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.
Campbell will face United Conservative Party candidate Mike Derry, who surprised many political watchers last week when he defeated City Councillor Dan McLean in the party’s nomination vote.
With 507 total ballots cast in the UCP membership vote in Calgary-Shaw, Derry earned 286 votes to McLean’s 221 votes. Fifty-three per cent of party members in the riding turned out to vote at the nomination meeting.
Campbell will face UCP’s Mike Derry in race to replace Rebecca Schulz
The Alberta NDP have nominated Kyle Campbell to run as the opposition party’s candidate in the upcoming Calgary-Shaw by-election to choose a new MLA following Rebecca Schulz’s resignation last month.
The by-election in this southwest Calgary riding will be an uphill battle for the NDP but, whenever it’s called in the next five months, it will take place during one of the most unpredictable periods in Alberta politics in recent memory.
There is no shortage of issues of the NDP to focus on in this by-election and it looks like health care and affordability will be top of mind for Campbell as he hits the doors.
It is very easy to overstate the importance of by-elections, but there is little doubt that the results of the by-election in Calgary-Shaw will be interpreted as a measurement of support for Premier Danielle Smith referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada and her government’s handling of health care and affordability issues.
It will also be an important test for NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, who served as Mayor of Calgary from 2010 to 2021 and won the party’s leadership in 2024 on his ability to increase the party’s support in Calgary.
NDP expected to nominate Kyle Campbell on June 26
Talent management company owner Mike Derry defeated City Councillor Dan McLean to win the United Conservative Party nomination in Calgary-Shaw at a candidate selection vote on June 24.
The nomination vote was held to choose a UCP candidate in the upcoming by-election to replace former UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz, who stepped down on May 15, 2026.
Derry owns the LegenDERRY talent management company and was the talent management lead for Canadian Natural Resources Limited from 2013 to 2022 and is a coach with the Bow Valley Hockey Society. He was the Chief Financial Officer of Calgary-South East UCP association and has volunteered with Conservative MP Tom Kmiec‘s campaign in Calgary Shepard.
UCP members in Calgary-Shaw will choose the candidate to raise their party’s banner in the upcoming by-election to fill the Legislature seat vacated by UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz.
Current city councillor Dan McLean is considered the establishment favourite in this race. The second-term councillor was re-elected last October and has maintained close public ties to the UCP since he ran against Schulz for the nomination in this riding in 2018.
McLean’s decision to jump into provincial politics so soon after the October 2025 municipal election has made him a target of criticism from former councillor Jeff Davison.
McLean faces Mike Derry, an oil and gas industry talent company owner who has the support of well-known right-wing political organizer Craig Chandler.
Another candidate, Stewart Jeanes, had planned to run but did not qualify to enter the nomination race. Jeanes had been endorsed by separatist leader and Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul UCP constituency president Mitch Sylvestre.
The nomination vote is being held from 3:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Cardel Rec South.
Somerset Residents Association President Kyle Campbell is the first candidate to enter the Alberta NDP nomination in Calgary-Shaw ahead of the expected by-election. The NDP have scheduled a nomination meeting on Friday, June 26 at 7:00 pm at the Cardel Rec South.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Campbell is the Director of Employee Benefits for Qopia Financial and previously worked as Senior Sales Consultant for RBC Insurance. He studied Global Supply Chain Management at Brigham Young University.
“I’m running to protect the essential services our province delivers. My life is deeply impacted by the province of Alberta: career opportunities, public education for my children, cancer care for myself, and more,” Campbell told Daveberta.
“I’m running to ensure that as my kids grow up that they are afforded the same quality of life, and quality of protection that I’ve benefited from,” Campbell said. “I’m keen to protect their rights as Albertans, and their privileges as Canadians.”
A by-election in Calgary-Shaw is imminent following the resignation of United Conservative Party MLA Rebecca Schulz, who stepped down last month after representing the riding since 2019. Schulz served as Minister of Environment and Protected Areas until her resignation from cabinet last December.
The UCP nomination contest is now set for June 24 but the race got one candidate smaller this week after Stewart Jeanes was told by the UCP that he will not be allowed to run after his application was deemed incomplete.
