UCP MLA and Minister of Municipal Affairs Dan Williams fended off a challenge from local contractor and separatist-backed candidate Dave Long to win his party’s nomination to run for re-election in Peace River.
Williams was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 72.8 per cent of the vote.
Provincial cabinet ministers have poured into Calgary-Shaw to support UCP candidate Mike Derry and Danielle Smith has campaigned with him numerous times since the by-election campaign started last month.
Derry is the favourite to win the by-election but the vote is also a test for Smith, who has led a government mired in controversy and a party deeply divided on whether Alberta should separate from Canada.
Smith’s absence from any visible pro-Canada campaigns ahead of her October 19 separation referendum has raised a lot of eyebrows, especially after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s full-throated support of Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian campaign in Banff this week.
NDP pitches stability and investment over the UCP’s restructuring and privatization
With only days left before the September 14th by-election in Calgary-Shaw, Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi joined candidate Kyle Campbell to deliver his party’s health care pitch to voters with a pledge of stability and investment in a public system that has undergone massive bureaucratic restructuring and increased privatization since 2023.
Nenshi pledged that within three years of forming government after the 2027 election, the NDP would shorten emergency department wait times, cut surgical, diagnostic, and specialist wait times by 30 per cent, make sure every Albertan has access to a family doctor or nurse practitioner, and, a big one, re-form one single Ministry of Health.
Nenshi said the NDP would also launch a judiciary-led public inquiry into CorruptCare, a wide-ranging government corruption scandal that largely faded into the background over the summer.
Elections Alberta issued a statement correcting a series of errors and confusing instructions included in Special Ballot packages that have been mailed to more than 200,000 Albertans ahead of the October 19 referendums. The elections authority also announced the deadline for applying for a mail-in Special Ballot is now September 25 instead of the previously announced October 9.
There has been no shortage of attention on the Alberta separation question that Albertans will be asked on October 19, but a cadre of former and current municipal and provincial politicians have written an op-ed warning of the divisions created by the five referendum questions that frame immigrants as scapegoats for the strain on Alberta’s health care and education systems.
The op-ed published in the province’s Postmedia newspaper was penned by former premier Rachel Notley, former Edmonton mayor Don Iveson, former Lethbridge mayor Chris Spearman former St. Albert mayor Cathy Heron, former Brooks mayor Barry Morishita, former Slave Lake mayor Karina Pillay, lawyer Avnish Nanda, and current High River Mayor Craig Snodgrass (Premier Smith lives in High River).
The immigration referendum questions were a hot topic at the Edmonton launch of Public Interest Alberta’s referendum campaign at the Beverly Heights Community Hall on September 3. The well-attended event in the packed community hall featured a handful of speakers including PIA executive director Brad Lafortune, comedian Henry Sir, Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan, and Senator Paula Simons (who recently wrote about the “Noxious Nine” in Alberta Views Magazine).
There are 49 days left until Albertans cast 10 separate referendum ballots on October 19. Rallies held over the weekend aimed to pump some energy into what has been a fairly sleepy referendum campaign.
In Calgary, NDP leader Naheed Nenshi launched the first in a series of Vote to Save Canada rallies being organized by the NDP Official Opposition Caucus.
Nenshi was joined by Calgary-Edgemont MLA Julia Hayter at the rally of supporters clad in red and white and waving maple leaf flags. The NDP’s For Alberta, For Canada has been one of the main campaigns focused on door-to-door canvassing and lawn sign placement ahead of October 19.
Premier going to Tennessee as Alberta separation referendum only 49 days away
Premier Danielle Smith is soon flying to Nashville, Tennessee to meet with the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, Head of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, and the CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corporation.
These meetings with local officials in Nashville are somewhat comical because of how low-level they are for a provincial premier’s international trip. Imagine the Governor of Tennessee travelling to Alberta to meet with the CEO of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce but not arranging a meeting with the Premier.
It would be strange, right?
One political strategist I recently spoke with suggested that the meetings could either be a cover for a meeting with a more important US official that was cancelled at the request of Canada’s trade negotiators or a cover for a meeting with a more important US official that will happen (remember Smith’s surprise trip to Mar-a-Lago in January 2025?).
It’s also possible these low-level meetings were arranged at the last minute to justify Smith’s vacation to Music City USA (we’re told that the personal trip has been in the works for months).
Politics makes strange bedfellows. It’s amazing how much can change in 10 years.
I was recently reminded that it was only 10 years ago that Jason Kenney was campaigning for the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party. With everything that has happened in Alberta politics since then, it feels like it might as well have been 20 years ago.
The longtime Calgary MP and former federal cabinet minister set his sights on “uniting the right” after the PC Party’s 43-year long streak as govermment was ended in spectacular fashion by Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP in the 2015 election.
The PC Party’s loss and the NDP’s win was a shock to Alberta’s political system.
Decades of one-party dominance in Alberta (that even preceded the PCs) created a system centered around a PC Party with a big tent that spanned the political spectrum. The PC Party’s survival instincts and electoral success were matched only by the Liberal Party of Canada — another natural governing party that adapted and recreated itself again and again over the last century to get in front of the parade of public opinion.
