Calgary’s 2025 Mayor for the Day, Kamran Shukoor, has been busy since he left office, first graduating high school and beginning medical school and now being one of eight Alberta students to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medallion.
Shukoor said that receiving the award, which recognizes exceptional citizenship, leadership, public service and volunteer work, is a humbling honour.
“All students in Alberta do incredible work, so it’s really, truly humbling to be one of the top eight selected in this category,” he said.
“The real work behind the scenes is being in those rooms where decisions get made. Last Friday, I was in the Harry Hays Building, and I met with Mark Miller, who is the minister sponsoring Bill C-34, and he listened to my youth opinion.”
Though Shukoor’s career path is taking him towards being a medical practitioner, his experience in politics thus far has been far from misaligned.
“Medicine treats the body, and politics treats the system, and you really can’t have one without the other. If you look at the US, medicine is being politicized. I don’t think that that should be the case,” Shukoor told LWC.
“Medicine is something that everyone eventually needs. We’re in a province right now where we’re talking about a double-tiered healthcare system. We need leaders who stand by the things that they say.”
Digital literacy among current projects
For now, Shukoor is actively working on a handful of projects with ties throughout the country, including research on gaming addiction in adolescents at a UCalgary lab, advising the RCMP on mental health and online harms for youth, and advising the Library and Archives Canada.
For the next handful of years, Shukoor will continue his advising and other volunteer roles as he completes his medical schooling at the Medical School of the Americas.
“The work that organizations like the RCMP do is very important, and having youth at the table is also as important. The only thing that’s more expensive than training youth is ignoring them, because ultimately we will grow up and become the next leaders of tomorrow, so it’s always good to have a start today,” he said.
“When I was Mayor of the day, there was a comment in an article that was posted about me being mayor for a day, and someone said ‘This kid is too young to be mayor,’ and I didn’t post this online, but I thought to myself, maybe I’m not the one who’s too young, maybe the system is too old. Maybe we haven’t been as effective in protecting youth because we haven’t heard from youth at the same table.”
Shukoor said that one issue he’s very interested in moving forward with is social media restrictions for youth.
“If we’re going to ban kids under 16 from accessing social media, what happens when we turn 17, are we going to release them into this world of addictive designs and harmful content with irresistible algorithms that they haven’t been acclimated to?” he said.
“It’s important that we don’t replace that with something as harmful as social media or as addictive as gaming. It’s important that we talk about digital literacy.”
Shukoor will officially receive his medallion later this month.
