This is part 1 of a podcast series about where Albertans fit in the sprawling success story we call Canada and how we can tell better stories about why Albertans…

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Only two Alberta premiers have finished a full term in office since the beginning of the 21st century.

Ralph Klein completed his third full-term as a Progressive Conservative premier from 2001 to 2004 and Rachel Notley led the New Democratic Party through the entirety of its historic one-term as government from 2015 to 2019 (Notley’s also defied historical expectations by leading her party to a near comeback in 2023).

Aside from Klein and Notley, the Premier’s Office has been a rotating door of short-term tenants who were forced out after election defeats, scandals, caucus and cabinet revolts, and raucous party memberships (the exception being Premier Dave Hancock, who served in the role for the six months between Alison Redford’s resignation and Jim Prentice’s win in the 2014 PC Party leadership race).

So the question on the minds of many political watchers today is whether the current occupant of the Premier’s Office, Danielle Smith, can survive a full-term in office to lead her party into the next election?

A month ago, I would have said absolutely and even today I would say probably, but Smith is now finding herself on increasingly shakier political ground after deciding to call a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada.

Danielle Smith’s approval rating takes a plunge

Smith has been successful at maintaining her popularity with United Conservative Party voters since entering the Premier’s Office in 2022 while also remaining a very polarizing figure among the general public. Her supporters tend to really like her and her critics tend to really not.

But a recent poll released by Angus Reid shows Smith’s public approval has plummeted from 51 per cent just 12 months ago to a record low of 39 per cent approval this month. Only 26 per cent of Albertans surveyed in the poll said they strongly approved of Smith’s performance as Premier and, at 46 per cent, she has the strongest disapproval rating of any Premier in Canada.

While the UCP government has implemented a fairly radical and chaotic political agenda and have been caught up in some major scandals that would have shattered public support for most premiers, it appears that Smith’s decision to call a referendum on Alberta separating from Canada is what was finally able to shake her popularity among many Albertans.

Smith says she will campaign for Alberta to remain in Canada ahead of her October referendum but Albertans aren’t buying her later-day Captain Canada act.

Smith has spent most of the last year changing laws and making it easier for separatist supporters inside her UCP to organize for the separation vote. She was happy to ignore a pro-Canada Forever Canadian citizen initiative petition until the moment the Stay Free Alberta petition was blocked by the courts. And she has spent a considerable amount of time chastising Albertans who want to remain in Canada for not treating the separatists with kid gloves — without applying the same expectations to the separatists inside her party.

A recent poll released by Ipsos showed the 48 per cent of Albertans believed Smith wants Alberta to leave Canada and only 31 per cent surveyed believed she wants Alberta to stay in Canada.

Another Angus Reid survey found that 56 per cent of Albertans believed Smith is handling the separatism issue poorly and 58 per cent believed she is calling the referendum to appease the separatists in her party. Sixty-nine per cent of Albertans surveyed believe the separatists will never accept a no vote result in the referendum, which is a prediction I’m willing to bet money on.

Most polls show that separatism is largely an issue among a subset of UCP voters who would vote for Alberta to leave Canada, but the wording of Smith’s referendum question has left separatist organizers like UCP constituency president and separatist leader Mitch Sylvester deeply unhappy and publicly challenging Smith’s leadership (though Smith’s wording makes it easier to frame the question as a way to send a message to Ottawa).

Smith’s inner circle has already been heard arguing that replacing the Premier will almost certainly lead to a less appealing leader or even, gasp, an NDP government.

Smith all of a sudden looks pretty wobbly as she tries to continue what had been a fairly impressive balancing act of appeasing both separatists and people who want to just send a message to Ottawa without leaving Canada — and those people are almost entirely inside her own party’s voter coalition.

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Jason Kenney comparisons are flawed

A number of people have made comparisons to Premier Jason Kenney who was driven out of office in 2022 by UCP activists unhappy that his government enacted public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many of those same party activists are now the most enthusiastic Alberta separatists within the UCP and they include UCP MLAs, provincial vice-presidents and board members, past candidates, and influential local constituency presidents — and many of them are deeply influenced by the radical online politics of American President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

While Smith’s political ground is a lot shakier than it was a year ago, there’s a few key differences between her situation and Kenney’s that are important to recognize.

1. Smith has UCP MLA support

Smith is not facing an open rebellion of UCP MLAs like Kenney was in the final days of his premiership. Smith’s UCP has actually grown over the past year after it welcomed back Lesser Slave Lake MLA Scott Sinclair. Sinclair rejoined the UCP Caucus after spending much of the last year criticizing corruption in the Smith government until he probably realized that his chances of re-election as an Independent MLA were slim to none.

Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie, who quit cabinet and was kicked out of the UCP Caucus after asking too many questions about alleged government corruption, remains leader of the Progressive Tory Party.

Power in the UCP government is clearly centralized in the Premier’s Office, and through Chief of Staff Rob Anderson (co-author of the Free Alberta Strategy), but Smith has allowed some dissent in her caucus on the separation issue.

Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan quit his job as a Parliamentary Secretary after publicly supporting Sylvestre’s separation petition, but he was never at risk of being kicked out of the UCP Caucus. And Smith stood confidently behind transportation minister Devin Dreeshen after he refused to say if he would vote to remain in Canada.

2. The UCP is raising tonnes of money

The UCP under Smith’s leadership has remained a fundraising powerhouse.

Elections Alberta disclosures from the first quarter of 2026 show Smith’s UCP raised $2,478,702.89 between January 1 and March 31, putting the governing party miles ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP, which raised $1,021,436.32 in the same period.

Big fundraising dinners in Edmonton, Lethbridge and Red Deer earlier this year, and a 2000-person fundraising gala in Calgary last week, will fill the UCP coffers ahead of the next provincial election, which is expected to be held in 2027.

Notley’s NDP led in fundraising during Kenney’s final year as UCP leader and Premier.

3. UCP is still ahead of the NDP in the polls, though the gap is closing

Aside from the recent dip in the polls and Smith’s own approval rating, the UCP remains ahead in the polls and headed for another majority government in 2027 — especially if the ridings are drawn in a way that guarantees it.

Three recent polls show the UCP in the lead and two show NDP gaining ground:

• Leger: UCP 49%, NDP 40%

• Ipsos: UCP 48%, NDP 45%

• Angus Reid: UCP 46%, NDP 45%

When Kenney was pushed out, Notley’s NDP were leading in the polls, so although Smith’s personal popularity has taken a hit, her party remains in the lead.

4. Nenshi’s NDP just can’t seem to capitalize on the chaos

Smith’s biggest saving grace might be the inability of Nenshi’s NDP to capitalize on the chaos the UCP has created inside the health care and education system, as well as ceding the affordability issue to the UCP who mostly used it as a bludgeon against Ottawa.

I wrote a year ago that NDP MLAs should should start every day by asking themselves the question “how can we make life more affordable for working-class Alberta families?” and then they should spend the rest of their day talking all about it, all the time.

And just this week, the NDP released a new suite of affordability policies, promising to cut electricity bills by 10 per cent, increase minimum wage to $18, and to reduce grocery prices by increasing competition, ending shrinkflation, and appointing a grocery watchdog. The NDP also proposed removing the $0.13 per litre provincial gas tax while prices remain high.

It’s a good start but the NDP are playing catch up on an issue that they should have spent the last year or more defining.

5. Smith is likely more focused on UCP AGM than the referendum campaign

Smith’s shockingly causal attitude towards calling a province-wide referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada, followed up by pledging a cost-analysis of leaving compiled by a panel of the usual suspects only a few months before the vote, suggests her mind might be more focused on managing the rowdy crowds of party activists that will show up at the UCP AGM in November.

The annual convention will be held a month after the referendum vote and, regardless of the voting results, will almost certainly include fierce debate about Alberta’s separation from Canada and Smith’s future as party leader.

We know that Smith and her government dedicate an intense amount of time catering and responding to the demands and needs of her party’s most loyal activists, and that might be a key difference between Smith and Kenney.

While Kenney was a product of 1990s conservative activism and professional politics that served him well for decades in Ottawa and for a brief time in Alberta, Smith is first and foremost a media personality.

Smith understands from her time as a talk radio show host that the show belongs to the listeners and not the host, or, in her current role, the UCP belongs to the members and not its leader. I understand this will be a divisive position among some UCP members, but it’s clearly how most of the UCP’s most energetic activists see their place in the party and Alberta politics.

Readers shouldn’t interpret this as a defence of Smith because it remains very clear that she holding this divisive and damaging separation referendum in an attempt to save her own leadership, regardless of a huge leak of voters’ personal contact information by separatist groups and the threat of foreign interference and misinformation. But it might work out for her.

Will Smith be more politically damaged when the dust settles? Almost certainly.

Will her United Conservative Party remain united? Yet to be seen.

Will Alberta be more united in a year from now? That feels really unlikely.

Will Smith survive to finish a full-term as Premier? Probably, but TBD.

The next 12 to 18 months might be the most unpredictable time in Albertan and Canadian politics in recent memory, and that says a lot about how chaotic it is going to get.

NDP MLA Amanda Chapman running for re-election in Calgary-Beddington

NDP MLA Amanda Chapman was nominated to run for re-election in Calgary-Beddington at a nomination meeting yesterday. Chapman was first elected in 2023 after defeating UCP MLA Josephine Pon in a close race.

More NDP nominations are coming up soon:

• June 16: MLA David Eggen will be nominated in Edmonton-North West and MLA David Shepherd will be nominated in Edmonton-City Centre.

• June 24: Sarah Elmeligi will be nominated in Banff-Kananaskis.

• June 25: MLA Marie Renaud will be nominated in St. Albert and Sharif Haji will be nominated in Edmonton-Decore.

• June 26: Kyle Campbell will be nominated in Calgary-Shaw ahead of an expected by-election.

• June 28: MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul will be nominated in Edmonton-West Henday.

Three new candidates have declared their plans to run for UCP nominations to run in the next provincial election:

• Michelle Mather is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Glenmore

  • Mather ran for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Lougheed ahead of the 2023 provincial election.

  • Sanjeev Kad is also running for the party’s nomination in this southwest Calgary riding.

• Principal and teacher Kevin Van Lagen is running for the UCP nomination in Drumheller-Stettler

• Chidi Iwuchukwu running for the UCP nomination in Edmonton-South West

A full list of nominated and nomination candidates can be found on this page:

More Alberta politics

• Corb Lund has submitted the Water Not Coal citizen initiative petition to Elections Alberta.

  • Lund says more than 200,000 Albertans signed the petition demanding the province prohibit new coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, including the Grassy Mountain and Blackstone projects.

  • Lund was a recent guest on the Daveberta Podcast.

• Monte Solberg and Darwin Durnie have been named by the UCP to the Independent Advisory Panel that will draw the new electoral map for the next election.

  • Solberg is a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister and Durnie is a senior strategist in emergency management.

  • NDP appointees are Dr. Gerard Kennedy, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Alberta, and Brent Robinson, a former councillor for the town of Okotoks.

• Longtime journalist Sean Amato is now the Director of Communications for the NDP Caucus. Amato worked for many years as a reporter for CTV in Edmonton and most recently for CityNews.

  • Amato fills a role that was previously occupied by Will Tigley from 2024 to 2025.

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Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a boring moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

I am hoping to publish a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast tomorrow, which includes an in depth discussion why Canada needs Alberta and Alberta needs Canada.

If you like what you read here on Daveberta, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter and feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

Refer a friend

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.

“We absolutely need all of your help to get the attention of the UCP and make them understand that have to cater to some of the things that we want at least, and this is the start of the whole process,” Sylvestre said in a video posted on x.com.

Sylvestre has threatened to mount of challenge of Premier Danielle Smith’s leadership of the UCP and recently told Toronto Star reporter Richard Warnica that be believes King Charles III wants him dead.

City Councillor Dan McLean and Mike Derry remain in the UCP nomination contest.

McLean was first elected to Calgary City Council in 2021 and was re-elected in 2025. He ran against Schulz for the UCP nomination in October 2018 and has kept close public ties with the UCP and Schulz since then. He is widely considered to be the favourite in the nomination race.

Derry is a talent management company owner and 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.

Derry has the support of well-known right-wing organizer Craig Chandler, who has spearheaded a lawn sign campaign in the riding calling on McLean to remain on city council to complete the four year term he was elected to in October 2025.

The UCP nomination vote will happen on Wednesday, June 24 from 3:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Cardel Rec South.

Kyle Campbell running for NDP nomination in Calgary-Shaw by-election

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.”

“When policy is made in Edmonton it shows up in the lives of people,” he said. “I’ve felt the pinch of poor public policy and can no longer stand on the sidelines hoping someone else will protect our province and our rights.”

Calgary-Shaw has been represented by conservative party MLAs since its creation in 1986 with the sole exception of NDP MLA Graham Sucha, who represented the riding from 2015 to 2019. The riding was one of the NDP’s strongest voter growth ridings in the 2023 election, with candidate David Cloutier increasing the NDP’s vote by 17.09 points over 2019.

It’s 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 metric of support for Premier Smith after she called a referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada. It will also be an important test for Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, who see winning more seats in Calgary as their path to victory in the next provincial election.

While the NDP has lagged behind the UCP in most polls for most of the last three years, a recent poll from Angus Reid showed the NDP with 45 per cent support, one point behind the UCP’s 46 per cent.

The Calgary-Shaw by-election will also be held as Elections Alberta and the RCMP investigate the leaking of the entire official voters list that included the names and addresses of 2.9 million voters, as well as efforts by governments and private groups outside of the country to interfere in Canadian politics.

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Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse running for re-election in Edmonton-Rutherford

NDP MLA Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse was selected to run for re-election Edmonton-Rutherford at a nomination meeting on May 27. Calahoo Stonehouse was first elected in 2023 and currently serves as the opposition critic for Forestry and Parks.

She ran for the Alberta NDP leadership in 2024 and was a guest on the Daveberta Podcast during her campaign.

Calgary-Acadia NDP MLA Diana Batten was also nominated to run for re-election at a meeting on May 29. A Registered Nurse before becoming an MLA, Batten was first elected in 2023 in the closest race in that year’s provincial election.

More NDP MLAs are expected to be nominated as candidates over the next month:

• June 11: MLA Amanda Chapman will be nominated in Calgary-Beddington.

• June 16: MLA David Eggen will be nominated in Edmonton-North West and MLA David Shepherd will be nominated in Edmonton-City Centre.

• June 24: Sarah Elmeligi will be nominated in Banff-Kananaskis.

• June 25: MLA Marie Renaud will be nominated in St. Albert and Sharif Haji will be nominated in Edmonton-Decore.

• June 28: MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul will be nominated in Edmonton-West Henday.

Three new candidates have declared their plans to run for UCP nominations to run in the next provincial election:

• Sanjeev Kad is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Glenmore.

  • Kad is the chair of the Chair of the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC) and member of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology board of directors.

  • He is President of the UCP constituency association in the Calgary-West riding and ran for Calgary City Council in 2017 and 2021.

  • Calgary-Glenmore is currently represented by NDP MLA Nagwan Al-Guneid, who was first elected in 2023 by a narrow 48 votes.

• Janice Fleming announced on LinkedIn that she is running for the UCP nomination in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood.

  • Fleming is a former community league president and the current President of the UCP association in the riding.

  • She ran for Edmonton City Council in the 1992 and 1995 municipal elections and for Edmonton Public School Board in 2001.

  • The riding is currently represented by NDP MLA Janis Irwin, who was first elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023 with 71.4 per cent of the vote.

• Tina Warawa is running for the UCP nomination in Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville.

  • Warawa is a former mayor and councillor of the Village of Andrew and served on Vegreville town council from 2017 to 2025. She is the former president of the Vegreville Minor Hockey Association.

  • She works as a constituency assistant for Lakeland Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs and previous worked in a similar role for Progressive Conservative MLA Jacquie Fenske from 2012 to 2015.

  • The riding is currently represented by UCP MLA Jackie Armstrong-Homeniuk. She was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 58 per cent of the vote.

A full list of nominated and nomination candidates can be found on this page:

UCP electoral boundaries committee names former judge and UCP-donor as advisory panel chair

Retired judge Brian O’Ferrall, KC has been appointed as the chair of the independent advisory panel that will redo the work already done by the bipartisan Electoral Boundaries Commission last year.

