Kyle Campbell nominated as Alberta NDP candidate in Calgary-Shaw by-election

Campbell will face UCP's Mike Derry in race to replace Rebecca Schulz

Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi and Calgary-Shaw NDP candidate Kyle Campbell in a campaign video released by the Alberta NDP (screenshot: Kyle Campbell / Facebook)

The Alberta NDP have nominated Kyle Campbell to run as the opposition party’s candidate in the upcoming Calgary-Shaw by-election to choose a new MLA following Rebecca Schulz’s resignation last month.

The by-election in this southwest Calgary riding will be an uphill battle for the NDP but, whenever it’s called in the next five months, it will take place during one of the most unpredictable periods in Alberta politics in recent memory.

There is no shortage of issues of the NDP to focus on in this by-election and it looks like health care and affordability will be top of mind for Campbell as he hits the doors.

“Three years ago, I was told I had stage four cancer, and in that moment I saw firsthand what’s at stake when our system isn’t working the way it should,” Campbell said after being acclaimed for the NDP nomination on June 26.

“What matters in a moment like that is being able to count on getting timely health care and having a government that cares about affordability for all families,” said Campbell, who is the President of the Somerset Residents Association and Director of Employee Benefits for Qopia Financial.

Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP government has implemented a huge administrative restructuring of the public health care system by carving up the former province-wide health authority known as Alberta Health Services into a handful of bureaucratic “pillars” responsible for different health services (AHS continues to run hospitals as a service provider under the new Acute Care Alberta provincial health agency).

While there is certainly a recognition that the status-quo wasn’t working, it remains unclear how the UCP’s restructuring will improve patient care and services. Emergency room wait times in Alberta, for example, remain embarrassingly long.

The UCP’s health care reforms are controversially paired with legislative changes that allow for more private-for-profit surgical facilities and dual private-public practice by Alberta doctors. The move to increase private surgical clinics is also at the centre of the dodgy contracts corruption scandal that is under investigation by the RCMP and Auditor General.

NDP leader Naheed Nenshi recently called on Prime Minister Mark Carney and federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel to enforce the Canada Health Act to block the UCP’s privatization push, which health advocates worry will open Canadians to the threat of American private insurance companies.

It’s Campbell vs. Derry in Calgary-Shaw

Campbell will face United Conservative Party candidate Mike Derry, who surprised many political watchers last week when he defeated City Councillor Dan McLean in the party’s nomination vote.

With 507 total ballots cast in the UCP membership vote in Calgary-Shaw, Derry earned 286 votes to McLean’s 221 votes. Fifty-three per cent of party members in the riding turned out to vote at the nomination meeting.

Mike Derry wins Calgary-Shaw UCP nomination, defeats city councillor Dan McLean

McLean has maintained close public ties with the UCP since he was first elected to council in 2021 and was widely considered the establishment favourite to succeed Rebecca Schulz.

As Postmedia columnist Don Braid pointed out, McLean’s nomination loss also removes an opportunity for 2025 mayoral runner-up Sonya Sharp to return to city council in a municipal by-election:

For Mayor Jeromy Farkas and council, the backstory here is that former councillor Sonya Sharp, who narrowly lost the mayoralty to Farkas, was ready to run in the city byelection to replace McLean.

That would have set her up for another try against Farkas. It also threatened to disrupt a relatively harmonious council and give the UCP greater influence.

Farkas would much rather have McLean as a UCP voice on council than the formidable Sharp. She lost to him by only 616 votes.

Sharp endorsed McLean and campaigned with him during the nomination race. One of Farkas’ and Sharp’s mayoral competitors, Jeff Davison, also chimed in on this nomination contest by criticizing McLean’s candidacy so soon after the October 2025 municipal elections.

Alberta separatism referendum will be impossible to ignore in by-election

The NDP were quick to put Derry on the spot on the issue of Alberta separatism, which voters will face in a province-wide referendum on October 19.

An NDP press release sent out the night of Derry’s nomination win questioned his support from Darrell Komick, the president of the UCP constituency association in the neighbouring Calgary-Lougheed who ran in the UCP board president election last year on a pro-independence platform, and campaign manager Craig Chandler, a well-known right-wing political organizer in Calgary.

Chandler recently ran City Councillor Mike Jamieson’s successful election campaign in Ward 12 and is believed to be involved in Erin Averbukh’s campaign for the UCP nomination in the Calgary-Acadia riding (Averbukh’s only competitor in that race at the moment is former Wildrose Independence Party leader Jeevan Mangat).

