Alberta's UCP Prioritizes Separatist Appeasement Over Working Albertans, So the NDP Should Run on Unabashed Working-Class Politics
Source: Laurence Miall. "Alberta’s Post-Referendum Hangover." October 27, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that Alberta's governing party spends its energy placating a small separatist faction and fighting itself, while health care, affordability, and education get neglected. Since most Albertans rejected separation and care about everyday issues, the opposition NDP should offer a clearly pro-working-class platform.
Conclusion
Alberta's NDP should confront the UCP with a bold, unabashedly working-class platform (e.g., windfall profits tax on oil and gas, public auto insurance, Alberta Federation of Labour proposals), because the UCP under Danielle Smith has governed to manage its separatist base rather than serve ordinary Albertans' priorities.
Premises
- Albertans' top concerns are health care, cost of living, education, and affordable housing, according to Nanos (spring 2025) and Leger (October 2025) polling.
- Support for independence rarely exceeds 30 percent and the referendum's separation question was rejected roughly 75 to 25, yet a majority (53 percent) of UCP voters backed starting the separation process, showing a fringe has outsized influence within the party.
- Premier Smith won the UCP leadership by appealing to separatists, then campaigned on safer promises to the general public and afterward pursued measures she had not campaigned on: a referendum on separation, four uses of the notwithstanding clause, and a moratorium on renewable projects.
- The UCP has broken or undermined policies that serve ordinary people: the no-out-of-pocket health care pledge (the Health Statutes Amendment Act enabling dual public/private practice) and its interference in renewables, which has caused about 11 GW of projects to be withdrawn and is likely to raise electricity prices.
- The referendum has triggered UCP infighting (calls to remove Smith, a leadership review push, a resignation), distracting the government from everyday concerns and leaving working families as bystanders.
- Self-identified moderates, liberals, centrists, progressives, and socialists together outnumber conservatives in Alberta, and the UCP and NDP are nearly tied in polling, so there is an opening for an alternative.
Assumptions
- The UCP's policy choices are primarily driven by appeasing separatists and pro-fossil-fuel constituencies rather than by sincere policy conviction or broader voter preferences.
- Polling on voter priorities and referendum results accurately reflects what voters would want from a government in an election.
- Non-conservative self-identification translates into votes for the NDP's platform.
- A bolder, more left-populist platform (windfall tax, public auto insurance) would be electorally viable and attract rather than alienate moderates.
- UCP infighting will continue and will hurt the governing party's capacity to address affordability, health care, and education.
- Measures like private-public physician practice and renewables restrictions harm ordinary Albertans on net.