The two NDP MLA’s on the committee, Calgary-Mountain View MLA Kathleen Ganley and Edmonton-Mill Woods MA Christina Gray, took issue with O’Ferrall’s financial support of the UCP since retiring as a judge:

“In a process that is already regarded by the public as illegitimate, this clear partisan leaning does nothing to restore legitimacy. Instead, it continues to show that this is about the UCP drawing a partisan map.”

According to Elections Alberta records, O’Ferrall donated $500 to the Calgary-Elbow UCP constituency association in 2022, $1,000.00 to the UCP in 2024 and $1,287.50 in 2025. Elections Canada records show that he donated $6,850 to the Conservative Party of Canada in 2023 and 2024.

Before becoming a judge, O’Ferrall was vice-president of the Calgary-Elbow PC association and Ralph Klein’s official agent during the Premier’s re-election campaign in the riding in 1993. He was also the lawyer for the Calgary-Montrose PC association during its high-profile legal dispute over a candidate nomination result in 2004.

During the committee meeting Ganley tried to introduce a motion that would specifically ask the O’Ferrall to disclose whether he has made any political donations below the $250 reporting limit. Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Brandon Lunty, who is chairing the committee, ruled Ganley’s motion out of order.

Lunty was also chair of the citizen initiative committee that made headlines last month.

The UCP and NDP have now been given until Friday, June 5 to submit their two nominees to sit on the advisory panel chaired by O’Ferrall.

The UCP’s decision to throw out the year’s worth of work done by the Boundaries Commission and create this new committee and panel to redraw the map has been widely criticized as an attempt to gerrymander the new riding map to benefit the UCP in the next provincial election.

The next provincial election is expected to be held in October 2027.

New episode of the Daveberta Podcast

I shared a new episode of the Daveberta Podcast over the weekend after catching up with Corb Lund as his Water Not Coal citizen initiative petition enters its final week. Be sure to listen to the interview and find a petition signing location near you.

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Ranchers, farmers, landowners, residents of communities downstream of the Eastern Slopes, and Albertans across the province are concerned about the impact of large industrial coal mines on the fresh water that flows from the Rocky Mountains.

The Water Not Coal campaign needs to submit more than 177,732 signatures to Elections Alberta in order to force the Alberta government to respond to the following statement through a vote by MLAs in the Legislature or a province-wide referendum:

“The Government of Alberta shall prohibit through legislation all coal exploration and mining activities within the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, other than mines that are in actual production as of January 1, 2026. For clarity, this prohibition includes Northback Holdings’ Grassy Mountain Project and Valory Resources’ Blackstone Project as well as any projects to expand any producing mines.”

This is a continuation of a heated political battle sparked six years ago when the United Conservative Party government of Premier Jason Kenney decided to rescind a 1976 policy restricting open-pit mines across most of the province's Rocky Mountains and Foothills. The decision faced widespread opposition, especially in southwest Alberta.

The government partially backtracked, kind of, but Premier Danielle Smith appears eager to move forward with Northback Holdings Corp’s Grassy Mountain coal mining project anyway.

Northback is a subsidiary of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd owned by Australian billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

According to a poll released by Leger in February 2025, 77 per cent of Albertans were concerned about possible selenium contamination in the watershed, and 70 per cent were concerned with coal dust carrying downwind from the mine sites. Only 23 per cent of Albertans surveyed said they supported coal exploration for mining in the eastern slopes, and 27 per cent believe the economic impacts outweighed the environmental risks.

If you haven’t already, visit the Water Not Coal website to find a location to sign the petition. The campaign will be be collecting signatures until the end of this week and submitting the petition to Elections Alberta on June 10, 2026.

Thanks for listening

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Daveberta Podcast.

A big thanks to Daveberta’s more than 9,000 subscribers, including new paid subscribers Jim, Gabriela, Lee, Ross and Janet, Matt, Ian, Thomas, Patricia, Ethan, Ken, Lisa, Jody, Lizette, Laurence, Samuel, Glen, Elizabeth, Michelle, Wolverine and Stephen, who shared a message saying “keep up the good work!”

Thanks for the kind words and for your support!

If you found today’s podcast interesting and useful, feel free to share it with a friend or neighbour.

Thanks again. I’ll be back soon.

Dave

This is my Prairie

As part of this fight against new coal mines in Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, Lund re-released his hit song “This is my Prairie” a few years ago along with Brett Kissel, Terri Clark, Sherryl Sewepagaham, Paul Brandt, Armond Duck Chief, Katie Rox and Brandi Sidoryk. It’s a really powerful song, so take a listen and enjoy.

We also delved into a bit of history from Danielle Smith’s time as leader of the Wildrose Party and echos of the Social Credit era of Alberta politics.

Be sure to check out Jeremy’s new book, Dark Phoenix: The Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence of Danielle Smith, available on October 13, 2026 from Dundurn Press.

“I’m no separatist. I am a Canadian. A proud Canadian. And I think almost every person in this party is a proud Canadian.”

That was Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s message to Progressive Conservative Party convention delegates at the party’s convention in Red Deer on March 28, 2003.

Klein was responding to frustration felt by many Alberta conservatives about the federal Liberal government of the time, then lead by Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and calls by some for Alberta to separate from Canada.

“Whether the issue is the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, Senate reform, or the gun registry, many Albertans feel their views are being ignored by the federal government,” Klein said in his speech. “Don’t let anyone tell you that the best way to resolve these frustrations is separation.”

Klein was right that calling for Alberta to leave Canada wasn’t the way to resolve these frustrations. Only three short years later, Calgary Member of Parliament Stephen Harper was Prime Minister and would lead a Conservative government in Ottawa for the following nine years.

And, as political writer Jen Gerson pointed out on Real Talk yesterday, it wasn’t long after Harper’s win in 2006 that the Wheat Board monopoly was dissolved and the gun registry was scrapped. Whether or not you agree with those big policy changes (or Klein’s political agenda at all) the impact of Alberta conservatives on Canada is undeniable.

“We have evidence that when smart Albertans put their minds together and actually become effective communicators and policy makers we can change the country,” said Gerson.

Gerson has written extensively about Alberta separatism and has joined the Lead not Leave campaign, which bills itself as a Pro-Alberta, Pro-Canada policy initiative. The group is calling on Premier Danielle Smith to not hold a referendum on Alberta separation from Canada.

The Lead not Leave campaign’s opening letter, signed by Gerson, former conservative finance ministers Travis Toews and Jim Dinning, prominent academics Andrew Leach, Trevor Tombe and Jared Wesley, conservative strategist Ken Boessenkool, and former University of Alberta chancellor Peggy Garrity, declares that:

Our goal is to address Alberta’s legitimate frustrations in a way that is productive and pro-active, strengthening both Canada and our province’s place within it. Where separatists are offering attractive ideas, we’ll test them out. When their claims are rooted in wishful thinking or a retreat from grounded reality, we will call them out.

And we start by calling on the Alberta government to not hold a referendum on separation and instead focus on making the case for Alberta in Canada with a credible set of policy proposals - beginning with the progress demonstrated by the recent MOU - that will ensure this next generation of Albertans is leading the country, not leaving it.

Stating clearly that “the status quo is not desirable,” the group aims to “host structured conversations, or salons; test new ideas with stakeholders in policy labs; and contribute actionable ways of improving Alberta’s place in Confederation.”

Not just accepting the status quo is key, especially in a time when many voters increasingly believe the status quo is making life more difficult.

I offered a similar piece of advice to Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi almost a year ago as it became clear the opposition party was struggling in the polls:

In the debate about Alberta separatism, Nenshi has positioned the NDP as the “Stand up for Canada” party. Now he needs to appeal to that significant group of Albertans who want our province to remain in Canada but also think we could get a better deal out of Confederation. Canada isn’t perfect and neither is the relationship between the provinces and the federal government. In this debate, the status quo isn’t going to be good enough. Nenshi should come up with some concrete and aspirational ideas aimed at improving Alberta’s position within Canada.

I still think this is the case, but I’ll update that advice to say that those ideas should be aimed at not just improving Alberta within Canada but improving Canada as a country.

I’m hoping that Lead not Leave might convince the normally risk adverse NDP and their For Alberta For Canada campaign to propose some new progressive ideas for a better Alberta and better Canada.

There’s a real opportunity for pro-Canada voices and thinkers to counter to the fantastical and easily debunked utopian claims and conspiracy theories that loads of AI-generated images shared by separatist social media accounts proclaim await us in an independent Alberta Republic. But it can’t just be countered with fact sheets and fancy reports. Facts are important and they need to be the basis for more powerful emotional arguments for Alberta and Canada.

There’s also an opportunity to counter the zero-sum threats and moving policy goalposts that Premier Smith continues to use to threaten the future of Canada.

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Ottawa-based political writer David Moscrop described Smith’s threats to national unity and Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response as “Canada’s Shotgun Federalism.”

“With the Carney ministry offering Alberta concessions on the industrial carbon price and a pipeline in the hopes of, let’s say, ah, nation-building and keeping the family together, the feds got in return exactly what you’d think: nothing,” wrote Moscrop.

“The overestimated-but-still-dangerous forces of Alberta separatism weren’t placated by the bargain, and Premier Danielle Smith continues to try to walk a line so fine that it makes the threads of a spider web look like the trunk of a redwood,” Moscrop wrote. “Her strategy of a “sovereign Alberta in a united Canada,” whatever that means, smacks of wanting-to-have-it-all-itis. I get wanting it all. I’ve been there. But it doesn’t work.”

It won’t work, because while there are plenty of Albertans who have long been unhappy with the Liberal government in Ottawa, a pipeline isn’t going to placate separatist ringleaders who are more interested in creating a Trump-tributary state than furthering any coherent economic policy.

It’s those separatist leaders, many who hold prominent positions within United Conservative Party, who Smith is trying to appease by holding this referendum on Alberta separatism even though Carney has agreed to most of her demands and is spending a lot of political capital to get a pipeline to the Pacific Coast.

Until now Smith has succeeded in appealing to both Albertans who want the province to leave Canada (who most polls show are a majority of UCP voters) and those who want to remain in Canada but are unhappy with Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa. But actually calling the separation referendum appears to have upset her tenuous balancing act.

Separatist leaders are split on Smith’s future, but prominent leavers like Stay Free Alberta/Alberta Prosperity Project CEO Mitch Sylvestre, who is also president of the UCP association in Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul riding, has openly threatened Premier’s leadership of the UCP.

They are angry that Smith, who decided to call the separation referendum, said she would campaign for Alberta to remain in Canada.

An Angus Reid survey released this week found that 56 per cent of Albertans believe Smith is handling the separatism issue poorly and 58 per cent believe she is calling the referendum to appease the separatists in her party. Sixty-nine per cent of Albertans surveyed believe the separatists will never accept a no vote result in the referendum.

Smith dug the political hole she now finds herself in. After years of bending over backward for the separatists in her party by amending laws, fuelling the flames of resentment, and appealing for them to the courts, she has found herself in a politically untenable situation. Simply claiming to be pro-Canada at the eleventh hour is hilariously unconvincing.

Former conservative party premiers like Ralph Klein, and Peter Lougheed before him, told the Alberta separatists to pound dirt. Because of that the separatists then found themselves marginalized in right-wing parties on the electoral and political fringe.

Klein and Lougheed wouldn’t have allowed the separatists to entrench themselves into the Progressive Conservative Party like Smith has allowed them to dig into the UCP.

Danielle Smith might be damned if she does and she’s damned if she doesn’t, but regardless of how Albertans end up voting in the referendum, it won’t be soon forgotten that she risked the future of Alberta and Canada to save her own party leadership.

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10 years after the Fort McMurray Wildfire — Plus ça change

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author John Vaillant is the keynote speaker at the Elbows Up For Climate Summit 2026 in Edmonton next week. Vaillant’s book Fire Weather won the 2024 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Vaillant is speaking at a free event at the Art Gallery of Alberta on Thursday, June 4 from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm that will be followed by a Q&A discussion featuring Town of Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, former Montreal mayor Valérie Plante and former Edmonton mayor Don Iveson.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a boring moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

I will be joining a live stream discussion with independent journalist Jeremy Appel on May 29 at 3:00 p.m. MDT to talk about Smith’s separation referendum, the politics that got us here and what we will face over the next four months.

If you like what you read here on Daveberta, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter and feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

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.

He was voted MLA to Watch in 2025 by Daveberta subscribers.

A former solar power business owner and NAIT instructor, Kasawski was first elected in 2023 after unseating one-term United Conservative Party MLA Jordan Walker. Walker is once again running for the UCP nomination.

Kasawski has been vocal in his opposition to Alberta separatism and called on Premier Danielle Smith to speak out against foreign interference.

The suburban riding just east of Edmonton was represented by NDP MLA Annie McKitrick from 2015 to 2019.

Sherwood Park was a key riding for the NDP in the last provincial election in the party’s campaign to regain support in the suburban and commuter communities that surround Edmonton, which some political watchers refer to as the Edmonton Doughnut. Despite a focused effort and an impressive list of local candidates in the Doughnut, Sherwood Park was the NDP’s lone gain in the region.

Fun fact: Conservative MP Garnett Genuis was the Wildrose Party candidate in Sherwood Park in the 2012 provincial election.

Lethbridge NDP MLA running for re-election: NDP MLA Rob Miyashiro has been nominated to run for re-election in Lethbridge-West. Miyashiro was first elected in the December 2024 by-election to replace NDP MLA Shannon Phillips, who stepped down after representing the riding since 2015.

More NDP MLAs are expected to be nominated as candidates over the next month:

• May 27: MLA Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse will be nominated in Edmonton-Rutherford.

• May 29: MLA Diana Batten will be nominated in Calgary-Acadia.

• June 11: MLA Amanda Chapman will be nominated in Calgary-Beddington.

• June 16: MLA David Eggen will be nominated in Edmonton-North West and MLA David Shepherd will be nominated in Edmonton-City Centre.

• June 25: MLA Marie Renaud will be nominated in St. Albert.

Calgary-Shaw by-election: The deadline for candidates to enter the UCP nomination in Calgary-Shaw was set for May 29 (the party has since removed the information from its website so it’s unclear if the previously announced deadline remains). Mike Derry, Stewart Jeanes, and Dan McLean are running for the UCP nomination. A by-election is expected to be called after incumbent UCP MLA Rebecca Schulz announces her resignation.

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A full list of nominated and nomination candidates can be found on this page:

Still no new electoral map

Political parties are nominating candidates but we still don’t know what the electoral boundaries will look like in the next provincial election. Adding another stumbling block to Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Brandon Lunty’s hastily created electoral boundaries committee, the Law Society of Alberta and the Canadian Bar Association now say they won’t help find retired and sitting judges to lead an advisory panel to redraw Alberta’s electoral boundaries.

Yes, Alberta is actually having a separation referendum

There’s a lot happening following Premier Smith’s announcement last week that she has decided to hold a province-wide referendum on October 19, 2026 about Alberta’s separation from Canada. Here are some of the latest updates:

• "The party won't be taking a position and I won't be making mine public,” UCP President Rob Smith told CBC Radio this week when asked if he or the governing party would pick a side in the Alberta separation referendum. Most polls show a majority of UCP voters support Alberta separating from Canada.

• Environics and Angus Reid have released fresh polling about Albertans response to Smith’s separation referendum.

  • The Angus Reid survey found that 56 per cent of Albertans believe Smith is handling the issue poorly and 58 per cent believe she is calling the referendum to appease the separatists in her party.

  • Sixty-nine per cent of Albertans surveyed believe the separatists will never accept a no vote result in the referendum.

• The media Q&A session at the press conference wrapping up the Western Premiers’ Conference in Kananaskis focused almost entirely on Smith’s separation referendum, leading to a notable exchange between Smith and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew over the treaty rights and the duty to consult First Nations.

• Lead Not Leave is the latest pro-Canada group to emerge, with former conservative finance ministers Travis Toews and Jim Dinning among the leaders of the group. Toews finished second to Smith in the 2022 UCP leadership contest.

• A recording of Smith’s hour and a half long virtual town hall with UCP members on May 23, 2026 has been posted online.

• Red Deer-South UCP MLA Jason Stephan quietly stepped down as Parliamentary Secretary for Constitutional Affairs weeks ago after he urged Albertans to sign the Stay Free Alberta separation petition.

  • During this time in the role Stephan called for Canada to abolish the monarchy and abandon Official Bilingualism.

