Former Calgary Police Commission Chair Brian Thiessen said that it’s time for a mayoral candidate who’s ready to roll up their sleeves and tackle Calgarians’ everyday problems.
Thiessen is announcing his intention to run for Calgary’s top political job in the fall of 2025, the second to do so thus far after former councillor and 2021 mayoral contender Jeff Davison entered the race on Oct. 10.
The labour employment lawyer and managing partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, and 30-year Calgary resident, is also the first announced mayoral contender under a party banner – which will officially be named later tonight. He has been acting as the head of advocacy organization Calgary Act Now.
Thiessen, born and raised in Lethbridge, Alta., where he lived for six years, before moving to Edmonton for eight, eventually landing in Calgary to study and practice law, said he’s been deeply committed and involved in the city over the past three decades, both politically and through volunteering and by participating on various boards.
He said that he has a track record of leadership at various organizations – the law firm, the Calgary Police Commission and non-profits – that have led him to the point where he wants to participate more actively in the municipal political sphere.
“I think that I have the skills necessary to bring council together and get Calgarians’ priorities implemented,” Thiessen told LiveWire Calgary during an interview on Wednesday.
“I think the job is to roll up your sleeves, do the day-to-day issues that solve the day-to-day issues that face Calgarians and not focus on large, grand, idealist visions.”
Thiessen, who met his wife here in Calgary (at the Stampede) and where they’re raising their two kids, said that his priorities are downtown safety, affordability, housing, critical infrastructure replacement and transit.
“We need to do the small things right, like fixing potholes, and then we can focus on the big-ticket items to building a great city,” he said.
Calgary’s pressing issues
Downtown safety is a big overarching issue for many Calgarians; however, Thiessen said a multi-pronged approach is needed to address it. To a large degree, he said it’s rooted in the need for more housing across the spectrum. He’s seen the success in other cities around the world that have focused on housing first.
“Affordable housing is absolutely critical,” he said.
“If you don’t house the unhoused, you can’t get to all the other issues.”
Thiessen wasn’t a fan of the Downtown Safety Table, saying that we need to stop studying things and start taking action on major files.
“We created that task force because we thought it was an emergency,” he said.
“It does appear to be an emergency to me, and so for me, I think you need a proper implementation strategy, no more studies. Prioritize the recommendations of the report, hold ourselves accountable, clear, measurable goals, and then say, ‘How are we doing on a regular basis on these goals?’”
He acknowledged that a lot of that had ties to provincial funding and it is under their purview.
“I’m not a fan of pushing problems to other orders of government. I am a fan of working together with the provincial government,” he said.
“We all are public servants, and taxpayers pay both orders of government to be public servants, and so it is incumbent on us to work together to serve Calgarians.”
Infrastructure is another big topic, as is affordability – particularly around property tax increases. The money to pay for things like infrastructure have to come from somewhere.
Thiessen said they want to listen to Calgarians to find out where their priorities are on taxation and the budget. They’ve launched a budget tool where Calgarians can go through the budget and make changes to areas they see as a priority.
“When you go through that, you realize what is common sense to all of us – there are trade-offs,” he said.
“There are areas of the city budget that will have to decrease if you’re going to maintain for the cost of inflation services to Calgarians.”
One area he sees some flex is in pushing the province to give up the education portion of the property tax they collect from Calgarians. That amount was estimated at nearly $882 million – up $96 million from 2023.
The party life
Thiessen, who considers himself a centrist, said he looked at the province’s Bill 20, and like many, he wasn’t necessarily thrilled that parties were coming to municipal politics; he called it a solution to a problem we never had.
After some thought, however, Thiessen said he recognized that you can wish the rules were different, or you can look at them the way they are.
“On the flip side, glass half full, it is a good opportunity to do what I really like to do, and that’s build teams,” he said.
“When I looked at the political party opportunity, the opportunity that I saw was a chance to actually get people working together on an agreed set of ideals, some key policy areas where they would agree on upfront, which I think solves one of the major issues facing this council.
“When I look at the City Council, it’s a pretty dysfunctional group of individuals. They do not work together.”
He said getting individuals together to agree on common priorities, move those forward and then be held accountable for those promises could be a good thing.
“I think that is probably the positive you could take out of a party system, and I plan to tap into that opportunity,” he said.
Calgary’s municipal election is set for Oct. 20, 2025.
