she found her husband to be more conservative-minded, while she was more liberal in her political views.

But after 57 years in small-town Alberta, Zachar says she and her husband agree on a lot of things, and she generally doesn't find the people in and around Pincher Creek all that different from those she grew up with in the small town of Carleton Place, Ont.

"Some are very fanatically conservative — and that was true in Ontario, too — and some are more liberal," she said. "Most are just middle of the road."

Stereotypes vs. lived experience

Thomas Ambrozitis is a more recent transplant, having moved to Calgary from Toronto just three years ago, in large part to be closer to the mountains.

He says his first impression of the city was that it was more conservative in its politics than he was used to back in Ontario, but as time went on, he saw more and more similarities, too.

"The short version would be: At the end of the day, we're all humans," Ambrozitis said. "And so, the same concerns, the same issues, the same cares and enthusiasms — I see them in the people that I meet here, just as I would in Ontario."

His own stereotypes about Calgarians started to disintegrate, he said, once he realized how Calgarians have their own stereotypes about Torontonians — in particular that they see themselves as "the centre of the universe."

"I kind of want to say to people, 'Have you ever asked someone from Toronto if they feel like the centre of the universe? Because my sense is: I don't. And so it's interesting because, to me, there's a story about Torontonians that Torontonians may not actually experience," he said.

"So to flip that, I've kind of been like, 'Oh, Well, I have a story about Calgarians that Calgarians may not have about themselves either.'"

'Resistance is futile'

Several years ago, Brown says she delved deeper into some of her polling data, which included a question for people who had moved to Alberta, about how long they had lived in the province. 

"I tried to figure out: How long do you have to be in Alberta before you're indistinguishable from somebody who was born here? And I sort of came to the conclusion it was about seven years," she said.

"After about seven years, resistance is futile. Even if you come here and you decide you don't want not to be a stereotypical Alberta, you are going to be one."

Of course, none of this is to say every single person who moves here ends up being conservative in their mindset and their voting patterns. It just means that, on aggregate, the newcomers have ended up statistically akin to the born-and-raised Albertans, in terms of their values and beliefs.

Or, as Brown puts it: "It's a stereotype to think people are going to come to Alberta and change Alberta. People come to Alberta because Alberta makes sense to them."

EDITOR'S NOTE: CBC News commissioned this public opinion research to be conducted immediately following the federal election and leading into the second anniversary of the United Conservative Party's provincial election win in May 2023. 

As with all polls, this one provides a snapshot in time.

This analysis is one in a series of articles from this research.

Methodology:

The CBC News random survey of 1,200 Albertans was conducted using a hybrid method from May 7 to 21, 2025, by Edmonton-based Trend Research under the direction of Janet Brown Opinion Research. The sample is representative of regional, age and gender factors. The margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. For subsets, the margin of error is larger.

The survey used a hybrid methodology that involved contacting survey respondents by telephone and giving them the option of completing the survey at that time, at another more convenient time, or receiving an email link and completing the survey online. Trend Research contacted people using a random list of numbers, consisting of 40 per cent landlines and 60 per cent cellphone numbers. Telephone numbers were dialled up to five times at five different times of day before another telephone number was added to the sample. The response rate among valid numbers (i.e., residential and personal) was 12.8 per cent.