Calgary-Shaw By-Election: Don't Get Too Confident

 First, congratulations to newly-elected MLA Kyle Campbell.  The win was decisive enough to not need a judicial recount, and to some degree sent a message to the United Conservative Party (UCP).  

This is not the overwhelming victory that it should have been.  Voters did not turn out in large numbers, and while a 500 vote margin is large enough to avoid a judicial recount, it's not anywhere near what should have been the case if people were actually paying attention to what is going on in Alberta politics. 

You can fully expect the UCP to argue a few things here: 

1. It's a by-election, and the turnout is so low as to really mean it was just angry NDPers who came out in numbers.
2. The vote was "split" because the Progressive Tory Party (PTP) garnered nearly 1,000 votes - stealing victory from the UCP

It's the latter argument that is more insidious because it presupposes that the existence of the PTP is invalid, and they should all be part of the UCP.  They will use this to attempt to undermine the PTP between now and next election. 

The logic will be something along the lines of "voting for the UCP will ensure the continuance of the conservative dominion over Alberta", and that "voting for the PTP is essentially voting for the NDP, and we cannot have the NDP in power ever again".  

Unite The Right Logic

The error in that logic is the supposition that conservatism is somehow a monolith.  In reality, as we are seeing in both BC and Federally, the language of "unite the right" is really a code phrase for a "takeover from within" of a party by its most radicalized socially conservative fringe groups.  

Federally, it's been a long, slow burn with the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).  The "unite the right" campaign began in the late 1990s and culminated in the merger of the Reform Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties under Stephen Harper's control.  I say control because while Harper was leader of the CPC, he was very careful to keep the social conservative wing carefully constrained so that the public wouldn't freak out at some of their more radical policies.  Since Harper stepped aside after losing the Federal Election in 2015, we have seen the CPC move ever further right, with increasingly radical socially-conservative policies become part of the policy book at each convention, and leaders that seem more willing than Harper to adopt those policies themselves.   That's a long burn - 25 years - but it was only that long because of Harper's tenure at the helm - had a leader with less focus on power been in charge, I would probably have been writing this kind of argument by 2015. 

The BC Conservatives have been speed running this same script.  The BC Conservatives ejected Rustad after the party narrowly lost the 2024 election.  The first half of 2026 was a leadership campaign which ultimately led to the election of Kerry-Lynne Findlay - who has made it very clear she is aligned with the more radicalized socially conservative wing of the party.  Rustad was already aligned, although somewhat more careful about what he said, Findlay is far more direct about it.  The BC Conservatives went from at least seemingly mainstream to radicalized in less than a year.  Since becoming leader, 9 MLAs have departed the BC Conservative caucus.  

The UCP suffers from a similar problem, with internal coups having resulted in the party going from "newly united" to radicalized in less than 10 years.  COVID no doubt played a role in that, but it's not hard to look at the party as it was in 2017 and what it looks like now and see that Danielle Smith is clearly beholden to a small, but organized and vocal group of radicals.  

In short, the "united front" of conservatives is not really what it claims to be.  It's a front for the movement's most extreme beliefs to take precedence.  

Upcoming Electoral Moments In Alberta

The Referendums

In just over a month, Alberta voters will vote in a series of 10 referendum questions - all of which are basically separatist propaganda questions.  If current polling is any indication, these questions should all go down to a pretty nasty defeat.  Of course, that supposes that a significant percentage of eligible voters actually vote.  It is not clear to me at all that will be the case.  

I fully expect Smith to ignore the results of the referendum and simply forge ahead with next steps.  Not because she has any mandate to do so, but because her career depends on that happening.

2027 Election

Next year's election is another matter entirely.  First, this fall is when Smith's second "Electoral District Commission" will release its revised electoral map.  Expect this to contain a significant amount of "gerrymandering" in the form of ridings on the edges of major urban centres being carved into "rurban ridings", and ridings where the UCP sees themselves at risk being creatively rearranged so that they are absorbed into safer ridings.  

Additionally, the UCP will probably step up its campaign against both the PTP and the NDP. 

Closing Thoughts 

The upshot here is that while the by-election in Calgary-Shaw is a definite win for people who are angry with the UCP, we need to recognize that we are not dealing with a party that cares one whit about "democratic mandates", and will push through whatever it feels like.  

Opponents of the UCP and the separatist movement in Alberta need to continue to organize and get their message out there.  Not just during campaign periods.