Kelly Hopper is challenging Elan Harper for the federal Conservative Party nomination in Calgary Confederation.
Hopper ran for the Conservative nomination in the neighbouring Calgary Signal Hill in 2024 and her website says former UCP MLA and 2025 candidate Jeremy Nixon asked her to enter this race.
Nixon was the UCP MLA for Calgary-Klein from 2019 to 2023, and was defeated in Calgary Confederation by Liberal Corey Hogan in the 2025 federal election.
While a number of United Conservative Party MLAs and prospective candidates have signalled their plans to run in the next election, the governing party appears to be waiting for the new electoral map before publicly announcing nomination meetings. But there is a possibility that there could be at least one new MLA elected between now and October 2027.
Calgary-Shaw UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz is expected to resign her seat in the Legislature this May and talent management company owner Mike Derry has already announced his plans to seek that party’s nomination in an upcoming by-election.
Candidate nomination season kicks off in Alberta
It could be 18 months before Albertans line up to mark their ballots in the next provincial election but that isn’t stopping Alberta’s main opposition party from starting to nominate candidates ahead of the vote.
The Alberta NDP started nominating candidates this week, far ahead of the scheduled October 2027 vote. A much earlier election was rumoured but appears increasingly unlikely as we move further into 2026.
NDP MLA Sarah Hoffman became the first candidate nominated ahead of the next election when she was acclaimed in Edmonton-Glenora on March 3. Hoffman has represented the riding since 2015 and served as Deputy Premier and Minister of Health in the NDP government led by Premier Rachel Notley from 2015 to 2019.
The following night, on March 4, the NDP nominated first term MLA Samir Kayande for re-election in Calgary-Elbow and, last night, MLA Peggy Wright was selected to run for re-election in Edmonton-Beverly-Clarevew.
Orders-in-Council released on Wednesday afternoon show that Darren Hedley has been appointed as the Deputy Minister of Finance and Treasury Board. Hedley previously filled the position in an acting role under Deputy Minister of Executive Council Dale McFee and worked as Associate Deputy Minister in the department before that.
Hedley replaces Katherine White, who was late last year appointed as the Deputy Minister of the Department of Finance in the Yukon territorial government. She previously worked as Deputy Minister of Jobs, Economy, and Innovation and Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Tourism, and Trade, and also worked as the Chief Economist for the Alberta government.
There’s a baked-in analysis in every Alberta provincial budget that is impossible to ignore: Alberta relies too much on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government.
The other baked-in part of the analysis is what Albertans want: well-funded public services without having to pay more taxes for them.
From a first glance, it sure looks like that’s what Albertans got in Minister of Finance Nate Horner’s budget tabled today in the Legislature.
The budget doesn’t appear to include any big spending cuts, but it does include something Conservatives in this province used to like saying they wouldn’t do: run a deficit. This budget runs a big deficit of $9.4 billion and projects deficits for the next two budgets.
“Cut the bullshit. Call the election.”
Those were the words Alberta NDP deputy leader Rakhi Pancholi directed at Danielle Smith the morning after the Premier took to the television waves to blame immigration for the provincial government’s budget problems and announce a suite of nine referendum questions to be put to Albertans on October 19.
The 38-MLA NDP opposition has struggled to gain traction and define itself since former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi replaced former premier Rachel Notley as leader a year and a half ago, but those six words from Pancholi last Friday cut through the noise and were a blunt reminder that she is one of the party’s most effective voices.
Some readers will be familiar with the story about then-Premier Don Getty’s son getting arrested for possession and trafficking of cocaine and his father creating a holiday to celebrate family values in response. It sounds like a cynical take but it’s a big part of the story.
The idea to create a mid-winter holiday had been around for some time before it was announced in Alberta’s 1989 pre-election Speech from the Throne.
A foundation chaired by Canadian historian Pierre Berton had been calling for a national mid-winter holiday called Heritage Day since the early 1970s. And just one year before it was announced in the Getty government’s 1989 Speech from the Throne, Alberta MLAs debated creating a holiday when Vegreville NDP MLA Derek Fox proposed it in a private members bill.
An Alberta politics deep dive on Craft Politics (originally published on the Daveberta Substack)
I recently joined Joseph Lavoie and Andrew Percy on Craft Politics for a deep dive discussion about Alberta separatism and how it’s shaping Alberta politics in 2026.
We had a broad-ranging discussion about Alberta politics, the current separatist movement’s roots in the COVID-19 pandemic and how its supporters became key players inside the United Conservative Party, and who might lead the pro-Canada campaign in a possible separation referendum later this year.
We covered a lot of ground in this discussion but I’m remiss for going through the list players in the separatism debate without mentioning the role of First Nations communities and the Treaties signed between First Nations and the Crown. That’s another important layer to this political debate.
