There are no slates or parties in Alberta’s upcoming school board trustee elections. All candidates are running independently—at least, on paper.

But some Calgarians have noticed that certain public school board trustee candidates in different parts of Alberta’s largest city have campaign materials that look identical and contain similar themes.

Meanwhile, A Better Calgary Party (ABC), which describes itself as the most conservative of Calgary’s three municipal parties, is encouraging people to campaign not just for council candidates, but for trustee candidates as well in the run up to October 20.

“I want to remind you that you can simultaneously do lit dropping for the school board trustees as well as for your favourite councillor,” said Roy Beyer, the party’s executive director, at a political meeting on Monday, September 15.

The event, put on by A-C-T NOW at Habebe’s Banquet Hall & Restaurant in northeast Calgary, opened with a tribute to slain American political activist Charlie Kirk by another speaker.

After Beyer introduced some of his party’s councillor candidates, plus two independents ABC is deliberately not running against (Sheldon Yakiwchuk in Ward 4 and Mahmoud Mourra in Ward 10), he introduced five public school trustee candidates: Cindy Dubray, Joanny Liu, Jennifer Steward, Tyzen Ario and Dar Zuch.

Beyer said that while he only knows three of the five candidates, they face a big challenge as each trustee represents two wards—which can add up to more than 200,000 Calgarians.

“It’s a huge, huge task for them to reach the entirety of the community. So if we do this creatively, as I already described... they can do an awful lot for the school board trustees, all of which are excellent parental rights people that we can get behind.”

“We can do this,” Beyer said. “We need to spread the word. Get behind those freedom candidates, those principled conservatives.”

The five Calgary Board of Education (CBE) candidates—along with a sixth, Gordon Ferguson—all use the same website template, and their campaign videos on YouTube appear to be filmed in the same room. Some of their flyers and signage look identical as well. On their websites they all ask voters to support “common sense leadership” to “save our schools.”

UPDATE: Since this story was originally published, Ferguson has withdrawn his candidacy, as the September 22 nomination deadline passed without him filing his papers.

“No policy that forces teachers to keep secrets from parents can ever be good,” says Dar Zuch (Wards 12 & 14) in his video.

“No policy that forces teachers to keep secrets from parents can ever be good,” says Jennifer Steward (Wards 6 & 7) in hers.

“No policy that forces teachers to keep anything from parents is going to help anyone,” says Gordon Ferguson (Wards 8 & 9) in his.

It’s not unusual for party candidates to share talking points and campaign templates—just look at The Calgary Party on the city council level for an example. But it is unusual to see independent candidates doing it.

The candidate videos were posted to YouTube by an Alberta political consultancy called Western Impact. It’s run by Mitch Furlong, a longtime conservative campaigner who, earlier this summer, helped create a new Calgary municipal third-party advertiser—a.k.a. political action committee—called Active Community Engagement (ACE) Ltd.

“We advocate for common-sense, conservative-aligned solutions to improve public safety, affordability, and city services,” states ACE’s website. “Our goal is to expose the failed policies and costly ideas of non-conservative candidates that risk raising your taxes while delivering ineffective programs and doing little to make our streets safer or our lives easier.”

ACE was registered with Elections Calgary on August 15 by Rick Northey who, according to his LinkedIn page, is Western Impact’s VP of strategy and communications. Northey is a former president and candidate of the Freedom Conservative Party, a separatist provincial party that merged with Wexit Alberta in 2020 to become the Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta, which Northey also became president of.

Western Impact and ACE share the same southeast Calgary address, according to corporate records. ACE is the first new third-party advertiser to be registered with Elections Calgary since 2021.

Social media posts show Northey as a featured speaker, along with David Parker of Take Back Alberta, at a March gathering on “conservatizing municipal councils and school boards” organized by Westlock-based activist Benita Pedersen.

Furlong declined a phone interview with The Sprawl but stated by email that “none of Western Impact’s school board candidate clients are running as part of a slate nor a party.”

Candidates that responded to The Sprawl’s inquiries said the same.

“As a young parent looking for information about the school system in Calgary into which I am about to entrust my children, my research led me to various groups among which was Western Impact,” stated Jennifer Steward in an email. “They encouraged me to put my name forward and I am pleased to participate in this critical function of our society.”

“I understand a few other people have also contacted Western Impact, but although the graphics might be similar it is clear that the platforms differ.”

Tyzen Ario (Wards 11 & 13) stated by email that he “was unaware that other candidates have similar looking websites.”

“I am not coordinating with anyone, I take pride in having organized my campaign myself with the help of my family and friends,” Ario stated.

“I’m independent,” said Gordon Ferguson in an interview. “I like what I have to offer.”

At the A-C-T NOW event on September 15, Cindy Dubray (Wards 1 & 2) reiterated that there is no slate. She said she’s known a couple of the candidates for years and met more at an election training session in 2024.

“Since then, we have connected at some other events,” said Dubray. “Because, interestingly enough, we all hired the same campaign consulting group—which is why our graphic designs, our websites and everything, all look similar. And that’s the only reason. Because we’re all independent.”

“We all have our own platforms. We all have our own ideas. And we all have different reasons for running—even though, like most candidates in any election, we have similar ideas because the problems are similar. And so we have the same things that we might want to change.”

At Monday’s event, the candidates covered a range of topics. Joanny Liu (Wards 3 & 4), a doctor of Chinese medicine who spoke at the UCP Calgary-Lougheed Constituency Association’s “Injection of Truth” conference earlier this year, emphasized the importance of getting back to basics of reading, writing and math. Dar Zuch talked about the importance of supporting teachers. And Tyzen Ario emphasized that more education dollars need to go into the classroom.

Trustee elections typically get far less attention than mayoral and councillor contests. But amid heated provincial debates on education, and with a potential teachers’ strike looming, this year could be different as candidates hit the doors.

John Hilton-O’Brien, executive director of Parents for Choice in Education, says his group has trained about 300 people for Alberta school board elections this fall with two-day workshops. “But the other side, they are much better funded,” states Hilton-O’Brien, a former Wildrose Party president, in a July video filmed in the same style and location as the six candidate videos.

In an interview, Hilton-O’Brien noted that city unions put $1.7 million into a single progressive third-party advertiser called Calgary's Future before the 2021 election. “They endorsed candidates for the public system and also for city council,” Hilton-O’Brien recalled.

This proved effective: Of the 13 council candidates endorsed and promoted in 2021 by Calgary’s Future, nine won. And of the six public school trustee candidates endorsed, four won (Nancy Close, Laura Hack, Charlene May and Susan Vukadinovic).

Calgary’s Future is led by Alex Shevalier, president of the Calgary & District Labour Council. New rules brought in by the UCP cap donations to third-party advertisers at $5,000, which means no more big union donations.

Over the past week, Calgary’s Future has already endorsed 14 councillor candidates—10 of whom are with The Calgary Party—but hasn’t endorsed any mayoral or trustee candidates yet.

Meanwhile, the political action committee of the Alberta Teachers’ Association Local 38 is organizing CBE trustee candidate forums on Zoom. MJ Eagleson, the committee’s chair and a teacher, says invitations have been extended to all official candidates that could be reached.

“I would be surprised if there aren’t more people that are engaged in the trustee elections or trying to scope out their candidates more this round than ever before, and I think it’s just because we have public education front of mind for a lot of parents,” said Eagleson.

Jeremy Klaszus is founder and editor of The Sprawl.

UPDATE 09/22/2025: Gordon Ferguson is no longer running for CBE trustee in Wards 8 & 9, as the nomination deadline has passed without him filing his nomination papers.