• has launched an Alberta Referendum Poll Tracker on his excellent The Writ website.

I will be joining a live stream discussion with independent journalist on May 29 at 3:00 p.m. MDT to talk about Smith’s separation referendum, the politics that got us here and what we will face over the next four months.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There’s never a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

If you like what you read today, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter and feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

“Should Alberta remain a province of Canada, or should the Government of Alberta commence the legal process required under the Canadian Constitution to hold a binding provincial referendum on whether or not Alberta should separate from Canada?”

That’s the referendum question that Premier Danielle Smith has decided to put on the 10th paper ballot that Albertans will be handed when they show up to vote on October 19, 2026.

Smith says the wordy multiple choice question was her only option because the court ruling quashing Elections Alberta’s approval of the separatist Stay Free Alberta citizen initiative petition ruled out a question where yes and no were the only answers.

Smith had an option to not hold the referendum at all but she opened this can of worms and it won’t easily be closed. The populist-turned-separatist-wing of the United Conservative Party that booted former premier Jason Kenney and then boosted Smith into the Premier’s Office is now firmly entrenched in the governing party — and they are not going away.

Despite polls consistently showing that around 70 per cent of Albertans would vote to stay in Canada, Smith is moving ahead on this referendum because the 30 per cent who would vote to leave are almost entirely supporters of her UCP (more than half of UCP voters, according to most polls).

Smith told reporters today that she’s fighting for Canada, has always fought for Canada, and will campaign for the stay side in the Alberta separation referendum that she is making sure happens in October.

She said all that with a straight face.

No patriotic Canadian would do what Smith has done up until now and continues to do.

Smith’s assertion that she is just standing up for more provincial autonomy and less interference from Ottawa is a story that can be told about every province in Canada since 1867, but only Quebec — and now Alberta — have made breaking up the country a real option available to voters.

From Smith’s endorsement of the Free Alberta Strategy to the introduction of the Sovereignty Act to openly threatening national unity to moving the citizen initiative goalposts for the separatists to this week’s committee fiasco, the intent was always to push Alberta closer to a political crisis that she believes she can control.

She said today that she couldn’t ignore the wishes of 700,000 Albertans who are believed to have signed two citizen initiative petitions. But she would still be ignoring the 456,000 Albertans who signed the Forever Canadian petition if a judge hadn’t quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of UCP constituency president Mitch Sylvestre’s Stay Free Alberta separatist petition.

Nine other referendum questions will be on the ballot, including a handful that aim to remove or further restrict access for refugees and immigrants to public education and health care in Alberta. Given the anti-immigrant ideas promoted by separatist activists who have called for mass deportations of new Canadians, it is no shock that these questions have been paired with the separation referendum question.

This is why it’s so important that Albertans judge Smith by her actions and not by her confidently delivered statements at press conferences or quips on her weekend radio show.

The decision to put this wordy separation referendum question to Albertans was Smith’s to make and, if you want to believe her explanation, she’s doing it because she loves Canada.

Does it make any sense? No. But that’s how we got here. What happens next is up in the air.

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No one is happy with the separation question

The wording of the referendum question will make no one happy.

Many, if not most, of the more than 456,000 Albertans who signed Thomas Lukaszuk’s pro-Canada Forever Canadian petition did so with the belief it would block an actual separation referendum from ever happening. Lukaszuk said he’d rather have MLAs vote on the question in the Legislature to save Albertans from having a costly and divisive referendum.

The leaders of Alberta’s separatist Stay Free Alberta petition are spitting mad and calling for Smith to be toppled by UCP members for not holding a yes or no question. Some separatist organizers are trying to convince 22 UCP constituency association presidents to sign a letter to trigger a Special General Meeting to remove Smith as party leader before October.

Outside these two camps, I imagine a lot of Albertans are fairly confused about the whole situation.

Referendum for another referendum blocks unilateral declaration of independence

Grinding the gears of many separatist organizers is the referendum for another referendum-style question.

A referendum to hold a referendum to open constitutional negotiations is a pretty dry rally slogan and it robs more radical separatist elements of the temptation to just unilaterally declare independence if a clear separation question was successful.

Since there is no separation process in the Canadian constitution, we’ll have to guess what Smith believes the next steps would be. Legal minds I have spoken with suggest that the constitution would need to be amended and we all know how long and drawn out that process would be.

Some prominent separatist organizers have openly dangled the threat of American President Donald Trump immediately recognizing Alberta’s independence, forcing the hand of the federal government and other provinces that would want to undertake constitutional negotiations.

Separatists are entrenched in the UCP and aren’t going away

Former conservative party premiers Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein would have told the separatists to pound dirt and wouldn’t have allowed them to dig themselves into their party like they have in the UCP.

The referendum will almost certainly further deepen the divide in conservative politics in this province along pro-Canada and pro-separation lines.

In her press conference today, Smith called for the losing side of this referendum to “accept the judgement of people and the direction that we go.”

That seems unlikely.

This referendum is guaranteed to string out this debate.

While many Albertans who support separatism have longstanding legitimate and perceived grievances against Ottawa, it is important to remember that the current version of the Alberta separatist movement doesn’t have its roots in old timey grievances about NEP, the metric system, or Official Bilingualism.

The current crop of separatist leaders cut their political teeth opposing public health restrictions and vaccine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. They are well-organized and have now embraced many of the fringy online conspiracy theories associated with the MAGA movement south of the border.

A UCP member connected to the Centurion Project, the group responsible for the largest privacy breach of personal information in Canadian history, has already submitted a policy resolution for the UCP AGM in November 2026 for the party to officially endorse Alberta leaving Canada.

Given the enthusiastic support for Alberta separatism among the UCP’s most engaged activists, it seems entirely possible that delegates at the party’s AGM could endorse a policy of separating from Canada, regardless of the referendum results.

This week’s pre-referendum cabinet shuffle and the release of a new election-style ad with the tagline “Getting the job done” suggests Smith is already on the campaign trail for her own job, and leaving her options open for a snap election if things really go sideways (the UCP continues to lead the NDP in recent polls and in party fundraising).

Captain Canadas begin to step up

• First Nations Chiefs and leaders have been a strong legal bulwark against the separation referendum and played a central role in blocking the Stay Free Alberta petition. The Confederacy of Treaty No. 6 First Nations released another statement yesterday:

  • “First Nations are once again carrying the burden of defending the Constitution of Canada while the Government of Canada remains silent. The Confederacy of Treaty No. 6 First Nations calls directly on the Government of Canada to step up and fulfil its duty to protect Treaty Rights, the rule of law and the Constitution. This is a Treaty matter, and this unacceptable silence and inaction dishonour the Treaty relationship.

    We will not be idle. The Confederacy will continue this battle in unity with all Treaty No. 7 and No. 8 Nations.

    Treaty is forever.”

• Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi held a rally today in Calgary’s Confederation Park as part of his party’s For Alberta For Canada campaign.

  • “All of us have a role to play, and now is the time to stand together For Alberta, For Canada,” Nenshi said at the rally today. “That’s why I’m thrilled that proud Canadians like Olympic gold medalist Catriona Le May Doan are speaking out, lending their voice in the fight to save Canada. Thank you Catriona for joining us at our rally today in Calgary and for sharing why you will be standing up to save Canada.”

• A group of pro-Canada conservatives led former federal cabinet minister Monte Solberg, former premier Kenney, former finance minister Travis Toews, and political writer Jen Gerson have launched VoteToStay.ca.

  • “Our goal is simple: inform voters, listen to their concerns, and get more people on board with pledging their vote to stay,” Solberg said in a press release today. “This is about engaging Albertans directly and building a movement rooted in facts, respect, and a shared commitment to Alberta’s future within a united in Canada.”

• Prime Minister Mark Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, released a video today in which he talked about the important role Alberta plays in Canada.

• Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who represents the rural Alberta riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, announced yesterday that he would campaign for Canada in the referendum.

Curiously missing from the growing roster of pro-Canada conservatives in Alberta is former prime minister and Bragg Creek resident Stephen Harper. His silence on this referendum question can’t last for long.

Recommended reading

There has been no shortage of smart commentary about Smith’s separation referendum question published over the last 24 hours.

I encourage you to add these columns, articles, and podcasts by Jared Wesley, Jen Gerson, David Climenhaga, Lisa Young, Paul Wells, Jeremy Appel, Arlene Dickinson, Joseph Lavoie and Evan Menzies, and Kyla Ronellenfitsch to your weekend reading list.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

If you like what you read today, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter. And please feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

Brandon Lunty looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin when he found out that the United Conservative Party Caucus sent out a press release announcing the adoption of a motion that hadn’t even been voted on yet.

As chair of the Special Citizen Initiative Proposal Review Committee, Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Lunty had one job today: to steer a motion through the committee to recommend the adoption of a referendum question on Alberta separation from Canada.

It should have been easy. The UCP has a 3-2 majority on the committee over the opposition NDP and Lunty controlled all the levers. The last minute scheduled hour and a half meeting that was only called on Monday should have given the UCP plenty of time to finish the task if only some poor staffer at the UCP Caucus hadn’t clicked send too early on the press release declaring it was a done deal.

At the exact time Lunty was sitting in the Federal Building board room chairing the debate on a motion that had just moments before been introduced by Strathcona-Sherwood Park UCP and Minister of Technology and Innovation Nate Glubish, Lunty was also praising the passage of Glubish’s motion in the UCP press release:

“The Select Special Citizen Initiative Proposal Review Committee, established to review Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canada petition, has passed a motion that the Special Select Committee on Citizen Initiative Petition Review recommend the Government of Alberta include a question on the October 19, 2026 provincial referendum that includes an option for Albertans to vote for Alberta to remain in Canada.”

Yikes.

That press release immediately undercut Lunty’s credibility as committee chair, something that Edmonton-Whitemud NDP MLA Rakhi Pancholi immediately honed in on with her signature prosecutorial-style of questioning. Pancholi and Calgary-Foothills NDP MLA Court Ellingson backed a point of privilege raised by observing NDP house leader Christina Gray that this troubling turn of events be referred to Speaker Ric McIver.

Lunty scrambled and spent the next 20 minutes in camera trying to figure out what to do next.

The motion to refer to Speaker McIver was put to a vote and defeated by the three UCP MLAs sitting on the committee — Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills MLA Tara Sawyer, Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA Jason Nixon (who is widely expected to be appointed Minister of Finance in tomorrow’s cabinet shuffle), and Glubish (who was sitting in place of Calgary-North West MLA Rajan Sawhney), but by that point the committee had run the clock and the meeting ended before the separation referendum motion could be adopted.

It was a gong show.

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UCP MLAs treat Forever Canadian’s Thomas Lukaszuk like a hostile witness

Before Glubish’s motion and the UCP’s pre-mature press release, MLAs on the committee heard from former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk, who headed last year’s successful Forever Canadian citizen initiative petition.

The UCP MLAs on the committee aggressively questioned Lukaszuk as if he were a hostile witness. It was strange to watch.

Lukaszuk’s petition, which asked the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?” collected the signatures of more than 456,000 Albertans. But Lukaszuk and his legion of pro-Canada of volunteers clashed with the growing separatist-wing of the UCP.

While Premier Danielle Smith’s government bent over backward to amend laws, lower bars, and give their tacit support for the separatist Stay Free Alberta citizen initiative petition, they also did everything in their power to shelve the Forever Canadian petition. Lukaszuk’s petition was sent to this committee for “review,” which is a polite way of saying “die a slow and obscure death.”

The Forever Canadian petition was frequently framed as calling for a referendum but was submitted to Elections Alberta as a Legislative or Policy Proposal instead of a constitutional referendum proposal. That’s because Lukaszuk said he’d prefer MLAs vote on the question instead of holding a costly and divisive province-wide referendum on separation.

Avoiding a vote in the Legislature gave cover to UCP MLAs who support the separatists or are vulnerable to nomination challenges by separatist-endorsed UCP candidates ahead of the next provincial election.

After ragging the puck for half a year on the Forever Canadian petition, the UCP MLAs on the committee spent most of today’s meeting trying to play gotcha with Lukaszuk.

Nixon and Glubish aggressively questioned Lukaszuk in a clear attempt to put the blame for a separation referendum on him. Lukaszuk didn’t budge an inch and reiterated again and again that he’d rather have MLAs vote on separation instead. If the UCP are looking to avoid blowback for a referendum question that 70 per cent of Albertans don’t want, Lukaszuk isn’t going to let them say it was his fault.

The only reason Smith’s UCP is now interested in the Forever Canadian question is because of last week’s ruling by Justice Shaina Leonard that quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of a separation question put forward by UCP constituency president Mitch Sylvestre and admonished the Chief Elections Officer’s failure to consult First Nations. Smith said the Alberta government is appealing Justice Leonard’s decision, but the separatist petition is on hold until further notice.

The real option is to not have a referendum on separation at all, but the separatist-wing of the UCP continues to hold significant influence over Smith and her inner circle in the Premier’s Office. Most polls show a vast majority of Albertans support remaining in Canada, the same polls show the majority of UCP voters support Alberta separating from Canada.

Not holding a referendum would be good for Alberta but might mean an end to Smith’s leadership of the UCP, which is why she’s dead set against dropping the idea. It’s unclear whether accepting Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian question would lead to any better outcome for Smith.

Premier Smith is widely expected to announce the separation referendum question in a televised address to Albertans tomorrow night and discuss it further with supporters at a UCP member-only virtual town hall on Saturday morning.

Despite today’s committee chaos, the UCP isn’t cancelling Smith’s booked airtime. They’ve now scheduled another meeting of the committee for tomorrow with an extra hour added just in case Lunty has to deal with another unexpected delay.

UCP press release sent on May 20, 2026:

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.

Schulz was first elected in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 56.3 per cent of the vote. She served in cabinet as Minister of Children and Youth Services, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and then Minister of Environment. She finished fourth in the 2022 UCP leadership race.

Popular in conservative circles, Schulz hosted annual “Politics & Prosecco” fundraisers for women UCP candidates in Calgary and Edmonton and was a frequent speaker at the annual Canada Strong & Free conference in Ottawa.

McLean ran against Schulz for the UCP nomination in October 2018 and has maintained close public ties with the provincial party ever since. He was first elected to city council in 2021 by defeating long-time councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart in a landslide.

He was spotted door-knocking in the riding this weekend with former city councillor Sonya Sharp.

Well-known conservative agitator Craig Chandler launched a pre-emptive campaign against McLean last month calling for him to stay out of the race and complete the four-year city council term he was re-elected to last October. Chandler is supporting Mike Derry’s candidacy for the UCP nomination.

Derry posted an endorsement from former Progressive Conservative MLA Art Johnston on his Facebook page last week. Johnston was the MLA for Calgary-Hays from 2004 to 2012.

Stewart Jeanes is also running for the UCP nomination.

The UCP opened nominations in the riding on May 15 with an application deadline on May 29. That means the nomination vote will be held sometime between June 19 and 29.

The riding has been represented by conservative party MLAs since its creation in 1986 with the sole exception of NDP MLA Graham Sucha, who represented the riding from 2015 to 2019.

Calgary-Shaw was one of the NDP’s strongest voter growth ridings in the 2023 election, with candidate David Cloutier increasing the NDP’s vote by 17.09 points over 2019. The NDP have not yet announced a candidate nomination meeting ahead of the by-election.

By-election during a separation referendum and voters list privacy breach

If called within the next six months, the Calgary-Shaw by-election will be held during or near an expected referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada and amidst the largest privacy breach of personal information in Canadian history.

The public searchable database app that the separatist Centurion Project allegedly uploaded the names and home addresses of 2.9 million Albertans on the official voters has recently been revealed to have connections to United States Ambassador Pete Hoekstra. Elections Alberta admitted last week that thousands of people might have had access to the voters list uploaded to the app.

Other UCP nomination updates include:

• Sunday Adeleye is running for a UCP nomination in Airdrie, though he has not specified which riding.

  • Adeleye is a Power Engineer with Alta Gas and is the Chief Financial Officer of the UCP Airdrie-Cochrane constituency association. He ran for Airdrie City Council in 2021.

• Engineer Connor Hall is running for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Edgemont.

  • The riding is currently represented by NDP MLA Julia Hayter.

• Former Wildrose Independence Party leader Jeevan Mangat is running for UCP nomination in Calgary-Acadia.

