The Calgary-Shaw by-election was supposed to be a sleepy race and an easy win for the United Conservative Party but it ended up being a nail-biter with a surprise NDP win.
The Alberta NDP’s Kyle Campbell did what many political watchers believed would never happen by beating UCP candidate Mike Derry to win the by-election in the south Calgary riding that was a UCP stronghold under former cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz.
Campbell is an employee benefits professional and former Somerset residents’ association president who made health care, affordability, and opposition to Alberta’s separation from Canada a key part of his campaign’s message in the by-election.
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.
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).
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
Voting for separation weakens Canada and Alberta against Trump’s economic attacks
We are now 58 days away from the province-wide referendum that will ask Albertans whether they want to hold a future referendum on Alberta’s independence from Canada.
Leaked voters lists, billboards, lawn signs, political assemblies (from which just last week very candid and horribly racist remarks were delivered from a prominent separatist movement leader), and Premier Danielle Smith musing about holding a binding referendum next spring have grabbed the headlines in the separatism discussion. But there’s one big question that hasn’t been asked in this debate: Would Alberta be allowed to be an independent country?
I believe the answer to this question is no.
I wear my Canada and Alberta flags on my sleeve and am proud to call this place my home. My family settled here around 130 years ago and has deep roots in this part of the country. I have lived in Alberta my entire life and have spent more than two decades writing about its politics and history, so I would never punch down on Alberta — but I’m also realistic.
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.
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.
It was expected and NDP leader Naheed Nenshi has just confirmed it. Nenshi will run in a Calgary riding when the next provincial election is called. The NDP leader and former Calgary mayor won a by-election in Edmonton-Strathcona in June 2025 to replace former MLA and premier Rachel Notley but he had yet to officially announce his plans for the next election.
In a statement published on social media today, Nenshi said:
Today, I’m letting you know of a decision I’ve made. While I’ve been thrilled every day to serve as your MLA, I will be seeking election in a Calgary riding in the next general election.
This will open up Edmonton-Strathcona for a new representative from this beautiful community. I am informing you today so that the incredible constituency association in this riding has time for a healthy and robust nomination process to select a candidate and a future MLA worthy of representing you. Interested candidates can express their interest now and more details on the nomination process and dates will be coming soon.
Former school trustee Trisha Estabrooks is expected to announced her plans to run for the NDP nomination in Edmonton-Strathcona at a July 17 press conference at Frank’s Community Pub. The riding has been held by the NDP since 1997 and from 1986 to 1993 before that.
Former United Conservative Party president Cynthia Moore has launched her campaign for her party’s nomination in the Calgary-Elbow riding in the next provincial election.
Moore currently serves as chair of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, a role she was appointed to by the UCP government in 2024, and as chair of the Real Estate Council of Alberta. She previously worked as an executive of the Kahanoff Foundation.
Moore was UCP president from 2021 until 2023 — a tumultuous time in the governing party’s history that saw rank and file members revolt against Premier Jason Kenney’s leadership and rocket Danielle Smith into the Premier’s Office.
A list of pro-Canada and Alberta independence supporters in the October 19, 2026 referendum
Albertans are being asked to vote on ten referendum questions on October 19, 2026 and, unsurprisingly, the one question attracting the most attention is about Alberta’s separation from Canada.
I am a proud Canadian and proud Albertan and will be voting for Alberta to remain in Canada in this referendum.
One of my key goals since launching Daveberta more than two decades ago has been to help Albertans better understand the politics of their province. So, in the months ahead, I will be writing a lot about the referendum questions and maintaining a running list of groups, politicians, and individuals who are campaigning or taken positions in the Alberta separation referendum debate.
Similar to my nomination candidate tracking list, I will be updating this page as I receive new names, so please click on the title link and bookmark it to keep up to date.
If there are any names or website links that should be added or removed from this list, please send me an email at david.cournoyer@gmail.com. I am striving to do my best to keep this list as accurate as possible during a very noisy political debate.
Publicly-owned Alberta Petroleum Marketing Commission and Trans Mountain Corporation to build pipeline to the Pacific Coast
The path already taken might be the easiest way to get a new oil pipeline built from Alberta through British Columbia to Canada’s Pacific Coast.
That’s what Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are betting on as they announced a proposal for a new pipeline to follow the route near the Trans Mountain and Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipelines to BC’s Lower Mainland. So let’s call it TMXL.
After months of speculation, rumours, and political jostling over the proposed route of the new pipeline — Smith’s government is believed to have preferred the much more politically fraught northern route to Kitimat or Prince Rupert — the southern proposal was announced in Calgary by Carney and Smith.
The pipeline announcement comes days after Carney visited BC Premier David Eby to announce a new Memorandum of Understanding that reaffirms the North Coast tanker ban and includes $3 billion in federal funding to replace the aging Massey Tunnel and other investments — smoothing over any expected opposition from the NDP government on the Left Coast.
The NDP were quick to put United Conservative Party candidate Mike Derry on the spot on the issue of Alberta separatism, which voters will face in a province-wide referendum on October 19.
An NDP press release sent out the night of Derry’s nomination win questioned his support from Darrell Komick, the president of the UCP constituency association in the neighbouring Calgary-Lougheed who ran in the UCP board president election last year on a pro-independence platform, and campaign manager Craig Chandler, a well-known right-wing political organizer in Calgary.
Chandler recently ran City Councillor Mike Jamieson’s successful election campaign in Ward 12 and is believed to be involved in Erin Averbukh’s campaign for the UCP nomination in the Calgary-Acadia riding (Averbukh’s only competitor in that race at the moment is former Wildrose Independence Party leader Jeevan Mangat).
While polls show that a majority of UCP supporters would vote for Alberta’s separation from Canada, the majority of Alberta voters would vote to remain in Canada. The NDP will undoubtably try to use the by-election to put pressure on the UCP’s internal division on Alberta separatism.
