Albertans preparing to vote in October’s provincial referendum are being encouraged to read the questions ahead of time, after academics identified several examples of wording that can make voters stop, reread and reconsider what they are being asked.
The 10 questions cover issues including immigration, access to provincially funded programs, voting requirements, constitutional reform and Alberta’s relationship with Canada.
Nine are yes-or-no questions, while the 10th asks voters to choose between remaining a province of Canada or beginning the legal process required to hold a future binding referendum on separation.
Elections Alberta says its staff will not be able to explain what any of the questions mean or what the government intended by them at voting locations.
“We’re really encouraging Albertans to read those questions in advance and work to understand those questions in advance before they come into the voting locations,” said Michelle Gurney, a spokesperson for Elections Alberta.
“Because beyond having the posters and information about what the questions are, we won’t be able to offer any explanation on what the questions mean or the intent of the questions.”
That has prompted questions about how easily the wording can be understood, particularly for voters who may not have a strong background in politics, law or government.
‘People will have to backtrack’
Dennis Storoshenko, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Calgary, said the issue is not necessarily the reading level of the questions, but the complexity of the sentences themselves.
He told CTV News his work looks at how people process language, adding that some of the referendum questions are structured in ways that can interfere with the way people naturally process a sentence.
Specifically, there are identifiable features in the wording that can make some questions more difficult to process, particularly when sentences contain multiple clauses or lengthy phrases that can be interpreted in more than one way.
“Every human, when they’re listening to or reading sentences, they’re trying to guess the structure in advance,” Storoshenko said.
“So, what we see with some of these questions is that they’re structured in such a way that those guesses are going to go off the rails a little bit, and so people will have to backtrack when they’re trying to understand the questions.”
One example, he noted, is the repeated construction used in Questions 6 through 9, which uses the phrase: “Do you support the Government of Alberta…”
Storoshenko said the wording can initially lead a reader to interpret “the Government of Alberta” as the thing they are being asked whether they support.
“As soon as you read the words, ‘do you support,’ you want to figure out ‘what’ you support,” he said.
“So, the Government of Alberta, just framed as itself is something I can support, and then you hear that next ‘ING’ word and you realize, oh, wait that wasn’t the thing I’m trying to support. Now I’ve got to reevaluate.”
He said a small change could make the structure easier to process.
“You could fix that pretty easily just by saying, do you support the government of ‘Alberta’s working with’ and then all of a sudden, your brain realizes ‘oh’ that verb is the thing I’m trying to get to, not the Government of Alberta right away” Storoshenko said.
That is an issue he says has less to do with a person’s intelligence or political knowledge and more to do with how the brain processes sentence structure.
“We’re not even actually just kind of putting the bricks together as we encounter them, but we’re guessing where the next brick is going to go,” he said.
Storoshenko also identified wording he described as unnecessary, pointing to Question 7, which asks about abolishing the “unelected federal Senate.”
“The word ‘unelected’ is redundant because there is only one Senate,” he said.
He compared it for example to describing a vehicle as “the blue car” when there is only one car being discussed.
Ambiguity in immigration question
Storoshenko pointed to Question 4 in which he describes confusion over what the province is specifically asking when using the words ‘to’ and ‘for’ as modifiers.
Question 4 is as follows:
“Assuming that all Canadian citizens and permanent residents continue to qualify for public health care and education as they do now, do you support the Government of Alberta charging a reasonable fee or premium to individuals with a non-permanent immigration status living in Alberta for their and their family’s use of the healthcare and education systems?”
“So that ‘for’ you would imagine is probably trying to modify the fee or the premium, but they’ve placed it after ‘residing in Alberta,’ so that creates a structural ambiguity where you don’t know whether that ‘for’ is meant to be modifying the people or the fee,” Storoshenko said.
“And so that’s another place where people could be tripping up and trying to figure out, okay, what are you actually asking?”
He said the wording could also be particularly challenging for people who are learning English as a second language.
“I could imagine they would have that much more difficulty, figuring out what’s actually going on in those questions,” he said.
‘Can you read that again, please?’
David Jardine, a retired professor of education at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education, said he also found himself rereading the questions.
“I kept saying to my academic colleagues over and over — ‘can you read that again, please?’ — when we were looking at all of these questions,” Jardine said.
“For most of the questions you really have to start from the beginning again and try to get all the conditionals to get it straight.”
Jardine said the language and terminology were difficult to process quickly, noting that his main concern is what could happen to voters encountering the questions for the first time inside a polling station.
“I hope somebody isn’t going to walk into a polling booth having not read these things at all and then trying to read them and understand them and answer them in the way they want to answer them,” Jardine said.
He also pointed to what he described as conditional wording.
“Sometimes it would be a double negative,” he said.
“Do you want the province to ‘not’ do this? Do you want the province having ‘not’ done this, to do this then, or stuff like that.”
Jardine added that some of the terminology used throughout the referendum is also difficult to process quickly, including references to the Canadian Constitution, permanent residents, provincially funded programs, King’s Bench, the Court of Appeal and federal interference.
“It’s legible, but it’s not legible quickly,” he said.
“And for the average person that can be a very complex thing.”
Province points voters to website
When asked about concerns regarding the complexity of some of the referendum questions, the Alberta government says it has information available for voters online.
In a statement, Sam Blackett, director of media relations and press secretary to Premier Danielle Smith, said Albertans should visit the government’s referendum website.
“We encourage Albertans to visit albertareferendum2026.ca where they can view the 10 ballot questions and access information on these important issues to inform their vote,” Blackett said.
Bradley LaFortune, executive director of Public Interest Alberta, said he believes the wording goes beyond being complicated.
“When it comes to this referendum, I think it’s very, intentionally misleading and confusing,” LaFortune said.
“The government of Alberta has the responsibility to clearly articulate what the impacts could be, on the province, on our institutions and on Albertans,” he said.
LaFortune said his organization has since been trying to fill what he sees as an information gap by providing Albertans with accessible information ahead of the vote.
He said Public Interest Alberta is speaking directly with Albertans and holding events intended to help people understand what they are being asked to vote on.
LaFortune also questioned whether the government would provide the kind of public education he believes is needed before Oct. 19, saying Albertans are looking for information about issues such as affordability, the economy, health care and education.
Public Interest Alberta is campaigning against the referendum questions and plans to continue providing information to voters before the vote.