Has Thomas Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada petition boxed in Danielle Smith on Alberta separatism?
If there is one big takeaway from last weekend’s United Conservative Party annual general meeting it’s that the separatist movement in Alberta is deeply intrenched in the governing party.
From jeers and cheers to at least half the board candidates endorsed by the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project getting elected, the weekend gathering was a showcase of how influential Alberta’s most prominent separatists are in Premier Danielle Smith‘s UCP.
Smith’s unwillingness to challenge the burgeoning separatist-wing she helped inflame and instead accept them as key players in her party leaves the Premier in a precarious position after yesterday’s news that Chief Elections Officer Gordon McClure has validated and approved a pro-Canada citizen initiative petition asking the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”
The Forever Canadian campaign was spearheaded by former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, who represented Edmonton-Castle Downs in the Legislature from 2001 to 2015 and launched the citizen initiative in response to the separatist movement showing momentum earlier this year.
Premier Danielle Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney in Calgary on November 27, 2025 (source: Government of Alberta / Flickr)
Danielle Smith’s pipeline deal with Mark Carney could get more jeers than cheers by some at the UCP AGM
The United Conservative Party’s most dedicated activists and supporters will gather in Edmonton on November 28, 29 and 30 to debate a swath of policy resolutions and elect members of its provincial board at the party’s annual general meeting.
Since the UCP was founded in 2017, the party’s AGM has become one of the most interesting and closely-watched political events of the year. It’s an annual reminder the delegates attending the meeting — the UCP’s most enthusiastic activists — are as a group among the most influential people in Alberta politics today.
The United Conservative Party’s board elections are happening at its AGM at the end of November and the rhetoric is heating up from the party’s bustling separatist wing.
Alberta Prosperity Project co-founder Jeffrey Rath took to the internet to accuse “Danielle Smith’s Death Star team” of abusing their access to party membership lists to purge the party board of separatists.
Also: Look who’s running in the UCP AGM board elections
An MLA Recall law championed by United Conservative Party MLAs four years ago is coming back to haunt some of those politicians today.
A second recall campaign launched this month aims to recall UCP MLA Angela Pitt in her suburban Airdrie-East riding north of Calgary. Pitt is the second MLA to face a recall effort in recent weeks with a similar campaign being launched by constituents of Calgary-Bow UCP MLA and Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides in October.
Albertans’ negative reaction to the government’s handling of the teachers strike was probably a big reason why Premier Danielle Smith was scheduled to leave the country before her UCP MLAs passed Bill 2.
We don’t know exactly what Smith was looking at on her phone when she was photographed sitting at the Calgary International Airport while her UCP MLAs were still in the Legislature on Monday night, but her conveniently scheduled week-long trip to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates means that she will not face questions from reporters about suspending constitutional rights of citizens.
United Conservative Party Premier Danielle Smith’s own approval rating took a beating as well. The Premier saw her job approval drop from 44 per cent in May to 38 per cent this month. And, for the first time, that puts Smith below NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, who saw his approval jump up to 43 per cent in the same period.
Taking his seat in the Legislature this week, it definitely felt like Bill 2 gave Nenshi an opportunity to step into the spotlight and he didn’t disappoint.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (right) was photographed sitting at the Calgary International Airport while UCP MLAs were still in the Legislature pushing through Bill 2 on Monday night. Smith is spending the week in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. (photo: publicinterestalberta / Instagram)
Danielle Smith left for Saudi Arabia before invoking Notwithstanding Clause
The fall session of the Legislature started on Monday and Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government wasted no time pushing through its legislation to force striking Alberta teachers back to work.
