---
title: God's Referendum
description: What if Alberta’s referendum questions were about God? A satirical rewrite of all 10, plus what the estimated $130M could have funded.
image: https://shaneyu.art/hubfs/Voting%20in%20a%20church%201.jpg
---
[Skip to content](https://shaneyu.art/portraits-1/gods-referendum#main-content)
[](https://shaneyu.art/)
- [Home](https://shaneyu.art)
- [Portfolio + Blog](https://shaneyu.art/portfolio)
- [About](https://shaneyu.art/about)
- [Connect](https://shaneyu.art/contact)
# God's Referendum
[Shane Yu October 22, 2026](https://shaneyu.art/portraits-1/author/shane-yu)
- 3 mins
The results of Alberta’s referendum are in, and they’re not a surprise. We voted to stay in Canada. But I think a lot of us were confused by the other nine questions. They were some of the most blatantly biased, leading questions I’ve ever seen, and I’ll admit I would’ve voted yes to all of them if I didn’t know the context behind them.
So I wanted to see how the same kind of questions would sound if we applied them to Christianity. Most of us would never accept something this exclusionary and discriminatory when it comes to religion. But some of us are okay with it when it comes to immigration status.
“But Shane, we’re doing it to save money.”
What? Ottawa is already doing this. Carney’s government has been cutting temporary foreign workers and international students, and has committed to bringing temporary residents below 5% of Canada’s population by 2027.
There’s no substance in any of these questions. It’s unserious. It’s a waste of time. And it cost an estimated $130 million.
Here’s what $130 million could have done instead:
- [If it costs about $1,100 to prevent an eviction](https://cdn.sanity.io/files/xz3a3sbt/production/677ea75ad73e34c083e373e8ca05e371950c3339.pdf) in Calgary, that’s roughly **118,000 evictions prevented**. Calgary has about 40,000 households at high risk of homelessness, so we could have covered every one of them almost three times over.
- [150 family doctors](https://www.ctvnews.ca/edmonton/article/188-teachers-150-family-doctors-third-party-campaign-materializes-cost-of-alberta-referendum/), 188 teachers or 794 educational assistants.
- [Over 1,000 full-time registered nurses](https://lethbridgeherald.com/commentary/opinions/2026/08/12/the-100-million-focus-group-how-premier-danielle-smiths-referendum-deflects-blame-and-funds-her-2027-campaign/), or more than 320 fully equipped ambulances.
## God's Referendum
1. Do you support God taking increased control over your life for the purposes of decreasing sin to more redeemable levels, prioritizing godliness and giving you first priority on new chances to repent?
2. Do you support God introducing a law mandating that only believers in Christ will be eligible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?
3. Assuming that all people continue to receive their basic needs on Earth, do you support God introducing a law requiring all non-believers to go through additional trials and tribulations for at least 12 months before qualifying for God’s truly unconditional love?
4. Assuming everyone has a right to receive basic care and love, do you support God charging a reasonable tithe or offering to non-believers for their and their family’s continued care and basic needs?
5. Do you support God introducing a law requiring individuals to provide proof of belief, such as a baptismal certificate, confirmation record or church membership card, to receive basic rights?
6. Do you support the church working with other willing churches to amend local and provincial laws to have churches, and not the government, select the judges appointed to provincial courts?
7. Do you support the church working with other willing churches to abolish leaders of alternative faiths?
8. Do you support the church working with other willing churches to amend local and provincial laws to allow churches to opt out of government programs that intrude on church matters, such as marriage, education and charity, without losing any of the associated government funding or paying any taxes?
9. Do you support the church working with other willing churches to amend the Constitution to better protect churches from external interference by giving the church’s laws priority over government laws whenever the two conflict?
10. Should you remain a faithful member of the church, or should the church commence the process required under Scripture to hold a binding vote on whether or not you may leave the faith?
These questions are pretty wordy, aren’t they? Surely God wouldn’t sow this much confusion. After all, *God is not the author of confusion* (1 Corinthians 14:33).
I’ll admit some of my questions are a bit unfair. Would the church ever really want to abolish other faiths or govern how you live your life? Probably not, at least not at first. We have freedom of religion, after all. But that’s how it works. Nobody votes for a theocracy outright. You vote yes on one reasonable-sounding question, then another, until one day you look up and the rules have changed.
Swap “God” back out for “the Government of Alberta,” and that’s what we just voted on.
### Shane Yu
An artist and passionate advocate, dedicated to discovering innovative solutions within the social service sector.
---
[](https://shaneyu.art/)
Personalize and nurture your relationships, one card at a time.
#### Pages
- [Home](https://shaneyu.art)
- [About](https://shaneyu.art/about)
#### Blog
- [Portfolio](https://shaneyu.art/portfolio)
#### Contact
- [Email](https://shaneyu.art/contact)
Follow Shane on [Follow us on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-yu1/) [Follow me on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/shaneyu.art/) [Follow us on Facebook](https://dribbble.com/shaneyuart)
---
- [Terms and Services](https://shaneyu.art/terms-and-services)
- [Privacy Policy](https://shaneyu.art/privacypolicy)
```json
{
"@context" : "https://schema.org",
"@type" : "BlogPosting",
"author" : {
"@type" : "Person",
"name" : "Shane Yu",
"url" : "https://shaneyu.art/portraits-1/author/shane-yu"
},
"dateModified" : "2026-10-22T00:52:23.123Z",
"datePublished" : "2026-10-22T00:49:47.000Z",
"headline" : "God's Referendum",
"image" : [ "https://shaneyu.art/hubfs/Voting%20in%20a%20church%201.jpg" ],
"mainEntityOfPage" : {
"@id" : "https://shaneyu.art/portraits-1/gods-referendum",
"@type" : "WebPage"
},
"publisher" : {
"@type" : "Organization",
"logo" : {
"@type" : "ImageObject",
"url" : "https://shaneyu.art/hubfs/SY%20Horizontal%20Logo.png"
}
}
}
```