Jeanes’ candidacy in the Calgary-Shaw nomination contest was recently endorsed by Mitch Sylvestre, the Alberta separatist leader and UCP constituency president from Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul who led the Stay Free Alberta petition drive to leave Canada.
Danielle Smith’s Alberta separation referendum looms over party nominations for next election
MLA Kyle Kasawski was nominated to run for re-election in Sherwood Park by Alberta NDP members at a meeting last weekend in the large suburban hamlet east of Edmonton.
Kasawski currently serves as the opposition’s Affordability and Utilities critic role has been one of the strongest additions to the NDP opposition bench since 2023.
Kasawski has been vocal in his opposition to Alberta separatism and called on Premier Danielle Smith to speak out against foreign interference.
City Councillor Dan McLean, Mike Derry, and Stewart Jeanes running for UCP nomination
It was one of the worst kept secrets in Calgary political circles that City Councillor Dan McLean was planning to jump into provincial politics and he is now running for United Conservative Party nomination in Calgary-Shaw.
The southwest Calgary riding is expected to become vacant when UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz, who resigned from cabinet last December, steps down as an MLA. Schulz delivered a farewell statement in the Legislature last week and shared a video on social media thanking voters in the riding for choosing her to represent them for the past seven years.
“Our country is not perfect, but it’s the best place in the world, and Albertans are ready to fight for Canada,” Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi said as he launched his party’s For Alberta For Canada campaign in anticipation of an expected referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada.
“Every day, Albertans ask me one simple question about separatism: ‘what can I do?’ This new campaign is an answer to that—giving everyday people the tools and the power they need to stand up for our country.
They know that if Alberta separates, we’ll lose so much. Even the threat of a referendum is already damaging our economy and creating chaos and uncertainty. Today we are giving Albertans the tools to take action and be ready for this fall.”
The NDP campaign will kick off with a province-wide door-knocking day of action on April 25, which Nenshi says aims to attract pro-Canadian Albertans beyond NDP voters.
“We’re not repeating the mistake of the people who thought Brexit would never pass. We’re getting out there now,” Nenshi told reporters. “We’re not sleepwalking into this.”
Two contests to choose UCP candidates for the next provincial have begun to heat up:
Calgary-Shaw by-election watch: Well-known conservative organizer Craig Chandler launched a website to pressure City Councillor Dan McLean not to run for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Shaw. Chandler is believed to be supporting nomination candidate Mike Derry in the race to replace UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz, who is expected to resign from the Legislature in May 2026.
McLean said he has not decided if he’s going to enter the nomination race.
A coalition of farmers and Indigenous leaders from northeast Alberta have formed a coalition called No CO2 Pipelines to oppose the construction of a pipeline that could run from Fort McMurray and other areas to carbon capture storage areas near Cold Lake.
The coalition is concerned about the safety of the proposed 600-kilometre carbon capture pipeline and 18,000 km² underground carbon storage project that will cross near dozens of rural and Indigenous communities. The planned project would be the world’s largest carbon capture and storage network.
Hey there politics fans!
The United Conservative Party released its leadership race rule book!
UCP members will choose a replacement for Premier Jason Kenney on October 6, 2022.
It will cost $150,000 to enter the race, plus an extra $25,000 good behaviour deposit.
Low rollers need not apply.
It’s not just a race to replace Kenney.
It’s a race to save the UCP from defeat against Rachel Notley‘s resurgent Alberta NDP.
And the race is starting to take shape.
The cowboy hat wearing former Finance Minister from Beaverlodge, Travis Toews, launched his campaign last week with endorsements from 23 UCP MLAs, including Energy Minister Sonya Savage and Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.
Savage and Grande Prairie-Mackenzie MP Chris Warkentin are co-chairing his campaign.
Toews is seen as the establishment favourite, which isn’t always a blessing.
Just ask Jim Dinning and Gary Mar.
Former Transportation Minister Rajan Sawhney launched her campaign yesterday with a whistle-stop tour down the QEII, starting with media events in Edmonton, Penhold and Airdrie before ending at a +700-person rally in north east Calgary.
It was a strong kick-off.
Sawhney’s campaign is being run by well-known political strategist and conservative thinker Ken Boessenkool, who worked as an advisor to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former BC Premier Christy Clark.