In a severely time-limited debate that took less than 12 hours in total, UCP MLAs voted on third reading to pass Bill 2: Back to Work Act at around 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
The bill imposed a new contract on 51,000 striking teachers until 2028, threatened hefty fines for any teachers who dared defy the UCP’s rushed law, and used the constitutional sledgehammer known as the Notwithstanding Clause to suspend teachers’ and the Alberta Teachers’ Associations’ rights to collective bargaining under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi (source: Dave Cournoyer)
Also: Pierre Poilievre running in Battle River—Crowfoot by-election, gets unwelcome greetings from UCP VP
Naheed Nenshi’s speech was upbeat and touched on a lot of traditional NDP points about public health care, public education and rights for workers, but he was most animated when ripping into Premier Danielle Smith’s threat that the Liberal Party’s re-election would spark an unprecedented national unity crisis and her flirtation with Alberta separatists.
‘I will be damned if we ever let Danielle Smith tear the country down,’ Nenshi said. “Alberta’s New Democrats will always, always, always stand with the millions and millions of Canadians who believe in a stronger, more unified country,” Nenshi said.
“No more playing stupid separatist games with the future of our province! No more disrespecting Indigenous communities! No more disrespecting Albertans!”
Premier Danielle Smith in an ad announcing the UCP’s “Public Health Guarantee” during the 2023 election (source: United Conservative Party / YouTube)
Carrie Tait’s bombshell exposé rocked Alberta politics this week
When I first sat down to start writing today’s column I was planning to write a follow up to my piece about Premier Danielle Smith’s reaction to American President Donald Trump’s tariff threat, but a week in politics can be an eternity and to say this has been a busy week in Alberta politics is an understatement.
If you read one news article this weekend, I strongly recommend it be intrepid Globe & Mail reporter Carrie Tait’s bombshell exposé about the United Conservative Party government firing Alberta Health Services CEO Athena Mentzelopoulos “two days before she was scheduled to meet with the province’s Auditor General to discuss her investigation into procurement contracts and deals for private surgical facilities.”
Premier Danielle Smith speaks to delegates at the 2023 United Conservative Party annual general meeting in Calgary (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)
Any good talk radio host understands that the show doesn’t belong to the host, it belongs to the listeners. And if this past weekend’s annual general meeting is any indication, talk radio host-turned-Premier Danielle Smith might be taking a similar approach as leader of the United Conservative Party.
Aside from a nod to protecting parental rights during her keynote speech, Smith largely stood out of the way as more than 3,700 delegates packed into Calgary’s BMO Centre to vote on party policy and elect a new executive board. It was an impressive crowd and probably the largest provincial political convention in Alberta’s history.
The UCP board is the governing body of the organization and is made up of seventeen elected directors, party leader Premier Danielle Smith, and two non-voting MLAs who serve as Caucus liaisons. The two MLA spots, which are chosen through a vote of UCP MLAs, are currently filled by Camrose MLA Jackie Lovely and Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland MLA Shane Getson.
Half of the UCP director positions are up for election this year and the sweeping success of the slate of candidates backed by the social conservative Take Back Alberta group at last year’s AGM has fuelled a lot of speculation about what might happen in this election.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s good news week ahead of this weekend’s United Conservative Party annual general meeting was largely overshadowed by a slow motion rebellion in his party.
While the Premier wanted to talk about childcare and the economy, a disgruntled group of UCP constituency presidents announced Monday morning that they had convinced 22 constituency associations to pass identical motions calling for a review of Kenney’s leadership to be moved before March 1, 2022.
The leadership review had been pushed to April 2022 from fall 2022 after Kenney averted a caucus revolt over the summer.
a map of the United Conservative Party constituency associations that have passed motions calling for a review of Jason Kenney’s leadership before March 1, 2022.
According to recent polling, Kenney is the least popular Premier in Canada, sitting at 22 per cent approval among Albertans, and his party has floundered in the polls and fundraising for the past year.
Rachel Notley would be Premier once again if an election were held today, which will surely be a future on the minds of many UCP activists this weekend.
Kenney’s fumbling response to the COVID-19 pandemic is part of the problem, but so to is his cabinet’s decision to wage a multi-front war against everyone from Alberta’s parks, nurses and teachers while trying to open the Rocky Mountains up to open-pit coal mining.