  • Mangat was the Wildrose Party candidate in Calgary-Fort in the 2012 and 2015 elections and ran for the Wildrose Independence Party against Danielle Smith in the Brooks-Medicine Hat by-election in 2022 and in Innisfail-Sylvan Lake in the 2023 general election.

  • Mangat was part of the group that wrestled control of the small separatist right-wing party away from former leader Paul Hinman in 2022. Hinman was the former leader of the Alberta Alliance and Wildrose Alliance parties in the 2000s and was succeed by Danielle Smith in 2009.

  • He was a spokesperson for the Rally for Alberta Independence that took place at the Legislature in March 2025.

• Mavy Mangat is running for a UCP nomination in “Cochrane and area” as it remains unclear what riding Cochrane will be located in when the next election is called.

  • Mangat is an Associate with Scott Venturo Rudakoff LLP and ran for the federal Conservative Party nomination in Calgary Skyview in 2025.

• Isaac Nibourg is running for the UCP nomination in Drumheller-Stettler.

  • “I hope to fight for our rural, conservative way of life, for our Christian Values, and for a return to normal Common-Sense principles,” Nibourg wrote on his campaign website.

  • Nibourg’s candidacy lends credibility to the well-circulated rumour that incumbent UCP MLA and Minister of Finance Nate Horner will not seek re-election.

  • Horner has represented the sprawling rural riding since 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 82.1 per cent of the vote. He first won the party’s nomination in 2019 by defeating incumbent UCP MLA Rick Strankman.

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Alberta election candidates tracking list launched

Longtime Daveberta readers will be familiar with my tracking lists of party nomination and election candidates ahead of provincial elections.

I had planned to launch this list of nomination candidates when the Electoral Boundaries Commission final report was supposed to have been adopted this spring, but with the UCP tossing out the commission’s final report and appointing its own MLA committee to redraw the new riding map, I’ve decided not to wait.

I will update the list when we find out what the new riding map looks like later this year.

NDP MLA Janis Irwin running for re-election in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood

Popular MLA Janis Irwin is running for re-election and was nominated as the Alberta NDP candidate in Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood on May 3. The second-term MLA is the NDP’s housing critic and is a crowd favourite among Daveberta readers who for six years in a row have voted her Alberta’s Best MLA.

Irwin was first elected in the central Edmonton NDP stronghold in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023 with 71.4 per cent of the vote. Parts of the Highlands-Norwood riding in its various configurations over the decades have been represented by NDP MLAs in all but four years since 1982.

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The Edmonton-Highlands riding was represented by NDP leaders Pam Barrett (from 1986 to 1993 and 1997 to 2000) and Brian Mason (from 2000 to 2004), and the former Edmonton-Norwood riding was represented by NDP leader Ray Martin from 1982 to 1993.

Other NDP nomination updates include:

• The NDP have recently nominated incumbent Janet Eremenko in Calgary-Currie.

  • Eremenko was first elected in 2023 by defeating UCP MLA Nicholas Milliken.

• The NDP are scheduled to nominate MLAs Kyle Kasawski in Sherwood Park on May 23, Rob Miyashiro in Lethbridge-West on May 23, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse in Edmonton-Rutherford on May 27, Diana Batten in Calgary-Acadia on May 29, and Amanda Chapman in Calgary-Beddington.

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Cabinet shuffle rumoured soon

With the Legislative spring session ended, there is plenty of speculation that a major cabinet shuffle could happen this week. The changes in this shuffle are expected to reflect which ministers are planning to run for re-election in 2027, with retiring ministers leaving cabinet or moving to more junior positions and MLAs running for re-election appointed to more senior roles.

One of the biggest rumours that has been circulating for weeks is that Nate Horner will step down as Minister of Finance and be replaced by Jason Nixon, who currently serves as Minister of Assisted Living and Social Services.

Nixon briefly filled the finance role from June 2022 to October 2022 after Travis Toews resigned to seek the UCP leadership. He was left out of cabinet when Smith became Premier in October 2022 but was brought back to the cabinet table shortly after the 2023 election.

UCP BOARD VACANCY: UCP Vice President of Policy & Governance Raymond Strom passed away on May 11, leaving a position open to be filled on the party’s powerful provincial board of directors. Filling this position will be important for the UCP’s separatist-wing in order to maintain their control of the party’s provincial board, which they won at the UCP AGM in 2026.

Strom was the nephew of Harry Strom, who served as Alberta’s last Social Credit Premier from 1968 to 1971.

Political party fundraising: UCP dominates the first quarter of 2026

Elections Alberta disclosures from the first quarter of 2026 were released and show Danielle Smith’s UCP raised $2,478,702.89 between January 1 and March 31, putting the governing party miles ahead of Naheed Nenshi’s NDP, which raised $1,021,436.32 in the same period.

The UCP has shown strong first quarter fundraising returns for the past three years, likely owing in part to the party’s well-attended leader’s dinner fundraising events held in Bonnyville, Red Deer and Edmonton, and a significant number of maximum amount annual donations made in the first few months of the year.

The UCP allowing donations from private corporations, a practice that was made illegal by the NDP in 2015, has also led to a significant influx of money into UCP coffers.

The Pro-Life Political Association, an anti-abortion group, raised $140,276.50 in the first quarter. The group rarely runs political candidates in elections and uses the registration status of the former Social Credit Party to issue generous political party tax receipts for donations that support its political advertising activities.

Rounding out fundraising returns for the smaller parties are the Progressive Tory Party of Alberta with $58,590.79, Liberal Party with $7,339.50, Green Party with $1,382.00, the Republican Party with $1,110.00, and the Independence Party with $78.75.

The Advantage Party, Communist Party, Solidarity Movement of Alberta, Wildrose Independence Party, Wildrose Loyalty Coalition raised no money in the first quarter of 2026.

These quarterly reports only tell part of the fundraising story. Changes made by the UCP to political finance laws in 2021 mean that money raised by constituency associations is not included in the quarterly disclosures and is reported annually.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

If you like what you read today, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter. And please feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

Updated on June 6, 2026

Longtime Daveberta readers will be familiar with my lists tracking party nomination and election candidates ahead of elections in Alberta.

I had planned to launch the list of candidates for the next provincial election when the Electoral Boundaries Commission final report was supposed to have been adopted this spring but, with the United Conservative Party tossing out the commission’s final report and appointing its own MLA committee to redraw the new riding map, I’ve decided not to wait.

You can find below a list of prospective, declared and nominated candidates with the current electoral boundaries. I will update the list when we find out what the new riding map looks like later this year.

Italicized names indicate candidates who have announced plans to run but are not officially nominated by their party. Incumbent MLAs are denoted by an asterisk* next to their name.

If you are running for a party nomination or know someone who is and would like a name and website link added to this list, please send me an email at david.cournoyer@gmail.com.

I will be updating this page as I receive new names, so click on the title link and bookmark it to keep up to date.

Total nominated candidates by party

• Alberta NDP: 18/87

• United Conservative Party: 0/87

• Progressive Tory Party: 0/87

List of candidates running in Alberta’s next provincial election (List updated on June 6, 2026)

Airdrie-Cochrane

• PT: Peter Guthrie* (nomination meeting TBA)

• UCP: Sunday Adeleye, Mavy Mangat (nomination meeting TBA)

Airdrie-East

• UCP: Sunday Adeleye (nomination meeting TBA)

Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock

Banff-Kananaskis

• NDP: Sarah Elmeligi (nomination meeting on June 24)

Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul

Brooks-Medicine Hat

Calgary-Acadia

• NDP: Diana Batten* (nomination meeting on May 29)

• UCP: Erin Averbukh , Jeevan Mangat (nomination meeting TBA)

Calgary-Beddington

• NDP: Amanda Chapman* (nomination meeting on June 11)

Calgary-Bow

Calgary-Buffalo

Calgary-Cross

Calgary-Currie

• NDP: Janet Eremenko*

Calgary-East

Calgary-Edgemont

• UCP: Connor Hall (nomination meeting TBA)

Calgary-Elbow

• NDP: Samir Kayande*

Calgary-Falconridge

• NDP: Parmeet Singh Boparai*

Calgary-Fish Creek

Calgary-Foothills

• NDP: Court Ellingson*

Calgary-Glenmore

• UCP: Sanjeev Kad, Michelle Mather (nomination meeting TBA)

Calgary-Hays

Calgary-Klein

• NDP: Lizette Tejada*

Calgary-Lougheed

Calgary-Bhullar-McCall

• NDP: Irfan Sabir*

Calgary-Mountain View

• NDP: Kathleen Ganley*

Calgary-North

Calgary-North East

• NDP: Gurinder Brar*

Calgary-North West

Calgary-Peigan

Calgary-Shaw (by-election expected in this riding)

• NDP: Kyle Campbell (nomination meeting on June 26)

• UCP: Mike Derry, Stewart Jeanes, Dan McLean (nomination meeting on June 24)

Calgary-South East

Calgary-Varsity

Calgary-West

Camrose

Cardston-Siksika

• UCP: Joseph Schow* (nomination meeting TBA)

Central Peace-Notley

Chestermere-Strathmore

• UCP: Chantelle de Jonge* (nomination meeting TBA)

Cypress-Medicine Hat

• UCP: Justin Wright* (nomination meeting TBA)

Drayton Valley-Devon

Drumheller-Stettler

• UCP: Isaac Nibourg, Kevin Van Lagen (nomination meeting TBA)

Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview

• NDP: Peggy Wright*

Edmonton-Castle Downs

Edmonton-City Centre

• NDP: David Shepherd (nomination meeting on June 16)

Edmonton-Decore

• NDP: Sharif Haji (nomination meeting on June 25)

Edmonton-Ellerslie

Edmonton-Glenora

• NDP: Sarah Hoffman*

Edmonton-Gold Bar

Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood

• NDP: Janis Irwin*

• UCP: Janice Fleming (nomination meeting TBA)

Edmonton-Manning

Edmonton-McClung

Edmonton-Meadows

Edmonton-Mill Woods

• NDP: Christina Gray*

Edmonton-North West

• NDP: David Eggen (nomination meeting on June 16)

Edmonton-Riverview

Edmonton-Rutherford

• NDP: Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse

Edmonton-South

• NDP: Rhiannon Hoyle*

Edmonton-South West

• NDP: Nathan Ip*

• UCP: Chidi Iwuchukwu (nominating meeting TBA)

Edmonton-Strathcona

Edmonton-West Henday

• NDP: Brooks Arcand-Paul (nomination meeting on June 28)

Edmonton-Whitemud

Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche

• UCP: Brian Jean* (nomination meeting TBA)

Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo

Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville

• UCP: Tina Warawa (nomination meeting TBA)

Grande Prairie

• UCP: Nolan Dyck* (nomination meeting TBA)

Grande Prairie-Wapiti

Highwood

• UCP: RJ Sigurdson* (nomination meeting TBA)

Innisfail-Sylvan Lake

• UCP: Devin Dreeshen* (nomination meeting TBA)

Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland

• UCP: Ray Donnelly, Nancy Karvellas (nomination meeting TBA)

Lacombe-Ponoka

• UCP: Jennifer Johnson* (nomination meeting TBA)

Leduc-Beaumont

Lesser Slave Lake

Lethbridge-East

Lethbridge-West

• NDP: Rob Miyashiro*

Livingstone-Macleod

Maskwacis-Wetaskiwin

Morinville-St. Albert

• UCP: Dale Nally* (nomination meeting TBA)

Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills

• NDP: Bev Toews

Peace River

• UCP: Dan Williams* (nomination meeting TBA)

Red Deer-North

Red Deer-South

Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre

• UCP: Jason Nixon* (nomination meeting TBA)

Sherwood Park

• NDP: Kyle Kasawski*

• UCP: Jordan Walker (nomination meeting TBA)

Spruce Grove-Stony Plain

• UCP: Searle Turton* (nomination meeting TBA)

St. Albert

• NDP: Marie Renaud (nomination meeting on June 25, 2026)

Strathcona-Sherwood Park

• UCP: Nate Glubish* (nomination meeting TBA)

Taber-Warner

Vermilion-Lloydminster-Wainwright

• UCP: Dale Aalbers, Stacy Miskiw, Jackie Tomayer (nomination meeting TBA)

West Yellowhead

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with more than 9,000 Daveberta subscribers.

If you find this list of nomination candidates useful, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter. And please feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

Refer a friend

🎶Can you tell me how to get. How to get to Forever Canadian Street.🎶

That might be a tune that children visiting Alberta’s provincial legislature for the first time will sing in years to come if an Edmonton City Councillor gets his wish.

City Councillor Michael Janz joined former Edmonton MLA Thomas Lukaszuk and supporters near the Alberta Legislature today to announce a proposal to rename a two-block stretch of 99th Avenue between 107 Street to 109 Street to Forever Canadian Avenue.

“This street belongs to all Albertans. This is the Alberta Legislature and the Forever Canadian movement collected signatures from all across Alberta,” Janz said of the pro-Canada citizen initiative campaign that collected more than 456,000 signatures in 2025 to support the ballot question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain part of Canada?”

“I think when we have a movement of grassroots volunteers like this in our community at a time when many organization are struggling to get volunteers and to just see the numbers the group put up, it’s incredible,” Janz said.

“This is such a special place for all of us. This is where we come for Canada Day. I can’t think of a better location for us to honour our commitment to a united Canada together,” Janz said.

Janz pointed to a stretch of 97th Street in north Edmonton that was renamed Canadian Forces Trail in 2018 as his inspiration for the idea. That name change was proposed to Edmonton’s volunteer Naming Committee by then-councillor Jon Dziadyk. Janz’s proposal will also need to be submitted and approved to the city’s Naming Committee for consideration.

If approved by the naming committee, the cost of the street signage changes will be the responsibility of the person who proposed the name change.

“99th Avenue is very symbolic because 121 years ago, in 1905, just about 500 metres behind us, is where Alberta became Alberta, that is where Prime Minister Laurier and our first premier, Rutherford, adopted the Alberta Act in 1905,” Lukaszuk said.

“And you go another 100 metres down south and that’s where Fort Edmonton was and that’s where the whole story of this land began other than our First Nations who, obviously, are a very key part of our Forever Canadian movement,” Lukaszuk continued.

Lukaszuk was the Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton-Castle Downs from 2001 and 2015 and served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Premier Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. He jumped back into the spotlight last year to lead the Forever Canadian campaign.

The successful Forever Canadian citizen initiative petition, the first in the province’s history, was submitted to Speaker Ric McIver last year and has been sent to an MLA committee to study.

Sending the question to a UCP-dominated committee avoids having to put the question to a province-wide ballot or to a vote by MLAs in the Legislature. Lukaszuk has said he would prefer to have MLAs vote on the question rather than going through the effort of a province-wide vote.

Avoiding a Legislature vote provides cover for MLAs in Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP Caucus who support Alberta’s separation from Canada or are vulnerable to nomination challenges by separatist-endorsed UCP candidates ahead of the next provincial election.

Elected officials should be coming out and voicing our commitment to Canada and to Confederation, says Janz

Janz’s Forever Canadian Avenue announcement comes just days after a judge quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of a citizen initiative petition organized by separatist leaders with deep ties to the governing United Conservative Party.

Premier Danielle Smith called the judge’s ruling antidemocratic and declared her government would appeal the decision as separatist leaders publicly threatened her leadership of the party if she didn’t intervene. While a large majority of Albertans support remaining in Canada, a majority of UCP voters tell pollsters they would vote for Alberta to separate from Canada if a referendum is held.

“I think we all need to be very clear eyed about what we’re facing with this whole question around separatism in Alberta. It’s not a joke,” Janz said. “It’s something we should be full throated in responding to and all of us, especially elected officials, should be coming out and voicing our commitment to Canada and to Confederation.”

When asked by reporters about his pitch to Alberta separatists, Lukaszuk replied that “It’s not a pitch, because I’m not selling anything — Canada sells itself,”

“But the message to separatists is, yes, Canada is not a perfect country, and yes there are some issues that separatist are raising that are worth analyzing and focusing on repairing,” Lukaszuk said.

“At a time when we are starting to see collaborative federalism at work and our Premier actually is doing an exceptionally good job negotiating with Prime Minister Carney and delivering long-term benefits from Alberta, why would we want to sabotage ourselves and stop this process,” Lukaszuk said. “We’re actually seeing that Canada truly works.”