Her former chief of staff (and former Daveberta Podcast co-host) Ryan Hastman is her deputy campaign manager.
Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt is Sawhney’s campaign chair.
It’s an odd fit for a leadership candidate who appears to be trying to position herself as a political moderate (no word if South Tyrol-like autonomy for Alberta will be in her platform).
Pitt endorsed Brian Jean for the UCP leadership 2017, and even have him credit for her entry into politics.
This time she’s backing Sawhney.
Jean is launching his campaign at a hotel in west Edmonton tomorrow.
Autonomy for Albertans is Jean’s slogan, not Anatomy for Albertans, as this writer first thought he read.
The former Wildrose Party leader launched his second political comeback in last year’s Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election with the singular purpose of defeating Kenney in the leadership review and run to replace him.
He’s met half his goal so far.
Another former Wildrose leader, Danielle Smith is also trying for her second political comeback after a short and disastrous stint on the Calgary Board of Education in the late 1990s and as Wildrose Party leader from 2009 until she infamously abandoned her party to join Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservatives in 2014.
For many conservatives, especially those of the Wildrose-variety, it is a betrayal that will live in infamy.
The leadership is only one-half of Smith’s comeback attempt.
She’s also challenging MLA Roger Reid for the UCP nomination in Livingstone-Macleod, which appears far from a safe-bet.
First-term south Calgary MLA Rebecca Schulz stepped down as Children’s Services Minister to jump into the race.
Schulz wants to take on what she describes as “the boys club.”
She has the backing of Calgary City Councillor Dan McLean, Health Minister Jason Copping, UCP MLAs Michaela Frey and Jeremy Nixon, MPs Laila Goodridge and Stephanie Kusie, former federal Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose and former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall.
The Wall endorsement might seem odd, but he endorsed Schulz in her bid to win the hotly contested Calgary-Shaw UCP nomination race back in 2018.
The Saskatchewan native was a spokesperson in Wall’s government before moving to Alberta in the mid-2010s, and her husband, Cole Schulz, was a ministerial chief of staff in Regina (he’s now the Vice President, Communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary).
UCP MLA Leela Aheer, who was ousted from cabinet for calling on Kenney to resign, is in and wants to “defeat the machines.”
“I think Albertans will defeat the machines. They understand what the machine is. They’re frustrated with the machine,” she told reporters.
She’s also facing a strong nomination challenge in her Chestermere-Strathmore riding.
Northern Alberta UCP MLA-in-exile Todd Loewen also jumped into the race, as did Village of Amisk Mayor Bill Rock, another former Wildrose Party candidate.
But one of the big potential contenders, Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, is playing coy.
Maybe she’ll run. Maybe she won’t.
Her text message reply to Press Gallery Dean Don Braid was “hahahaha!”
And the hot gossip in political circles today is that erratic former Liberal Party leader Raj Sherman is thinking about joining the fray.
Sherman was first elected as a PC MLA in 2008 but was driven out of that party and scooped up the Liberal leadership in 2011. He left politics in 2015 and returned to being full-time ER doctor.
He also donated $4,000 to the Alberta Party last year.
So it’s a scramble. It’s a dog’s breakfast.
And there could be more.
We’ll know soon enough.
July 20 is the deadline for candidates to pay up if they want to stay in the race.
The high-entry fee will quickly weed out candidates who can’t raise enough money.
August 12 is the deadline to buy a membership.
No time for the two-minute Tories who wreaked havoc against the establishment candidates in the old PC Party leadership races.
The party is also organizing debates and attendance by all candidates is mandatory.
Stragglers will risk be fined or disqualified, or both.
It’s no Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, but it’s bound to be entertaining to watch.
The Alberta Liberal Party also announced that it will be holding their own leadership vote and choosing a new leader on September 25, 2022.
Former party leader David Khan stepped down in November 2020 after failing to win a seat in the 2019 election, marking the first time since before 1986 that the provincial Liberals not represented in the Legislature.
Party stalwart John Roggeveen has filled the spot as interim leader since March 2021.
The race has no candidates as of yet. The second place finisher from the 2017 leadership race, Kerry Cundal, is running for the Alberta Party in Calgary-Elbow.
And don’t forget to sign up for my Substack at daveberta.substack.com.