While polls show that a majority of UCP supporters would vote for Alberta’s separation from Canada, the majority of Alberta voters would vote to remain in Canada. The NDP will undoubtably try to use the by-election to put pressure on the UCP’s internal division on Alberta separatism.

Taking Calgary for granted?

The by-election nomination races also come as a public spat between Smith and Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas over music tent hours during the Calgary Stampede reached a peak last week. Smith’s UCP has been eager to insert itself into Calgary’s municipal affairs, most notably by redrawing the Green Line LRT map and appointing a third-party investigator to probe the city’s water main issues, but this latest stampede stomp feels different.

Perhaps what’s most interesting about the Cowboys party tent discourse is that it isn’t a fight between a conservative premier and liberal mayor. Farkas has long list of conservative credentials as Calgary City Council’s resident fiscal hawk from 2017 to 2021, a former Manning Foundation researcher, and former Wildrose Party constituency president that dispels any argument that he’s just another Liberal-leaning mayor. Plus, he’s popular.

Stampede Stomp! Farkas and Smith duel over party tents and beer prices, Nenshi finally shifts to affordability

While we still don’t know what the riding boundaries will look like in the next provincial election, Calgary was the most competitive region of the province in the 2023 election and is expected to be so again in the next election.

Schulz won re-election with a comfortable margin of 13 point in the 2023 election but the riding was also home to one of the NDP’s largest vote increases in that year’s election (a 17-point jump). Calgary-Shaw should be a safe UCP riding but it shouldn’t be a by-election that Smith’s party should take for granted (nor do I think they will take it for granted).

The UCP has maintained a lead in the polls for most of the last three years but the party’s lead has shrunk in recent months and Smith’s own public approval rating as dipped below 40 per cent for the first time since she entered the Premier’s Office.

Whenever it is called, the Calgary-Shaw by-election will be an important test for Nenshi, who served as Mayor of Calgary from 2010 to 2021 and won the party leadership in a landslide on his strength in the province’s largest city.

“It’s time for the voters of South Calgary to send Danielle Smith a message: stop taking Calgary for granted, stop gaslighting us, and stop with this separatist nonsense,” Nenshi said. “The best way to send that message is to send Kyle Campbell to the legislature.”

Look who's running in Alberta’s next provincial election

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Former trustee Pamela Rath running for UCP nomination in Calgary-Beddington

Former Catholic school trustee and past UCP candidate Pamela Rath has launched her campaign for the UCP nomination in Calgary-Beddington.

The Calgary-Beddington riding is currently represented by NDP MLA Amanda Chapman, who defeated UCP MLA Josephine Pon by 543 votes in the 2023 provincial election.

Rath served as a trustee with the Calgary Catholic School District from 2017 until her resignation in December 2022 for “personal and family matters.” Her resignation came a few months after she was censured by her trustee colleagues after being found to be in violation of the board’s code of conduct, though the nature of the alleged misconduct was never made public.

Rath ran for the UCP in the Calgary-Mountain View riding in the 2023 provincial election where she placed second with 33.1 per cent of the vote.

She also ran for a board position on the UCP constituency association in Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre in 2024, writing in her campaign bio that she planned to relocate to the community of Bergen, located south of Sundre.

Worried about gerrymandering? Pay attention to the closest races from Alberta's 2023 election

More nomination updates

• The NDP has nominated incumbent MLAs Sharif Haji in Edmonton-Decore and Marie Renaud in St. Albert.

• NDP MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul will be nominated in Edmonton-West Henday today.

• Nomination applications are due on June 29 for candidates interested in running for UCP nominations in the Calgary-Bow, Calgary-West, Camrose, and Chestermere-Strathmore ridings.

• Lawyer Michelle Baer is running for the NDP nomination in Red Deer-South.

  • Baer is the former Legal and Legislative Services Manager for the City of Red Deer and was the NDP candidate in the riding in 2023, where she placed second with 41.5 per cent of the vote.

  • The riding has been represented by UCP MLA Jason Stephan since 2019.

  • An NDP nomination meeting is scheduled for July 25.

• Chris Kish is seeking the Progressive Tory Party nomination in Leduc-Beaumont.

  • Kish is a Division Learning Coach with the St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School Division.

  • I believe conservatism is about stewardship, service, and responsibility. It means respecting taxpayers, strengthening our public institutions, defending democracy, and ensuring government is transparent and accountable to the people it serves, Kish wrote in a Facebook post announcing his candidacy.

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