Good morning.

Three by-elections were held in Alberta this week. And while none of the results were particularly surprising, the results do have implications for provincial politics.

In Edmonton-Strathcona on Monday, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, won handily in a riding that is perhaps the safest in the province for the New Democrats. The central Edmonton riding was previously represented by former NDP premier Rachel Notley. Perhaps most importantly, Nenshi, who won the party leadership a year ago, will finally have a seat as an MLA, allowing him to directly confront Premier Danielle Smith in the legislature.

As The Globe’s Gary Mason argued in his column this week, now the work really begins for Nenshi, who came in as leader with a big name and optimism that he could take on Smith. But things haven’t gone exactly as planned.

“He has a popularity deficit to rectify that won’t be easy to reverse. Some good fortune will almost surely be needed, too,” wrote Mason.

The NDP did retain control in Edmonton-Ellerslie on Monday, a south Edmonton riding where the UCP had hopes of victory.

But the most interesting race was in Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, where the United Conservative’s Tara Sawyer won in a landslide with 61 per cent of the votes, with the NDP trailing in second and the separatist Republican Party of Alberta in third place.

As The Globe’s Carrie Tait reported this week, recent polls have shown roughly 30 per cent of Albertans support seceding from Canada, and Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills is widely considered a separatist hotbed.

And while Cameron Davies, the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta, was aiming for 20 per cent of the vote, he ended up with roughly 17 per cent.

“Last night was just the starting line,” he said in an interview with Carrie on Tuesday. Davies said he believes many separatist voters have “false hope” in the UCP.

Despite Davies’s rosy outlook, Lisa Young, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said the Premier should be relieved by the results.

“There isn’t a wave of separatist discontent that threatens the UCP immediately,” she said. “That said, every conservative Premier since the 1990s has had to be careful about rising support to their right and the danger of vote-splitting.”

On Tuesday, Smith also announced the creation of the Alberta Next panel, which is aimed at residents frustrated with Ottawa. She will chair the 15-person panel, which will recommend referendum questions for Albertans to vote on in 2026.

But speaking at a press conference announcing the newest listening tour, the Premier said the panel is also designed to mitigate vote-splitting between the UCP and parties that advocate for independence.

“We also have to address the things that are causing the rise in that sentiment,” she said. “The sentiment that you’re seeing was created in Ottawa.”

The Premier also announced the release of six surveys on topics to be considered by Albertans.

Most contentious is a question that asks whether the province should refuse to provide programs to non-citizens and non-permanent residents “unless they have been granted an Alberta government-approved immigration permit.”

The surveys also ask about a provincial pension plan, a provincial police force, tax collection, constitutional changes and federal transfers.

This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.