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you like what you read today, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter. And please feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

Refer a friend

Alberta politics can be a wild ride, so just in case you’re having a hard time keeping up:

• a judge quashed Elections Alberta’s approval of the separatist citizen initiative petition and admonished the Chief Elections Officer’s failure to consult First Nations

• Premier Danielle Smith called the judge’s ruling antidemocratic and declared her government would appeal the decision

• separatist leaders threatened Smith’s leadership of the United Conservative Party if she didn’t ignore the court ruling and hold a separation referendum anyway.

• Elections Alberta admitted that thousands of people might have accessed the leaked copy of the voters list that a separatist group uploaded to a public searchable database (and Elections Alberta says the leader of that group isn’t cooperating)

• Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney stood together to announce that construction of a new oil pipeline to the Pacific Coast will start as early as September 1, 2027.

There’s a lot to unpack here - and that’s just from the last four days.

Will Smith just call a referendum anyway? Yes, probably.

There has been plenty of thoughtful analysis and commentary about Justice Shaina Leonard’s rulings and how it will impact constitutional law in Canada, so I will leave that to the legal scholars. I’m interested in how this will impact Alberta politics.

Premier Smith decried the judge’s ruling as anti-democratic and said the Alberta government would appeal the decision to block the separatist citizen initiative petition. This is not surprising as it is very clear that separatist activists who hold key positions in Smith’s party hold a tremendous amount of influence over her.

Stay Free Alberta petition leader and Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul UCP constituency president Mitch Sylvestre appeared to threaten Smith’s leadership by saying her failing to put the separation question on a referendum ballot would ‘cause problems’ for the Premier.

Despite around 70 per cent of Albertans saying they would vote to remain in Canada, Smith is feeling immense pressure from members of her party and some MLAs in her UCP Caucus to bypass the court ruling by using cabinet’s power to call a referendum. According to recent polls, more than half of UCP voters say they would vote for Alberta to leave Canada if a referendum were held.

Prominent UCP voices, like Premier’s Office senior staffer and social media spokesperson Bruce McAllister attacked Justice Leonard as a “Trudeau appointee” and separatist influencers online have described the class of 2002 University of Alberta law school graduate as “New Brunswick born,” as if being born in another part of Canada was a legitimate criticism.

This undoubtably plays into another referendum question the UCP decided to put to Albertans in October 2026 asking if the provincial government should select justices appointed to the King’s Bench and Appeal courts.

That and the separation question are included with eight other questions Smith’s UCP are putting the ballot this fall. The question about increasing provincial authority, limiting access to public services for immigrants, and abolishing the Senate were obviously designed to boost turnout for the independence campaign.

Despite the increasingly wide off-ramp that the massive leak of the voters list and the court ruling has provided Smith, I would put my money on the UCP cabinet deciding to hold the separation referendum anyway.

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Won’t a new pipeline make the separatists happy?

Smith used the threat of national unity crisis to leverage the approval of a new pipeline to the Pacific Coast, and it looks like she just might get that. So this is a political win for Smith — especially because the September 1, 2027 target for the start of construction of a new pipeline lines up with the start of the next provincial general election campaign.

Expect “We got Alberta a pipeline!” to be splashed all over UCP re-election ads in 2027.

But don’t expect the promise of an oil pipeline to dampen the enthusiasm of Alberta’s separation activists. That was demonstrated clearly last November when Smith was booed by delegates at the UCP AGM when she touted the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding about pipelines and electrification.

For them, it was never about building a pipeline.

The current version of the Alberta separatist movement doesn’t have its roots in old timey grievances about NEP, the metric system, or the Crow Rate. The current crop of separation activists cut their political teeth opposing public health restrictions and vaccine requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You don’t have to scratch too far below the surface to find that some of the Alberta’s most prominent separatist leaders are enthusiastic supporters of American President Donald Trump and embrace the deep well of fringy conspiracy theories of Trump’s MAGA movement.

Smith has spent much of the last four years walking a politically dangerous line by trying to appeal to both straight out Alberta separatists and Albertans who don’t want to separate but still think the province is getting a bad deal from Ottawa.

This pipeline deal is aimed at the second group, but the unanswered question is whether Smith can put the separatists back in the box.

Separatist leaders like Sylvestre and Jeffrey Rath are calling on Smith to ignore the court ruling and use her cabinet’s powers to put the separation question on the October referendum ballot anyway. That pressure will be hard for Smith to resist, if she resists at all. Her actions over the past year have shown she is willing to bend over backward by amending laws and adding fuel to the fire to appease the separatist forces intrenched inside her Smith’s UCP.

Former UCP cabinet minister Tyler Shandro chimed in this week with a call for separatists to leave the UCP and openly run as separatists in the next election:

“Nothing in Justice Leonard’s decision prohibits separatists from running a separatist party with a separatist platform in the next general election. Democracy lives through long established processes for democratic participation.

Why won’t separatists run on a separatist platform in a general election?”

Shandro’s comment echoed calls by former premier Jason Kenney for separatists to leave the UCP and run for a separatist party, but that train has left the station.

The separatists have been entrenched inside the UCP for some time and have already submitted a policy for debate as the party’s November 2026 AGM to officially endorse Alberta’s separation from Canada.

The voters list is still leaked

Elections Alberta admitted this week that the personal information of 2.9 million Albertans included in the voters list that was uploaded to a public searchable database by the separatist Centurion Project may have actually been seen by thousands of people, not the hundreds they initially believed.

Smith has largely avoided talking much about the privacy breach, leaving Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi with a wide open field to bring it to the forefront at every opportunity. Nenshi held daily press conferences for a week calling on Smith to call a public inquiry and get to the bottom of the data breach.

But despite the largest data breach in Canadian history and who knows how many copies of the entire voters list floating around in separatist circles, the UCP government had not signaled any plans to postpone the already scheduled fall referendums.

Smith could end this by putting the Forever Canadian question to a vote

While the separation petition is stalled and the UCP ties itself in knots over its future, there is already a question from a verified citizen initiative petition that was signed by more than 456,000 Albertans last year that endorsed Alberta remaining in Canada.

The Forever Canadian question could have been put to a vote by MLAs in the Legislature, but Smith’s UCP sent it to an MLA committee where it will likely die a procedural death.

The petition was championed by former Progressive Conservative Thomas Lukaszuk, whose longstanding criticism of Smith and the UCP is likely a big reason the petition is being ignored by the government.

Former Edmonton mayor spoke up in favour of the Forever Canadian question:

“From the perspective of a signature collector and one of the 458K+ of us who signed the Forever Canadian petition, this means that we could settle this whole question now (including where each of our MLAs stands on the question of separation) with a simple vote at the legislature on the resolution proposed in the Hon. Thomas A. Lukaszuk’s petition.”

Avoiding a vote in the Legislature gives cover for UCP MLAs who support the separatists or are vulnerable to nomination challenges by separatist-endorsed UCP candidates ahead of the next provincial election.

Refer a friend

How did we even get in this citizen initiative mess?

It has been wiped from the memories of most political commentators that it was former premier Kenney who gave Albertans the Citizen Initiative Act.

“More power in the hands of ordinary Albertans,” is how Kenney described the Citizen Initiative Act when his UCP government introduced the bill in 2021.

It is supremely ironic that Kenney is now one of the loudest voices against the citizen initiative petition that would force a referendum on Alberta separation from Canada that is being led by activists from his old UCP.

While Kenney can’t be blamed for the series of amendments made by Smith’s UCP that lowered the bar for the separatist petition, it was passed into law just as the populist forces that took over his party were organizing to push him out of the premier’s office. Many of those activists were key to Smith’s win in the ensuing leadership race and are key figures in the UCP’s separatist-wing.

Another big twist: Albertans are willing to give Carney a chance

Adding another layer of complexity to this wound up political situation, Prime Minister Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, remains surprisingly quite popular among Albertans. This doesn’t mean that Albertans will rush to vote Liberal in the next federal election, but it does signal that many people in the province are willing to give Carney a chance.

What about the other citizen initiative petitions?

The Forever Canadian and Stay Free Alberta petition campaigns have sucked up most of the political oxygen around citizen initiatives, but there are two others worth paying attention to.

A petition question late last year came close to putting provincial government funding of private schools on the ballot, but fell just short of the threshold. Alberta Funds Public Schools collected 124,937 of the 177,732 required, which means it was unsuccessful in triggering a referendum, but can’t be ignored as a successful organizing effort.

The Water Not Coal citizen initiative led by rancher and country music artist Corb Lund is currently collecting signatures to put a ban on coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Canadian Rockies on the ballot in October.

Lund started the petition effort because of his deep concerns about toxic runoff from coal mines contaminating drinking water and the threat the mines would pose to generational ranching, agriculture, and tourism in southern Alberta.

Lund is on the campaign trail (literally) this weekend as he rides in Longview, Calgary and Edmonton to bring attention to the petition drive to hold a referendum of ban coal mining in the Eastern Slopes.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is rarely a dull moment in Alberta politics and it’s a real pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in my corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you like what you read today, please consider hitting the “like” button on Substack so that more people will see this newsletter. And please feel free to share it with a friend or on your social media.

Thanks again,

Dave

PS. Watch your inboxes early next week for a very special Daveberta feature that I know a lot of longtime readers have been eagerly awaiting.

Public libraries in Alberta are worth fighting for

Undermining public trust in librarians is the real aim of Dan Williams’ Bill 28

In the age of Artificial Intelligence, algorithms, easily spread misinformation, and privately owned social media platforms, who better is there to trust in our society than librarians? Like teachers and other educators, professional librarians and library staff are on the frontlines of the fight to preserve and protect credible public information and knowledge.

Public libraries are probably one of the last truly public spaces we have in our communities. They aren’t a private space that you have to pay to access by buying a ticket, membership, or a coffee. Public libraries are for everyone - and they offer much more than books. They provide programming for kids and adults, courses, resources, and a place for community gatherings.

The are an important space for new Canadians who are learning English or French and are searching for resources and community to help them in their new home.

Because they are for everyone, local public libraries are also one of the few welcoming public spaces open to some of our most vulnerable neighbours, people facing homelessness or mental health issues who just need a warm, dry and safe place to hang out for a while during the day.

That puts librarians on the front lines of our communities. They don’t wear uniforms or drive cars with loud sirens but, in so many ways and more, librarians are some of the helpers that Mr. Rogers eluded to decades ago.

So, it was concerning to see that local public libraries and librarians had a big target on their backs in the United Conservative Party’s spring legislative agenda.

Undermining public trust in librarians is the real aim of Dan Williams’ Bill 28

Bill 28 Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, introduced by Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams, is a broad bill that includes a suite of changes to municipal rules around housing construction approval, school property, municipal council rules, and more, but it’s the changes to the Libraries Act and Libraries Regulation that have garnered the most attention.

Bill 28 passed second reading last night in the Legislature.

The Alberta government press release from April 2, 2026 said that the bill will:

…allow the minister to initiate reviews or respond to complaints related to public libraries. This provides a clear and consistent process to address concerns and support accountability across Alberta’s library system. The proposed changes would also allow the minister to issue guidance and non-binding guidelines to support public library governance.

These provisions establish a foundation to support age-appropriate access to public library materials that include explicit visual content, with additional details to be developed through upcoming regulation. These changes will be implemented through future regulations and protect children by restricting access to sexually explicit visual materials in public libraries to individuals 16 and older. Minors 15 and under will not be permitted to access materials without parental consent.

When debating the bill for the first time on April 23, 2026, UCP Government House Leader Joseph Schow declared the most important part of Bill 28 “is protecting our children from explicit pornographic books in public libraries. I will repeat that. This bill protects our children from explicit pornographic books in public libraries.”

Public libraries are not where young people are stumbling upon or actively looking for pornography or inappropriate sexual material.

We are living in 2026, not 1956.

Many young people have access to all the internet has to offer through their computers at home or mobile phones their parents have bought for them. It is extremely disingenuous for Williams to stoke a fake morality crisis about pornography without talking about the internet. If you’re not talking about fixing that problem, then you’re not serious about stopping young people from accessing inappropriate sexual material.

What Williams’ Bill 28 does do is attempt to undermine the tremendous credibility and trust that Albertans have for public libraries by insinuating that librarians are allowing children to access inappropriate material and that the volunteers who sit on local library boards aren’t doing what’s best for their communities.

Williams and Schow claim that Bill 28 will protect children, but like the book ban in school libraries clumsily implemented by Minister of Education and Childcare Demetrios Nicolaides last fall, it is fixing a problem that doesn’t exist and tries to fabricate a moral crisis out of nothing.

As reported in March 2026, Nicolaides school book ban led to the removal of more than 160 books, including “graphic novel versions of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale and George Osrwell’s 1984 — both dystopian stories about government control.”

Like so much of Premier Danielle Smith’s political agenda, it borrows from what is happening south of the border. The government run by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a politician Smith has said on numerous occasions that she admires, has banned more than 700 books from public school libraries in that state.

Alberta librarians and library boards quick to respond to Bill 28

The speed at which librarians and the community volunteers who sit on local public library boards across Alberta responded to Williams’ bill was swift.

The Town of Mayerthorpe Library Board took on Williams' principal claims straight on in a statement published by the Mayerthorpe Freelancer:

The Mayerthorpe Public Library does not have pornographic material for children, nor does any other public library in Alberta. Our collection is guided by a board-approved collection development policy and is informed by professional library standards. Materials are catalogued and shelved appropriately by age. The library board has a formal process for patrons to request reconsideration of items – a process that has never been used in our community.

The Town of Olds Library board expressed concern that several aspects of a proposed bill could curtail library board autonomy and intimidate staff.

“While we understand the stated intent of protecting children, the practical application of this bill as currently written creates an administrative mandate that threatens the viability of library services across the province,” read a letter from the Olds Municipal Library board that was sent to Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills MLA Tara Sawyer.

Responding to concerns about the library possibly housing materials that parents may object to, the letter says:

“the Olds Municipal Library already has a robust and transparent process for managing controversial materials that respects parental autonomy.”

“Parents may already monitor and choose what their children have access to. Parents may also monitor their children by attending the library with them.

“Bill 28 creates a redundant and expensive bureaucracy that removes parental responsibility and forces library staff to act as parental decision-makers by proxy.”

Olds Municipal Library board chair Curtis Cook said during an interview with the Albertan newspaper that “Really it comes down to they’re trying to take away the responsibilities that have typically always been there for libraries,”.

Michelle Preston, director of the Canmore Public Library, told the Rocky Mountain Outlook that:

“The proposed legislation is very concerning – not only has there been a lack of consultation with the public library sector but, despite how this is being framed, it is an act of censorship.”

Preston said that the bill undermines the role of professional librarians and how libraries already curate collections and facilitate age-appropriate access to materials. It also fails to recognize that parents are already involved in their children’s library use.

Red Deer Public Library’s CEO Shelley Ross said in a statement that:

“Our patrons love the convenience of this primarily self-serve branch and we’ve never had a complaint about children being exposed to age inappropriate materials. Public libraries have always expected adults to be involved in supporting their little kids who are learning to read.”

“The provincial government should continue to trust the long line of volunteer Library Board members, chosen from volunteers in the community, who have been running the Red Deer Public Library since 1914 without the province second guessing which books are on which shelves.”

Ron Sheppard of the Coalition of Alberta Public Libraries told Michael Higgins, host of CTV’s Alberta Primetime, that:

We’re really not aware of when the minister ever realized or felt that somehow provincial intervention needed to occur in public libraries. We already have many processes in place to ensure parents have absolute control over what their children view and access. The way the collections are organized and arranged there shouldn’t be an easy way for children to access material that, in the minister’s opinion, is graphic. We don’t quite know where the problem ever was to begin with, so we don’t know what this legislation aims to solve.

James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote in an op-ed in the Edmonton Journal that:

The bill gives the minister of Municipal Affairs the right to exert virtually total control over every public library, at the expense of the municipal and regional library boards that currently govern public libraries and of the professional library staff that run the libraries according to library board policies.

The bill, if passed, replaces the minister’s current limited right to “inspect the records of a board” with unlimited rights over public libraries and their boards. Minister-appointed inspectors would have wide-ranging authority to examine everything the library has or does, to require library employees to answer any question or provide any information the inspector deems relevant.

The inspector then submits a report to the minister. After receiving an inspector’s report, the minister has the power “to make any order that the minister considers appropriate.”

This allows the minister to override any decision or policy of a municipal or regional library board, thereby transferring final authority over every public library in Alberta to the political wishes of whoever is minister of Municipal Affairs.