Thank you to Joseph and Andrew for inviting me on their podcast. Be sure to subscribe to Craft Politics on your podcast listening app of choice or watch their interviews on YouTube.
I will be joining Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson and other guests on Sunday, February 15 for an online discussion about Alberta’s role in Canada at her Alberta Belongs In Canada event. McPherson is running for the leadership of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Early March candidate meetings scheduled in Calgary and Edmonton ridings
With rumours of an early provincial election circulating since last year, the Alberta NDP looks like it will be the first political party out of the gate to nominate candidates ahead of the next vote.
The NDP website lists candidate nomination meetings scheduled in Edmonton-Glenora on March 3, Calgary-Elbow on March 4, Calgary-Klein on March 5, Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview on March 6 and Calgary-Edgemont on March 7.
All five of these ridings are represented by NDP MLAs who will be seeking re-election if they secure their party’s nominations.
Longtime Daveberta readers will know that I am keenly interested in tracking candidate nominations ahead of provincial and federal elections in Alberta, so I am pleased to share with you that I am continuing this tradition as we approach the next election.
The time to stand up for a Strong Alberta within a Strong Canada is now.
It’s still unclear who will lead the pro-Canada side in a referendum campaign that could happen as early as fall of this year. This is likely because a lot of prominent supporters of federalism in Alberta have had a hard time believing Albertans would vote in favour of separation or that a referendum will even be held in the first place.
Polls show support for Alberta leaving Canada sits at around 28 per cent and drops to 15 per cent when people are faced with the possible consequences, but this is not the time for Albertans who also count themselves as proud Canadians to be complacent.
In another time, the Premier of Alberta would be a strong voice against separatism, but Danielle Smith is now leading a party with an activist base deeply engaged in the separatist movement and she is not interested in upsetting that base of supporters.
If Albertans aren’t sent to the polls to vote in a provincial election in 2026 they will almost certainly be asked to vote in a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada.
Former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk was the first to spear-head a successful citizen initiative petition when his Forever Canadian campaign collected more than 456,000 signatures by asking Albertans if they wanted their province to remain in Canada.
The wildly successful Forever Canadian petition campaign is being countered by the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project’s flipped citizen initiative question asking Albertans if they want to leave Canada.
Increasing political and economic instability in the United States and President Trump’s threats to expand American military and political control over the western hemisphere could have dramatic effects on Canada. The breaking of the United States’ long-standing close relationship with democratic Europe and Trump’s continued threats to annex the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland and make Canada the 51st State could define world politics in 2026.
Just this week Trump posted a doctored photo on social media of him sitting in front of a map with the US flag superimposed over Canada, Greenland and Venezuela. The use of military force to remove Maduro and Trump’s freewheeling use of trade tariffs against countries who’s leaders he feels have personally insulted him suggests that Albertans and Canadians should take him very seriously.
Trump’s rambling, erratic behaviour and his embrace of authoritarianism is deeply troubling and will have a big impact on Albertans and our fellow Canadians across the country.
Oil production in our province is at a record high but, as Albertans have learned time and time again, we have absolutely no control over the international price of oil that makes or breaks our local economy.
Forecasts for oil prices are not encouraging for 2026. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected that the price of West Texas Intermediate oil could average around $50 to $52 per barrel and, with a glut of oil on the international market, Goldman Sachs expects WTI to average $53 per barrel in 2026.
This is trouble for the Government of Alberta, which relies heavily on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of public services like heath care and education. The Alberta government’s 2025 budget projected WTI at $68 per barrel but as of the second quarter update in November the average price was $61.50 per barrel. Each $1 change in the price of WTI has an estimated $750-million impact on provincial government revenue.
After months of speculation, Premier Danielle Smith said during her 2025 year-end interviews that she isn’t planning to call an early election in 2026, but anyone who pays attention to politics knows: circumstances change.
The next provincial general election is scheduled to happen in October 2027 but there continues to be wide speculation that an early election could be called — and there are plenty of reasons to believe why.
Smith’s UCP remains ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP in the polls and the governing party continues to raise large amounts of donations. And there is little doubt that Smith remains one of the most effective and shrewd political communicators in Alberta and in Canada’s conservative movement.
Edmonton-West Henday MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul was voted the MLA to Watch in 2026.
The first-term NDP MLA, who was voted as the Candidate to Watch in the 2022 Best of Alberta Politics Survey, has excelled as a strong voice for First Nations in the Legislature and a fierce critic of the government’s use of the notwithstanding clause to limit access to health care for transgender people in Alberta.
Arcand-Paul studied law at the University of Ottawa and was the in-house legal counsel for the Alexander First Nation before he was first elected to represent his west Edmonton riding in 2023. He currently serves as the NDP shadow minister for Indigenous Relations and in November 2024 introduced Bill 209: Reconciliation Implementation Act into the Legislature.