A party that famously promised “Jobs, Economy and Pipelines” in the 2019 election has delivered everything but.
When the business of the meeting begins, special resolutions will only be able to be brought to the floor of the AGM by Kenney and one resolution being introduced by the Kenney-friendly UCP association in Edmonton-North West would increase the number of constituency associations needed to trigger an early leadership review from 1/4 of 87 to 1/3 of 87.
A list of of the 22 constituency associations who passed the motion calling for an early review shows that this is largely a rural revolt against Kenney’s leadership, likely from the unruly rural Wildrose-side of the party, which has never been satisfied to subjugate itself to to the kind of centralized leadership that the Premier would have been comfortable with in Ottawa.
The first signatory of the letter from the 22 was a name that would be quite familiar to Kenney – Jack Redekop – the current president of the Calgary-Fish Creek UCP and former president of Kenney’s won former federal electoral district association in Calgary-Midnapore.
One of the common criticisms of Kenney is that he has become detached from the party’s organization and local leadership since his election as Premier in 2019. Wildrosers who don’t like a centralized party leadership are unhappy, as are former Progressive Conservatives, who might be accustomed to more attention and access to their leadership.
The two groups have also discovered that all the things they disliked about each others politics when they were two parties are still there, except now they are in the same party.
The revolt hasn’t been limited to the party membership.
Jason Kenney and former UCP deputy leader Leela Aheer in happier time (source: YouTube)
Four MLAs – Chestemere-Strathmore MLA Leela Aheer, Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie, Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt, and Calgary-Fish Creek MLA Richard Gotfried – have either publicly called for Kenney to resign or have openly criticized his leadership. And while most of their colleagues have avoided making public comments about Kenney’s leadership, the unhappiness among UCP MLAs and their staff is palpable.
There has been a steady stream of high-profile political staffers leaving their positions in the UCP government for jobs in the private sector. This past month saw the departure of press secretary Blaise Boehmer, who levelled some pretty heavy criticisms against Kenney, and UCP Caucus executive director Brittany Baltimore, who both recently took jobs with government relations companies.
Guthrie levelled allegations to the UCP Caucus this week that Political Action Committees supporting Kenney were paying the delegate fees of supporters in order to stack the votes in favour of the Premier during the AGM.
Peter Guthrie
Postmedia columnist Don Braid wrote in his most recent column that a private company was organizing to send delegates in order to curry favour with UCP cabinet ministers if Kenney survives his leadership challenges.
Albertans, and UCP members, are angry at Kenney, but aside from former Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean who is running for the UCP nomination in the Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche by-election, there is no obvious heir apparent inside the UCP for his opponents to rally around.
Cynthia Moore has been acclaimed as President and Sonia Kont acclaimed as Vice President of Fundraising, but there are races for the Secretary and Vice President of Communications positions.
A number of candidates are contesting regional director positions, including Sundre-resident Heidi Overguard, who was appointed by the UCP government to the Board of Directors of Alberta Health Services in Nov. 2019.
Meanwhile, UCP members will be lining up at the microphone to debate policies about cancel culture, private health care, private schools, and hydrogen, among other issues. The CBC reported that Kenney’s office instructed staffers to vote down policies “introducing a provincial sales tax, relocalizing 911 dispatch, a moratorium on new coal exploration and development on the eastern slopes of the Rockies and creating a revenue-neutral Alberta carbon tax to replace the federal backstop.”
This weekend’s convention will be a much different affair from the party’s last in-person annual general meeting after it’s big win in the 2019 election.
Kenney will surely be focused on rallying the party to give him one more chance ahead of next spring’s review, but don’t expect to hear many of the celebratory rallying cries we heard two years ago. The party no longer feels like it is united and it is certainly not the one big conservative happy family that Kenney helped establish in 2017.
The UCP AGM starts at the Grey Eagle Resort & Casino in Calgary on Friday, Nov. 19 and will wrap up on Sunday, Nov. 21.