The Vermilion Public Library board echoed similar concerns about control of their library by the provincial government in Edmonton:

In summary, Bill 28 raises concerns about how public libraries can continue supporting informed communities through open access to diverse, reliable information. Libraries should be driven by community needs, not political directives from Edmonton. Libraries exist to provide access to knowledge, not restrict it through gatekeeping. Changes to this model may limit the freedom to read and local autonomy, while also increasing financial and administrative pressures on libraries like Vermilion’s.

The Chinook Arch Library Board in Lethbridge also raised concerns about Bill 28 taking away local control of library operations and decision making.

These changes come as some small town rural libraries were expressing concerns about provincial funding tightening earlier this year. No extra funding appears to have been offered by the province to deal with the operational requirements of the proposed rules.

In fact, municipal governments like Calgary and Edmonton provide significantly more funding for public libraries in their cities than the provincial government, yet this bill would give the province considerably more control over neighbourhood libraries.

The UCP under Premier Smith’s leadership have demonstrated a troubling eagerness to break political norms, concentrate power, and weaken independent and local institutions. The amendments to the Libraries Act and Libraries Regulation in Bill 28 appear to be a part of this agenda.

Public libraries are important and so are the librarians who work in them.

Undermining public trust and weakening the role of librarians and the volunteer library boards that run local libraries will hurt Alberta communities. In the midst of all the political news and noise that we are easily distracted by everyday, it has been reassuring to see how many local library boards across Alberta have spoken out in opposition to Bill 28.

It’s clear that a lot of Albertans believe public libraries are worth fighting for.

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Only two and a half days left in Spring sitting

There are four government bills on the Order Paper and only two and a half days left scheduled in the spring sitting, so don’t be surprised if Government House Leader Joseph Schow moves to impose closure and tight timelines for debate as these bills enter the final stages of the Legislative process. The remaining bills include:

• Bill 25: An Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms and Amend the Education Act, 2026

• Bill 28: Municipal Affairs and Housing Statutes Amendment Act, 2026

• Bill 29: Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2026

• Bill 32: Electoral Boundaries Commission Amendment Act, 2026

Thank you for reading

Thanks for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There is never a dull moment in Alberta politics and it continues to be a pleasure to share my thoughts about what’s happening in our corner of Canada with so many of you.

A sincere thank you to new paid subscribers, Patricia, Ethan, Ken, Lisa, Jody, Lizette, Laurence, Samuel, Glen, Elizabeth, Michelle, Wolverine and Stephen, who shared a message saying “keep up the good work!” Thanks for the kind words and for your support!

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Cheers,

Dave

Premier Danielle Smith deflected criticism about a senior United Conservative Party Caucus staffer attending an online meeting of the separatist Centurion Project by blaming Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi for not telling her about the separatist group's use of a leaked voter list.

Nenshi has been taking daily swings at the UCP all week starting with claims that party president Rob Smith and Caucus Director of Stakeholder Relations Arundeep Sandhu attended the Centurion Project meeting where former premier Jason Kenney's home address was shown in a demonstration of the separatist group's app.

The UCP denied that the party president was at the meeting but admitted Sandhu logged into the zoom call.

Nenshi says he notified Kenney and the RCMP of the privacy breach and that the presence of Smith's senior staffer means she can't claim she didn't know that the voters list had been leaked.

The NDP hasn’t released the full video of the separatist zoom meeting so it’s unclear if participants would have known the Centurion Project app was illegally using the voters list, but the demo displaying Kenney’s home address should have raised big red flags.

It raises serious questions about who knew what when that should be investigated by a real public inquiry. Focusing on the one staffer makes sense for an opposition party trying to pin down the Premier on an issue that is becoming more difficult for her to dodge — but it misses the forest for the trees.

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I am willing to bet that most of the people on the Centurion Project zoom call are now or were until recently card-carrying UCP members — and that’s the bigger story.

The separatist movement, with all its raucous factions, is deeply entrenched in Smith’s United Conservative Party and they aren’t going anywhere soon.

Danielle Smith making her separatist problem our provincial problem

Jen Gerson penned an excellent op-ed in the Globe & Mail arguing that the biggest privacy breach of personal information in Alberta’s history presents Smith with a perfect opportunity to sever her party’s separatist wing (92 per cent of Alberta separatists are UCP supporters). Gerson is right that it is an opening for Smith but it might be politically impossible without tearing the UCP apart — something Smith won’t want to do.

Gerson argued forcefully on Ryan Jespersen’s Real Talk that Smith is making her political problem our provincial problem.

Many of the UCP’s most enthusiastic political activists, the ones who show up to constituency meetings and policy conventions, have also spent the past three months collecting signatures for the Stay Free Alberta citizen initiative to force a referendum on Alberta’s independence from Canada.

Many of those same activists cut their political teeth organizing opposition to COVID-19 public health measures and vaccinations, and embrace and promote the deep well of online conspiracy theories associated with that movement.

They helped topple Kenney in May 2022 and swept Danielle Smith into the Premier’s Office in October 2022. And during every moment in between they have been organizing on the ground through travelling town halls and convoy roadshows — putting them in a strong position to launch the separation petition, which they submitted to Elections Alberta earlier this week.

Polls show that a majority of UCP voters support Alberta separatism but that still only represents less than 30 per cent of Albertans. Yet, Albertans are almost certainly going to be forced to the polls in October 19, 2026 to vote on the question of Alberta leaving Canada.

Groups like the Alberta Prosperity Project, Stay Free Alberta, Take Back Alberta, 1905 Committee and others, operate both inside and outside the UCP. Many of their leaders and prominent supporters hold positions within the governing party at the provincial and constituency levels.

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Alberta Prosperity Project CEO and Stay Free Alberta petition leader Mitch Sylvestre is President of the UCP constituency association in the Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul riding. He was awarded the Best Fundraiser Award at the party’s annual general meeting last November.

Separatist spokesperson and lawyer Jeff Rath is a UCP member and received a standing ovation when he challenged Smith at the UCP AGM.

Benita Pedersen appeared to be the MC at a Centurion Project meeting in Edmonton and has been a prominent activist in groups opposed to COVID-19 public health measures and vaccinations. She is the President of the UCP association in St. Albert and is facing a human rights complaint at the Alberta Human Rights Commission.

UCP Vice President of Communications and Central Peace-Notley UCP constituency president Samantha Steinke posed for a photo with a group that included Sylvestre and Rath at the separatist petition rally outside the Elections Alberta offices this week. She was one of the candidates endorsed by Sylvestre’s APP during last year’s UCP board elections.

Red Deer-South UCP MLA Jason Stephan has been openly cheerleading the separatist petition drive. Stephan is Smith’s handpicked Parliamentary Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, though it appears he was given the role as a platform to promote his opposition to French as an official language and support for abolishing the monarchy.

Former Wildrose Independence Party leader Jeevan Mangat is the President of the UCP constituency association in Calgary-Acadia and is planning to run for UCP nomination the riding. He was a spokesperson for the Rally for Alberta Independence that took place at the Legislature in March 2025.

Other prominent Alberta separatists pepper UCP constituency association boards across the province, like former board director Vince Byfield who is President of the UCP association in Edmonton-South West.

Smith has bent over backward to make it easier for supporters of Alberta independence to hold the referendum by lowering the threshold to trigger a referendum and shielding their referendum question from constitutional challenges.

Smith also introduced a suite of nine other referendum questions that appear designed to boost turnout and slant the narrative towards the separatists. Perhaps she believes she can control the separatist-wing of her party but there isn’t much evidence that they can be controlled, even by a skilled politician like Smith.

As I’ve written before, previous Conservative party premiers like Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein succeeded in marginalizing separatists because they mostly existed in smaller right-wing parties on the political fringes, not inside the governing party.

While we haven’t seen much push back from pro-Canada conservatives inside the UCP, there have been some pockets of resistance to the separatist takeover.

Party members replaced a pro-separation constituency association board in Sherwood Park last year that was led by led by a former Wexit group leader. But the big gains made by separatist-endorsed candidates at the party’s board elections last November suggest the anti-separatist sentiment might be a localized feature within the UCP ranks.

Kenney has been outspoken in his opposition to separation, but it’s fair to say that his political base in Alberta is much much smaller than it was when the UCP romped to its first election win in 2019.

Alberta remaining part of Canada is such a divisive issue in the UCP that the party’s MLAs are doing everything they can to avoid a vote in the Legislature. And that is after the question, “Do you agree Alberta should remain in Canada?,” was endorsed by more than 456,000 Albertans who signed the pro-Canada Forever Canadian petition.

Separatist leader threatens nomination challenges against UCP MLAs

Rath appeared to threaten to launch nomination challenges against any UCP MLAs who opposed Alberta separatism:

IF YOU SUPPORT INDEPENDENCE PLEASE BUY A UCP MEMBERSHIP!

Let @ABDanielleSmith know that WE ARE THE UCP BASE.

No UCP MLA SHOULD BE NOMINATED UNLESS THEIR SUPPORT OF ALBERTA INDEPENDENCE MIRRORS THE WISHES OF THEIR CONSTITUENTS!

It is probably not surprising that one UCP MLA is already planning to resign and a growing number of UCP cabinet ministers are rumoured to be considering not seeking re-election in 2027 (which is also leading to rumours of a spring cabinet shuffle).

The key takeaway from this is that the separatism debate won’t end with a referendum.

Alberta separation policy proposed for UCP AGM

There is already a motion being proposed to adopt separatism as an official party policy at the UCP’s fall AGM.

A divisive policy debate about separatism was narrowly avoided by a vote by the UCP’s provincial board before separatist-endorsed candidates swept the majority of the party’s board positions at year’s AGM in Edmonton.

Emmott Kelsey of the Centurion Project is a UCP member and has submitted a policy resolution for debate at the UCP AGM that would officially endorse Alberta leaving Canada. A screenshot Kelsey shared on social media showed the text of the policy resolution:

The United Conservative Party agrees that the province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state.

The resolutions need to be ranked by UCP members, and the party’s executive has the ability to intervene, but it’s hard to see the UCP avoiding this debate again or whether the party’s membership will allow it to be avoided.

Party president Rob Smith said earlier this year that a party vote on separation is a possibility.

Even if the separation referendum fails, as most polls today suggest it would, the UCP might still end up becoming an official separatist party by the end of 2026 if this policy resolution ends up being adopted.

If you are a UCP member who supports Alberta staying in Canada, now is your moment to speak up — or you may find yourself having to look for a new party in 2027.

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New report finds Russian and Trump-aligned online disinformation campaigns targeting Alberta

The Globe & Mail reports that a study being released this week by the Global Centre for Democratic Resilience has identified Russian and Trump-aligned websites and social-media accounts that are being created to inflame the separatism debate in Alberta:

“The danger is not the existence of that debate. The danger is that foreign governments, state-aligned media, ideological networks, and profit-driven manipulation systems are seeking to distort it,” the report concludes.

“When external actors amplify separatist narratives, normalize annexation, encourage national rupture, or undermine confidence in democratic processes, the issue is no longer only a matter of provincial politics. It becomes a direct threat to Canada’s democratic integrity, national security, and cognitive sovereignty.”

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thanks for reading and subscribing to Daveberta.

There is never a dull moment in Alberta politics and it continues to be a pleasure to share my thoughts about what’s happening in our corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you found today’s column interesting, please feel free to share it with a friend or neighbour.

Cheers,

Dave

It has been a while since my phone buzzed with so many questions from political contacts and non-political friends than it did this past weekend.

“Did the voters list get leaked!?” “What does it mean?” “Who has my personal contact information"?” “Did the separatists cheat?” “Does this mean Trump and the Russians have the Alberta voters list?” “How did this happen?” “What’s going to happen now?”

Those are all legitimate questions that will be asked again and again as we start learn more about how a separatist group calling itself the Centurion Project got access to Elections Alberta’s official voters list and uploaded the full names, home addresses and phone numbers of 2.9 million Alberta voters to a public, searchable database. The group is led by well-known right-wing organizer David Parker of Take Back Alberta fame.

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Though it remains unclear how exactly Parker’s group got the list, Elections Alberta identified the voters list as one that was provided to the separatist Republican Party last year. The Republican Party is led by well-known right-wing political organizer Cameron Davies of Kamikaze campaign fame.

The official voters list is provided to registered political parties recognized by Elections Alberta but not to third party political groups like the Centurion Project.

The scoop for this story goes to of who was at the separatist gathering in Edmonton when an Elections Alberta investigator showed up flanked by police to follow up on a cease and desist order already issued to the separatist group.

The next big scoop came from , who wrote on that Elections Alberta had reasonable grounds to know that separatists had access to the province’s voter file at least a month ago — because she had notified them about it a month ago!

What followed would have been a comedy of errors if it wasn’t the largest privacy breach of Albertans personal information in the province’s history.

Information and privacy commissioner Diane McLeod was quick to call for political parties to be included under Alberta’s Personal Information and Privacy Act, a law they are currently exempt from.

A series of press statements from Elections Alberta was capped on Friday afternoon by a meandering 21-paragraph statement from Chief Elections Officer Gordon McClure that did not instill confidence. Elections Alberta blames changes made by the United Conservative Party government’s Bill 54 — changes McClure warned about — for not being able to investigate the allegations of the voter list data breach. But the 1,200 word statement leaves the deeply troubling impression that Elections Alberta is woefully outgunned and under resourced to deal with the challenges ahead.

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Premier Danielle Smith, posting on social media from somewhere in Europe, said this was something we should all be concerned about and that those who leaked the voters list should be held accountable. Smith’s statement didn’t meet the moment and will almost certainly be followed with attempts to deflect blame towards Elections Alberta’s response to the privacy breach.

NDP leader Naheed Nenshi described the privacy breach as dangerous and called for McClure to to testify before an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on Legislative Offices.

And the RCMP are investigating.

Jeff Rath, one of the spokespeople for the separatist Alberta Prosperity Project and Stay Free Alberta, the group collecting signatures to force an Alberta separation referendum on October 19, 2026, took to social media to deny his organization’s affiliation with Parker and the Centurion Project.

While the organizations might not be officially connected, it was hard to read Rath’s comments without letting out a loud guffaw.

The personalities behind Alberta’s bustling cottage industry of separatist and right-wing political groups are so deeply intertwined that it sometimes feels like it’s just a rotating cast of a dozen or so characters. Separation petition leader Mitch Sylvestre, for example, was a regional organizing captain for Parker’s Take Back Alberta group before jumping over to the Alberta Prosperity Project.

We will have a lot more questions than answers about this unfolding story and what it means for Albertans’ privacy this week, but the five questions that immediately popped into my mind over the last few days are:

1. How did David Parker’s Centurion Project group get a copy of the official voters list?

2. Do any other separatist organizers who have been actively collecting signatures or promoting the Stay Free Alberta citizen initiative have access to the list?

3. How many copies of the voters list provided to the Republican Party are floating around out there now and who has them?

4. Will Premier Smith call a public inquiry to investigate this information breach and Elections Alberta’s response?

5. Given the seriousness of this privacy breach, will Smith delay the UCP government’s referendums scheduled for October 19, 2026?

Albertans will have a lot of questions about this huge privacy breach of their personal information and they are within their rights to demand real answers.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thanks for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. As you can read today, there’s never a boring moment in Alberta politics and it continues to be a pleasure to share my thoughts about what’s happening in our corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you found today’s newsletter interesting, please feel free to share it with a friend or neighbour.

Cheers,

Dave

Alberta separatism, referendums, library book bans, and gerrymandering are catching a lot of the headlines these days but a law passed by Alberta’s United Conservative Party government that allows for more private-for-profit health care is becoming harder for the federal government in Ottawa to ignore.

Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 (No. 2), known as Bill 11 when it was passed through the Legislature last December, would allow physicians working in Alberta to practice medicine in both the public system and in private-for-profit businesses, something that isn’t allowed anywhere else in Canada.

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Premier Danielle Smith’s push toward privatization of the public health care system, which UCP defends as “European style” health care, is almost certainly more American-inspired. But wherever the inspiration comes from, it will almost certainly mean more out of pocket expenses for Albertans — something Smith has long advocated for — and more public funds subsidizing private companies.

“We can no longer afford universal social programs that are 100 per cent paid by taxpayers,” Smith argued in a June 2021 paper published by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. “The only option is to allow people to use more of their own money to pay their own way and to use the power of innovation to deliver better services at lower cost.”

