We’re all going to learn some interesting stuff, beyond the usual government-versus-opposition popularity contest that has typified Alberta politics for the past decade, from the Sept. 14 by-election in Calgary-Shaw called yesterday to replace former United Conservative Party leadership candidate and cabinet minister Rebecca Schulz.
Will the fact that the UCP standard bearer in the contest is a denizen of the governing party’s farthest-right fringe who knocked off a more traditional Conservative with experience on Calgary City Council in June’s constituency association’s candidate election have any impact on the party’s chances in the historically Conservative-leaning riding?
Mike Derry’s campaign was run by Craig Chandler, who in the past has expressed support for Alberta separatism and was once declared by Danielle Smith herself to be too extreme for the Wildrose Party she then led. One would think might be a problem, even in Calgary-Shaw.
Will the fact the NDP came right out and called Mr. Derry an extremist and possibly a separatist work for the Opposition party’s candidate, Kyle Campbell? If so, maybe we will see the NDP take a harder and more focused line in the lead-up to the general election.
As political commentator Dave Cournoyer observed on his Daveberta Substack, NDP support in the riding jumped significantly in 2023 after Ms. Schulz’s more comfortable victory in the 2019 general election. So maybe the NDP has momentum, or maybe the momentum it had has dissipated.
The run by Mr. Campbell, a former president of the residents’ association for the Somerset neighbourhood inside the riding, will be the first electoral test in Calgary for the NDP since Naheed Nenshi became leader. A win would put some wind back in the former Calgary mayor’s sails.
Will former UCP cabinet minister Peter Guthrie’s “Progressive Tory Party” have the electoral juice to break Alberta’s de facto two-party system as some polling once suggested it could and, if so, will it be done at the expense of Premier Smith’s UCP or Opposition Leader Nenshi’s NDP?
Will Kyle Joseph, candidate for the weirdly named PTP, manage to emerge as more than an ephemeral blip on the political radar, and if he does will it be because of or in spite of Mr. Guthrie’s alliance with the perpetually star-crossed Alberta Party? Mr. Guthrie could have rolled the dice and run himself. Perhaps wisely, he chose not to.
And, when the dust settles, will the Alberta Liberal Party, represented by Leader John Roggeveen, manage to survive another election cycle? The Alberta Liberals have been perched on the brink of extinction since at least 2011. You’d think that one of these days they’d just give up. But hope, they say, springs eternal.
As for the question of whether the United Conservative Party is now for all intents and purposes a separatist party – as its behaviour if not Premier Smith’s rhetoric suggests – it’s significant than none of the numerous fringe separatist parties in Alberta have put forward a candidate yet. Readers can decide for themselves whether than means anything. Candidates have until 2 p.m. on Aug. 27 to join the fun.
One thing the by-election campaign or its outcome is unlikely to help explain is the impact of the UCP’s separation referendum and intentionally confusing nine immigration and “constitutional” referenda on the UCP’s chances whenever the next general election is called. That’s why, presumably, the vote has been scheduled before the Oct. 19 referendum date.
As for Ms. Schulz, who announced last New Year’s Eve she was planning to quit as environment minister and formally left politics for a corporate job on May 15, there can be no question she would have made a better premier than Ms. Smith had she won the 2022 UCP leadership race.
Having campaigned as a kinder, gentler sort of Conservative leader, promising to deliver “compassion and common sense in addition to conservative values,” it was sad to see her playing Mini-Me Premier Smith’s MAGA-adjacent posturing when surely, as an intelligent person, she knew better.