And it worked like a charm for four decades.
Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish was met with jeers from the crowd at the government’s AI Data Centre town hall in Lacombe. The Canadian Press reports:
“Albertans do not want data centres,” said one man who came from the neighbouring town of Ponoka.
Another woman told Glubish to “get your boxing gloves on” if another AI data centre was being planned for the region.
“Your words are nice, you explain things well, but I don’t trust you, and I think that the people in this room agree with me,” she said to big applause.
Glubish encountered a similar response from local residents at a Redwater town hall with Morinville-St. Albert MLA Dale Nally:
Sturgeon County resident, Connie Shields, said she doesn’t trust the government to properly regulate projects like these.
“You are the people we elected. You should be saying what we’re telling you to say,” Shields said.
“You shouldn’t be making up your own rules, you shouldn’t be dictating what goes where.”
The NDP has been hosting their own town halls in response to the data centre backlash. Leader Naheed Nenshi was joined by Edmonton-South West NDP MLA Nathan Ip at a town hall meeting in Red Deer earlier in August
Lawyer Irma Roberts is the third candidate to enter the UCP nomination contest in Calgary-South East. Roberts has served as a regional director representing Calgary on the UCP’s provincial board of directors since 2023.
Roberts’ campaign is being run by right-wing political organizer Craig Chandler, who recently ran Mike Derry’s successful campaign for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Shaw. Chandler is also running Erin Averbukh’s UCP nomination campaign in Calgary-Acadia.
Alabi Adenekan and former Freedom Conservative Party chief of staff Stephen Burry are also running for the UCP nomination in this riding.
Karen Peters has been disqualifed from the United Conservative Party nomination contest in Grande Prairie-Wapiti, making first-term MLA Ron Wiebe widely expected to be acclaimed to run for re-election in the 2027 provincial election.
Peters was the UCP constituency president in the northwest Alberta riding and has posted on her personal Facebook page about chemtrails and vaccination conspiracy theories. These posts raised eyebrows among political watchers but neither issue is grounds for disqualification in the current UCP.
Premier Danielle Smith has set Monday, September 14 as the date of the by-election vote in the Calgary-Shaw riding vacated by former UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz earlier this year.
The by-election will see UCP candidate Mike Derry face New Democrat Kyle Campbell, with Progressive Tory candidate Kyle Joseph trying to break into what has been a two-party race in Alberta politics, and Liberal Party leader John Roggeveen trying to get his party back on the radar.
Just east of Edmonton, former MLA Jordan Walker, who served one term from 2019 to 2023, is facing a challenge from separatist organizer and former UCP constituency president Kathy Flett. Walker was unseated by NDP candidate Kyle Kasawski in 2023.
Flett is a spokeperson for the Alberta Women for Independence Network third party advertiser and has been a featured speaker at numerous pro-separation events across Alberta ahead of the October 19 referendum.
Two Grande Prairie MLAs and one former Edmonton-area MLA are facing nomination challenges as United Conservative Party members choose their candidates ahead of Alberta’s next provincial election.
First-term Grande Prairie UCP MLA Nolan Dyck is facing a challenge from firearms shop and indoor gun range owner Robin Coward.
Coward’s Bullets and Broadheads Shooting Center was listed as a signing location for the Stay Free Alberta petition that called for a referendum on the province to separate from Canada. Coward also recently promoted a separatist event in Grande Prairie on his social media.
A province-wide referendum on whether to hold a binding referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada is being held on October 19.
While a large majority of Albertans support the province remaining in Canada, UCP supporters are divided on the question. The issue has shone the spotlight on separatist organizers who are entrenched in positions of influence in the governing party.
Albertans need to get out and vote on October 19, 2026
Even after writing about Alberta politics for more than 20 years it’s still sometimes hard to fully understand and explain what is happening in our province.
Albertans are now 87 days away from having to vote on Premier Danielle Smith’s 10 referendum questions, including a convoluted question about holding a future binding referendum on Alberta separating from Canada. It feels like we’re having some kind of weird fever dream and we’re definitely sleepwalking into it.
Despite putting the future of Alberta’s place in Canada on the ballot in less than three months, I am shocked at how many people have told me Smith is barely or not even mentioning the separation referendum in many of the public speeches she is making during her summer travels across the province.
Public school trustee Angela Sommers is expected to be nominated as the NDP candidate in Red Deer-North at a July 30 nomination meeting. Sommers was first elected to the board of trustees of the Red Deer Public School Board in 2021.
The riding has been represented by UCP MLA Adriana LaGrange since 2019. LaGrange was re-elected in 2023 with 57.4 per cent of the vote. Her 2023 NDP opponent, Jaelene Tweedle, was elected to Red Deer City Council in 2025.
The NDP will nominate Michelle Baer in the neighbouring Red Deer-South riding on July 25. Baer is a former city lawyer who ran for the NDP the riding in 2023.