In the paper, Smith proposed the creation of health spending accounts, something she later pledged during her 2022 campaign for the UCP leadership, so “once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then we can change the conversation on health care.”

Pledging to “take it one step further,” Smith confidently wrote that “I think is time to redefine universality. … If we establish the principle of Health Spending Accounts, then we can also establish co-payments.”

Before Bill 11 was passed by the Legislature, Alberta had rules similar to other provinces that required doctors to disenroll from the government’s public insurance plan if they want to work in private health care that directly bills patients. By doing so, Bill 11 appears to set the groundwork for private insurance market and private payment and co-payments for medically necessary care for patients in Alberta.

“When dual practice is allowed, it encourages high-income patients to buy private health insurance to cover these new costs,” wrote researchers Rebecca Graff-McRae and Andrew Longhurst in a joint report by the University of Alberta-based Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Longhurst and Graff McRae warn that dual-practice and the private insurance market it will create will increase costs for individuals, employers and government:

An unrestricted private health insurance market—which Bill 11 creates—is likely to increase health care costs. We can look at the United States to see how much a system dominated by private insurance and profit-taking drives up health care costs for patients, employers, and government. As employers and individuals purchase private health insurance, the profits of private insurers, investor-owned facilities, and their physicians drive up the costs of medically necessary procedures.

As a result, the public insurance plan must pay increasingly more to doctors and investor-owned facilities where they perform services because the cost of the same basket of services is bid up by increasing profits, often disguised as “administrative costs.” The result is that health care costs rise rapidly for the government (the public insurance plan), placing a greater burden on public finances. Over time, health care spending increases to excessive levels that often encourage governments to narrow the scope of services that are insured. It’s a race to the bottom.

Medical professionals and health care advocates are concerned that Bill 11 will open a door to private-for-profit health care that, because of trade agreements signed with the United States, cannot be closed. They have been trying to get the federal Liberal government to acknowledge this threat to Canada’s public health care system. It looks like they finally got it, kind of.

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“I’m the guardian of the Canada Health Act,” says federal health minister Marjorie Michel

The National Post’s Rahim Mohamed reports that federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel admitted to speaking with Alberta’s Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services Adriana LaGrange about Bill 11 earlier this month.

LaGrange is the senior of Alberta’s four health ministers who were named following the province’s dismembering of the Alberta Health Services province-wide health authority in 2024. She introduced Bill 11 into the Legislature last year.

“As I’ve said every time, I’m the federal minister, so I’m the guardian of the Canada Health Act,” said Michel told the Post.

“Our two departments should be engaged because, if they were to move in (the wrong direction), then Health Canada could say, ‘no, if you do this, you will be out (of the Act),’” said Michel.

The federal health minister’s measured comments weren’t exactly a call to the barricades to defend universal health care in Canada, but it’s no shock that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government might be reluctant to wade too far into new disputes with the UCP government.

Carney’s relationship with Premier Smith has warmed considerably after the signing of last year’s much-lauded Memorandum of Understanding on energy and electrification projects and his support in Alberta remains surprisingly high for a Liberal Prime Minister (even one who grew up in Edmonton).

And anything perceived as overreach or interference by the federal government could also give fuel to independence activists and 51st State agitators desperately trying to fan the flames of Alberta separatism ahead of an expected separation referendum in October 2026.

But Carney and Michel aren’t just feeling pressure from outside groups to stand up for public health care, they are feeling it from inside the Liberal Party as well.

Policy proposal from St. Albert Liberal aims to block private health care and Alberta Pension Plan

Delegates to the Liberal Party’s national convention in Montreal earlier this month voted unanimously in favour of two policies that take direct aim at key pieces of Premier Smith’s political agenda.

Introduced by past St. Albert-Sturgeon River candidate Lucia Stachurski, the policy proposals call for the Liberal Party to oppose the implementation of Bill 11 and a big item on Smith’s sovereignty agenda: the creation of an Alberta Pension Plan.

“Our universal healthcare system is under coordinated across the country. There is a shift towards for-profit clinics that divert federal transfers away from public care and in many cases bill Canadians out-of-pocket for assured services,” Stachurski said when she took the floor to introduce the motion. “We cannot allow a two tier healthcare system to become the Canadian norm.”

“Recently, Alberta passed Bill 11, allowing physicians to work in both the public and private sectors laying the groundwork for a two tier health system disadvantaging the most vulnerable in our society and advantaging the wealthiest,” she said. “If this is allowed to go unchallenged, other provinces will also take similar measures and our valued universal healthcare will no longer exist.”

Titled “Enforcing the Canada Health Act against privatization,” the policy proposal Stachurski presented to Liberal convention delegates read:

WHEREAS provincial governments are increasingly contracting private surgical and diagnostic providers at higher costs that, divert federal health transfers from public care;

WHEREAS some Canadians are being billed out of pocket for services that are medically insured under the Canada Health Act, undermining the principle of universal access;

WHEREAS hospital operating rooms remain underused as nurses and anesthesiologists migrate or are directed to private clinics, worsening surgical wait times;

WHEREAS Section 12(1) of the Canada Health Act mandates that provinces negotiate service prices with recognized professional organizations, not with individual contractors or for-profit clinics;

WHEREAS Alberta’s pivot from publicly delivered to privately contracted health care services is setting a precedent that normalizes profit-based models across Canada, undermining universal health care and equal access to essential health/hospital services.

BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the Government of Canada to:

• Direct the Minister of Health to initiate formal consultations with provincial Ministers of Health regarding contracting for-profit surgical/diagnostic and hospital services and its impact on public accessibility and wait times;

• Incentivize standardized evidence-based annual provincial reporting on levels of private contracting, associated costs to the taxpayer, and effects on service accessibility, under the Canada Health Act;

• Review the Canada Health Act to initiate amendments to strengthen universal health care across Canada.

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Liberal policy would give Alberta workers choice to remain in Canada Pension Plan

Stachurski also introduced a policy proposal aimed at protecting the Canada Pension Plan by calling on the federal government to allow Alberta workers to choose whether they would leave the Canada Pension Plan or join a new provincial plan if the Alberta government creates its own pension plan to replace the CPP.

“Alberta is proceeding claiming a large portion of CPP. If Alberta is successful, other provinces would follow suit putting one of the world‘s best public pension pan plans at risk,” Stachurski said when she introduced the motion at the Liberal Party convention.

“This resolution recognizes that we can’t prevent the Alberta government from proceeding with this however we urge the government to protect those citizens that are already receiving it, and those who have already contributed to it by giving them the option individually of staying with the CPP and not moving their funds to the APP,” she said.

The UCP government has been inching towards pulling Alberta workers out of the CPP and replacing it with a provincial Alberta Pension Plan, something that province’s are allowed to do under the CPP rules but no province has ever done. It is a key element of Smith’s “sovereign Alberta within a united Canada” pitch and was featured in the Free Alberta Strategy co-authored by the Premier’s Chief of Staff, Rob Anderson.

The UCP’s argument in favour of creating an Alberta Pension Plan hinges entirely on removing all Alberta workers from the national plan — something Smith has said would entitle her government to roughly 53 percent, or $334 billion, of CPP assets.

Despite it being a deeply unpopular idea in Alberta and the government’s pension engagement chairman comparing it to a “renovation from hell,” the UCP is stuck on the idea. The final report from Smith’s Alberta Next Panel, which toured the province last year, ranked the APP as it’s second recommendation:

Provide Albertans with a detailed Alberta Pension Plan proposal outlining what benefits, management structure, contribution rates and implementation plan an APP would include. A provincial referendum asking Albertans whether to establish an APP and exit the CPP should only be scheduled after this proposal is provided to Albertans.

Results of the Alberta Next Panel survey, released by the government only after months of tenacious persistence by Edmonton Journal reporter Matthew Black, show the Alberta Pension Plan remains unpopular among Albertans.

Will these policy proposals stop health care privatization and the Alberta Pension Plan?

Policy proposals passed at a party convention don’t automatically become government policy and are sometimes easy for longstanding governments to ignore but they do show where the party’s most active members stand on policy issues. As we have learned with the UCP in Alberta, an extremely engaged membership base can hold significant leverage over a government’s legislative and political agenda. That said, the Liberal Party of Canada is a different political beast than the UCP.

While Carney likely wants to avoid a big fight over health care if he can, it will be more difficult to avoid a fight over the assets in the Canada Pension Plan if the UCP government moves to create an Alberta Pension Plan. While the Alberta government’s numbers are absurdly high, removing such a large amount of assets would devastate the CPP and throw the retirement security of Canadians in other provinces into total chaos.

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Dodgy Contracts Scandal investigation earns Carrie Tait the Journalist of the Year award

The UCP’s privatization push has come under intense scrutiny, especially after serious allegations of corruption and political interference were levelled against cabinet ministers and senior staffers in the Premier’s Office involving contracts with private surgical companies and the purchase of Turkish-made children’s medicine. The scandal has since spiralled into an overwhelming web of Stanley Cup playoff hockey tickets, rental houses, addiction treatment centre construction, court cases, lawsuits, restraining orders, and intimidation and harassment.

The NDP opposition has dubbed it “Corrupt Care.”

Much of the sunlight shone on this scandal is a result of impressive work done by intrepid investigative journalists at the Globe & Mail, including Calgary-based reporter Carrie Tait, who was recently named as Canada’s Journalist of the Year by the National Newspaper Awards.

The steady stream of scoops broken by Tait and her Globe & Mail co-workers has lodged a giant thorn in the side of the UCP government and recently earned her a rude insult from government house leader Joseph Schow.

You asked: How is Danielle Smith’s UCP still in the lead?!

A new survey conducted by respected pollster Janet Brown for the CBC shows the UCP with 49 percent support across the province and the NDP with 36 percent.

In Calgary, the Smith’s UCP is at 48 percent and the NDP at 37 percent. And in the NDP-stronghold of Edmonton, NDP leader Naheed Nenshi’s party is sitting at 45 percent ahead of the UCP at 38 percent. Outside Calgary and Edmonton the UCP dominates with 62 percent support and the NDP left trailing with 23 percent.

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The United Conservative Party government has moved to take greater control of how the electoral boundaries for Alberta’s next provincial election will be drawn. Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP government voted to toss out of majority report of the bipartisan Electoral Boundaries Commission this week and create a new process where an advisory panel reporting to an MLA committee will redraw Alberta’s new electoral map.

The Boundaries Commission report was disregarded by the government after the two UCP appointees to the commission released their own minority report that proposed drastically redrawing the proposed 89 ridings. It is difficult to look at the UCP commissioners proposal to slice the cities of Calgary, Lethbridge and Red Deer into huge rural-urban ridings without thinking it was proposed with the goal of cementing UCP majority government’s for the next decade.

Smith’s UCP are now facing allegations that they are trying to gerrymander the province’s ridings and rig the next election. The opposition has been very critical of the UCP’s ad hoc process, calling it illegitimate, but NDP leader Naheed Nenshi issued a statement today naming Calgary-Mountain View MLA Kathleen Ganley and Edmonton-Mill Woods MLA Christina Gray to the Select Special Committee on Electoral Boundaries:

“They have the experience and integrity this new committee will need in order to hold the UCP accountable.”

“But I want to stress; this does not mean we believe the process is legitimate. We will continue to call on Danielle Smith and the UCP to stop cheating and implement the independent commission’s final report.”

Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Brandon Lunty is the committee chair and Strathmore-Chestermere MLA Chantelle de Jonge, Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills UCP MLA Tara Sawyer, and Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA Ron Wiebe make up the UCP majority on the MLA committee. The members of the committee’s advisory panel have not been publicly released.

The MLA committee will be a hot source of political fireworks and theatrics over the next six months — and a lot of people will be watching closely for signs of partisan gerrymandering — so before we get too distracted I thought it would be a good idea to look at the results of the last provincial election in 2023 and where the races that decided the election were located.

The last Alberta election was pretty darn close

Alberta has a well-earned reputation as the land of historically large majority governments because every election since 1905 has resulted in a majority government — some of them huge. But the results of the last provincial election were pretty darn close in comparison.

The province-wide vote put Smith’s UCP ahead of Rachel Notley’s NDP by 8 points, but that margin is deceiving. The UCP’s province-wide lead was largely a result of the party’s huge margins of victory in rural and small city ridings outside of Calgary and Edmonton. The vote results in that election’s twenty closest races — fifteen which were located in Calgary — were much, much closer.

Premier Smith was speaking off the cuff when she admitted to Postmedia columnist Rick Bell in October 2022 that her party didn’t need to hold most of it’s seats in Calgary to win the 2023 provincial election.

“You know the electoral math. You need 44 seats to win government. If we lost our 39-seat base outside Calgary and Edmonton, we couldn’t form government.

“Now we just need to win 10 to 15 seats in Calgary and Edmonton.”

Smith quickly backtracked on her comments after some UCP MLAs realized the Premier was talking about them losing their jobs. But you can’t argue with math. That was the UCP’s play in 2023 and it worked.

The UCP’s near total domination of the ridings outside of Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge gave that party a huge structural advantage over the NDP in the last election.

The UCP wasn’t competitive in any Edmonton ridings, and aside from Banff-Kananaskis , the two urban Lethbridge ridings, and a few suburban commuter ridings surrounding Edmonton, Smith’s party was able to focus its resources on holding onto enough ridings in Calgary to complete the plan she told Bell about months earlier.

Seven of the ten closest races won by the UCP in 2023 were in Calgary and those wins secured the party’s 49 seats in the Legislature. With only 11 seats separating the UCP and NDP in the Legislature, it was the smallest majority of any government in Alberta’s history (the UCP currently has 47 MLAs in the Legislature and the NDP has 38 MLAs).

Top 10 closest UCP wins in 2023

1. Calgary-North West: UCP candidate Rajan Sawhney won by 143 votes (0.6%)

2. Calgary-North: UCP candidate Muhammad Yaseen won by 129 votes (0.8%)

3. Calgary-Bow: UCP candidate Demetrios Nicolaides won by 623 votes (2.4%)

4. Lethbridge-East: UCP candidate Nathan Neudorf won by 636 votes (2.9%)

5. Calgary-Cross: UCP candidate Mickey Amery won by 514 votes (3.4%)

6. Calgary-East: UCP candidate Peter Singh won by 698 votes (4.9%)

7. Morinville-St. Albert: UCP candidate Dale Nally won by 1,744 votes (6.7%)

8. Strathcona-Sherwood Park: UCP candidate Nate Glubish won by 2,219 votes (8.5%)

9. Calgary-Fish Creek: UCP candidate Myles McDougall won by 2,489 votes (9.7%)

10. Calgary-Peigan: UCP candidate Tanya Fir won by 2,797 votes (12.9%)

NDP’s path to victory still goes through Calgary

Alberta NDP supporters are fond of saying their party would have won enough seats to form government if a few thousand votes had shifted their way in Calgary on May 29, 2023.

Putting aside that’s basically the same as saying “we would have won if more people voted for us,” it does reinforce just how big of a role that city’s voters played in the last provincial election — and how much they will matter again when Albertans go to the polls in 2027.

The NDP made big gains in Calgary in the last election, winning 14 of the city’s 26 ridings and finishing ahead of the UCP in the city-wide popular vote. Eight of the NDP’s closest wins in the last election were in Calgary, and that city’s ridings remain the opposition party’s most likely path to victory in 2027.

The NDP dominated every race in Edmonton and had high hopes for big gains in the suburban commuter ridings surrounding that city. Their only gain among those seats was by Kyle Kasawski in Sherwood Park, but NDP candidates had strong showing in Mornville-St. Albert and Strathcona-Sherwood Park.

The NDP’s only gain outside the urban centres was in the Rocky Mountain and Bow Valley riding of Banff-Kananaskis where Sarah Elmeligi narrowly defeated UCP MLA Miranda Rosin. Not being competitive in any other rural ridings made the NDP’s path to victory much narrower and steeper — something that continues to be a big problem for the NDP today.

Top 10 closest NDP wins in 2023

1. Calgary-Acadia: NDP candidate Diana Batten won by 22 votes (0.1%)

2. Calgary-Glenmore: NDP candidate Nagwan Al-Guneid won by 48 votes (0.2%)

3. Calgary-Edgemont: NDP candidate Julia Hayter won by 284 votes (1.2%)

4. Calgary-Foothills: NDP candidate Court Ellingson won by 261 votes (1.2%)

5. Banff-Kananaskis: NDP candidate Sarah Elmeligi won by 303 votes (1.3%)

6. Calgary-Beddington: NDP candidate Amanda Chapman won by 543 votes (2.6%)

7. Calgary-Elbow: NDP candidate Samir Kayande won by 743 votes (3.0%)

8. Calgary-Klein: NDP candidate Lizette Tejada won by 867 votes (4.2%)

9. Sherwood Park: NDP candidate Kyle Kasawski win by 1,661 votes (6.4%)

10. Calgary-North East: NDP candidate Gurinder Brar won by 2,039 votes (10.1%)

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Alberta is on a collision course with a dangerous political storm

We are now 18 months away from the next scheduled provincial election in October 2027 and we don’t know what the electoral map is going to look like (we’ll find out by November 2026). We don’t even know what our political environment might resemble by that time.

Albertans are being forced on a collision course with a political storm unlike anything anyone who’s involved in provincial politics has seen in their lifetimes.

A referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada is expected to happen in October 2026 along with at least 9 questions proposed by Premier Smith ranging from abolishing the Senate to limiting access immigrants have to health care and education (Smith is expected to make an announcement about these on April 23). And there might even be a question about banning coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

Some of these incredibly divisive referendum questions have the potential to dramatically reshape and divide communities and politics in Alberta in ways we haven’t seen in generations — especially with the threat of foreign interference and misinformation promoting Alberta becoming the 51st State.

The UCP has led almost all public voting intention polls released since the 2023 election, some polls by large margins, which has been a five alarm fire for some NDP supporters. But I’m told the NDP have taken some solace in other polls showing a majority of Albertans are unhappy with the direction of the government. There’s a definite unease out there, but it’s unclear who that frustration will be directed toward at in the ballot booth.

Smith was successful at directing much of Albertans anger towards Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Ottawa, but the Premier has been more collegial with Prime Minister Mark Carney.

UCP support in rural ridings appears to remain solid, and the 1,000-strong crowd at Smith’s recent fundraising banquet in Red Deer is a pretty good indication that the conservative heartland remains enthusiastically behind her for now. How strong and united the United Conservative Party remains after the province is forced into a separation referendum in October is yet to be seen — especially because the key players in the separation campaigns are prominent UCP activists and constituency-level officials.

The UCP would love to make gains in Edmonton, even winning just one seat, in order to crack the NDP’s urban fortress. Choosing Nenshi, the former Mayor of Calgary, might deflate some NDP vote in the city but the 2025 by-elections in Edmonton-Ellerslie and Edmonton-Strathcona showed the opposition party’s support in the city remained strong despite UCP efforts to make gains in Ellerslie.

Most polls have also shown the UCP pulling ahead of Nenshi’s party in Calgary, but the NDP have been eagerly shopping around a poll from Pollara Strategic Insights that shows the party ahead of the UCP in Calgary.

If Nenshi’s NDP are indeed leading in Calgary and Edmonton, that could put the party in a position to win enough seats to form government if an election were held today under the current electoral map — but maybe not 18-months from now under the new maps that will be drawn by the new MLA committee and its advisory panel.

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thanks for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There’s never a boring moment in Alberta politics and it’s a pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in our corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you thought today’s newsletter was interesting, please feel free to share it with a friend or colleague.

Cheers,

Dave

Another day, another unprecedented decision in Alberta politics.

The United Conservative Party government surprised the opposition, political watchers, and probably a few of their own MLAs with plans to introduce a motion in the Legislature to scrap the final report of the bipartisan Alberta Electoral Boundaries Commission and replace it with an MLA committee and advisory panel tasked with redrawing riding boundaries ahead of the next provincial election.

The motion placed on the Order Paper by UCP Government House Leader Joseph Schow would create a Special Select Committee on Electoral Boundaries, composed of Leduc-Beaumont UCP MLA Brandon Lunty as chairperson and 3 UCP MLAs and 2 NDP MLAs. The MLA committee would oversee a new advisory panel that would include a government-appointed chairperson, two UCP-appointees and two NDP-appointees.

The government’s motion to create an entirely new process to draw the next electoral map comes soon after the boundaries commission, which is made up of a government-appointed chairperson, two UCP-nominated commissioners and two NDP-nominated commissioners, submitted its own final report to Legislative Assembly Speaker Ric McIver.

The MLA committee and advisory panel would replace and possibly duplicate much of the work done the boundaries commission that spent the last 12 months working on its own recommendations for the new riding boundaries.

The advisory panel would have six months to complete its work and not be required to collect any public input in the process, according to Schow’s motion. The report is due by October 22, 2026, three days after the long list of proposed referendums questions are voted on by Albertans.

After unanimously endorsing an interim report last year, the commission remerged divided in its final report that included a majority report endorsed by the chair and two NDP commissioners that stuck close to the interim report and a radically different minority report endorsed by the two UCP commissioners.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I make a real effort to not stray into hyperbole when I write about Alberta politics, but I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to describe the minority report as gerrymandering. It’s difficult to read the minority report maps without thinking that they were drawn to increase the partisan advantage for the UCP in the next election.

The minority report notably included a large number of “hybrid” rural-urban ridings that sliced the cities of Calgary, Lethbridge, Red Deer, and Airdrie into the surrounding rural areas. The minority report echoed recommendations made by Lethbridge-East UCP MLA and cabinet minister Nathan Neudorf to dissolve Lethbridge’s two urban ridings and carve the southwest Alberta city into three or four large “agri-innovation corridors.”

Neuford’s proposal was not included in the commission’s interim report or the majority report.

Number of ridings increasing from 87 to 91

The MLA committee and advisory panel would be given a mandate to increase the total number of ridings by four from 87 to 91, up from the two additional ridings UCP MLAs voted to allow the commission to create in its final report.

Adding four extra ridings was an escape hatch offered by boundaries commission chair Dallas K. Miller in the majority’s final report as a way to deal with the removal of rural ridings caused by faster population growth in urban centres.

Like much of the current UCP government’s chaotic approach to legislative bills and motions, it feels like they are making this up as they go.

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Five questions about the new MLA committee and advisory panel

1. Why is the government doing this?

The only reason for the UCP government to introduce this is that UCP MLAs didn’t like what the majority of the commissioners, including the government-appointed chairperson, recommended in the final report.

Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP caucus is dominated by rural MLAs and sweeping the ridings outside of Calgary and Edmonton is key to the UCP winning re-election in 2027. It’s very likely that UCP MLAs did not like the prospect of having to challenge each other for their party’s nominations in newly redrawn rural ridings ahead of the next election — a situation that would cause tension in any caucus. The addition of competitive urban seats in cities where the population has grown the fastest also risks slimming the UCP’s majority.

I’m willing to bet that’s the main reason why the UCP government has intervened to send the map back to the drawing board.

2. What’s going to happen next?

We don’t really know, but it’s easy to speculate. The UCP has a majority in the Legislature, so it is unlikely that the motion to create the MLA committee and advisory panel would fail.

Schow’s motion calls for Lunty to chair the MLA committee, but we don’t know who the other committee members would be or who would be appointed to the advisory panel.

Under the circumstances, a best case scenario might have the committee and advisory panel adopt the recommendations of the commission’s majority report while adding four additional ridings instead of only two new ridings. In this scenario, the UCP would likely use to two extra ridings to rescue the Lac Ste. Anne-Parkland and Lacombe-Ponoka ridings that were dissolved in the final majority report.

But there’s not many reasons to believe the UCP will take a moderate approach in this process. It is much more likely that the government will appoint a chair and commissioners who are much more agreeable to the map the UCP government would like to have to run for re-election in 2027. This could mean Alberta’s new map could look much more like the commission’s minority report that included “hybrid” ridings that sliced cities into sprawling rural-urban ridings.

The UCP under Smith’s leadership have demonstrated a troubling eagerness to break political norms, concentrate power, and weaken independent institutions, so it would not be out of character if they adopted a map very similar to the one proposed in the commission’s minority report.

Because the government motion doesn’t replace the Electoral Boundaries Commission Act, it is unclear whether the UCP government has further plans to change the entire commission structure in the future.

3. Will the NDP participate in the advisory panel?

That is unclear. NDP leader Naheed Nenshi said in a press conference at the Legislature yesterday that the opposition is weighing their legal options at this point. The UCP motion states that the panel will “conduct its review despite any vacancies in its membership,” meaning that the UCP have already prepared for the NDP to boycott this process.

4. What if we get another majority and minority report?

The UCP won’t accept the commission’s majority report but they will accept the majority report of the advisory panel.

The UCP motion states that “if the independent advisory panel submits more than one report to the Committee, the report of a majority of the members of the independent advisory panel is the report of the independent advisory panel, but if there is no majority, the report of the chair is the report of the independent advisory panel.”

5. Will Alberta’s new election maps be gerrymandered?

Gerrymandering, the act of politically manipulating electoral district boundaries to advantage a party, is one of the most toxic and corrosive features of American politics. This kind of political manipulation has largely been avoided in Canada and the courts have been quick to strike down any maps that strayed too far in that direction.

We don’t know what the new maps will look like, and I will be watching this process closely, but Canadians should vigorously guard against any attempt to import attempts to gerrymander ridings into our electoral system

Instead of the ad hoc system proposed in Schow’s motion, Alberta should consider adopting a non-partisan model for future boundary redistributions, similar to the one used to redraw federal electoral ridings.

Preserving the independence and credibility of institutions that should be free from direct partisan manipulation, especially when it comes to drawing electoral maps, is key to preserving public confidence in our election system and democracy.

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🎙️ Daveberta on the radio

I was up early on Monday morning to talk with CBC radio about Alberta’s divided electoral boundaries commission. It can be a bit of a confusing and dense topic so I did my best to explain it in a way that most folks can understand (and understand why it’s important).

Thank you for reading and subscribing

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Daveberta. There’s rarely a boring moment in Alberta politics and it continues to be a pleasure to be able to share my thoughts about what’s happening in our corner of Canada with so many of you.

If you found today’s newsletter useful, please feel free to share it with a friend or colleague.

Cheers,

Dave

“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.”

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Support for Alberta separatism has reached what is being described as a 5-year high at 27 per cent in favour, with 69 per cent opposed. But Pollara Strategic Insights’ warns against complacency:

Even though the “winning conditions” are seemingly not there today, support for separatism in Alberta is meaningfully higher now than it was pre-Trump, higher than it was when “F Trudeau” bumper stickers represented 8% of Alberta’s GDP. As Albertans talk about separatism more seriously, support is rising. That’s a concern.

Meanwhile, leader of the Stay Free Alberta group collecting signatures to trigger a referendum on Alberta separation says more than 177,000 signatures have already been collected ahead of the May 1 deadline.

“We [have] more than the buffer that’s required if [Elections Alberta] refuse signatures as well,” Mitch Sylvestre told CBC.

Sylvestre is also the President of the United Conservative Party constituency association in Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul and was presented with the party’s best fundraiser award in 2025.

Polling has shown that UCP supporters are deeply divided on separation, with 55 per cent in favour of leaving Canada and 45 per cent supporting remaining in the country. This is a huge contrast from Alberta NDP supporters who, at 97 per cent, are close to unanimous in their support for staying in Canada.

The current version of Alberta separatism has deep roots in the opposition to COVID-19 public health restrictions and the online political environment that grew around it. Alberta separatist movement is strongly influenced by the politics of American President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and separatist leaders have made numerous trips to Washington DC to seek financial support for an independent Alberta Republic.

Documents like the Free Alberta Strategy, which was co-authored by Premier Danielle Smith’s Chief of Staff, Rob Anderson, have further legitimized the idea within the governing UCP.

The separatist wing of the UCP’s activist base was on full display at the UCP’s annual general meeting last November when a slate of candidates endorsed by prominent separatist groups swept the board of directors elections.

More recently, Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan, who serves as Premier Smith’s Parliamentary Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, penned a column in a local newspaper supporting the separation petition. Stephan coming out in support of Alberta separatism wasn’t a surprise to many people, as he’s toyed with the idea since he was first elected in 2019 and last year issued statements in support of ending official bilingualism and abolishing the Canadian monarchy.

Smith has continued to successfully hold together her party’s voter coalition with this risky balancing act of appealing to both people who outright want to leave Alberta and people who want to remain in Canada but are unhappy with Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa. For the moment, she seems to have those two groups firmly in her corner.

Previous Conservative party premiers like Peter Lougheed and Ralph Klein succeeded in marginalizing separatists on the political fringes in smaller right-wing parties. But today’s separatists count themselves among the UCP’s most enthusiastic activists and were part of the populist wave that swept Smith into the Premier’s Office in 2022.

It’s highly unlikely they are just going to abandon their support of separatism if and when the referendum to separate from Canada fails. They are now an entrenched force that could have a lot more legitimacy and political capital after a referendum.

First Nations have been the most effective opposition to the separatists so far

I asked a few months ago who might step up to lead the pro-Canada efforts, and it looks like it will be a choir rather than a solo act. Nenshi’s campaign is the first of what is expected to be a handful of pro-Canada efforts that will launch ahead of the referendum.

Former Progressive Conservative MLA Thomas Lukaszuk’s Forever Canadian group is active, and former UCP Premier Jason Kenney is leading a one-man campaign that includes a series of public debates with Alberta separatist supporters.

Kenney’s first debate is against separatist lawyer Keith Wilson at the Civitas Canada conference at the Royal Glenora Club on May 1. Postmedia columnist Lorne Gunter is moderating.

Premier Danielle Smith and Justice Minister Mickey Amery have gone out of their way numerous times to amend the Citizen Initiative Act to clear the way for a referendum on Alberta separation, but First Nations leaders argue that a separation referendum would violate the Treaties signed between First Nations and the Crown.

Alberta government lawyers argue it wouldn’t, but Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation Chief Sheldon Sunshine and Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro raised questions about government lawyers collaborating with separatist lawyers.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard issued a limited ruling yesterday on a stay application from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and the Blackfoot Confederacy.

This means that Chief Elections Officer Gordon McClure will temporarily halt certifying signatures from the Stay Free Alberta citizen initiative petition until the final court ruling. The stay application does not prevent the separatist group from continuing to collect signatures.

If the court rules against the separatist referendum, it’s likely Smith’s UCP will come under intense pressure from party activists to hold a separation referendum anyway.

If you think this is a lot to follow, I assure you that Alberta politics is going to get a lot noisier and probably more confusing during the months ahead.

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Albertans served a heaping bowl of poll soup

A recent Leger poll showed that around 56 per cent of Albertans say the province is on the wrong track but 53 per cent of decided voters would still vote for Smith’s UCP if a provincial election were held today. Nenshi’s NDP sits at 36 per cent support, down 8 points from where the Rachel Notley-led party landed on election day in 2023.

And to make things more interesting are a hand full of polls showing the federal Liberals doing historically well in Alberta and that support for Prime Minister Mark Carney is surprisingly high. A poll released by Abacus Data last month showed the Liberals at 36 per cent support in Alberta and leading in Edmonton:

In Edmonton, the Liberals lead with 47% compared with 40% for the Conservatives. In Calgary, the Conservatives hold a 10-point advantage, 49% to 39%. Outside the two major cities, the Conservative advantage widens considerably. Outside of Calgary and Edmonton, the Conservatives lead 61% to 26%. In rural Alberta, the Conservative vote rises to 65%, while the Liberals fall to 21%.

🚲🌆 Upcoming event: City Councillor Michael Janz is hosting Mikael Colville-Andersen in Edmonton on May 1. Colville-Andersen will share his urbanist observations about pandemic response and from living and volunteering in Ukraine during the Russian invasion to explore what cities reveal about themselves when systems fail.

An Edmonton Riverbend by-election could have told us a lot about Alberta politics today

Fifty days ago Edmonton Riverbend MP Matt Jeneroux crossed the floor from the Conservatives to the Liberals. Jeneroux’s defection wasn’t unexpected, it had been rumoured for months, but a late 2025 statement that he planned to resign in 2026 led many people to believe there would be a by-election in Edmonton Riverbend.

Edmontonians won’t get the chance to vote in a federal by-election this spring, but had Jeneroux resigned we would have had an opportunity to test the long list of recent polls that show support for Carney’s Liberals increasing in Alberta. It wouldn’t have been much a test in most Alberta ridings, as Pierre Polievre’s Battle River-Crowfoot by-election win demonstrated, but Riverbend is a different matter.

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