Calgary NDP MLA McLean won’t run again

Stephanie McLean, an NDP cabinet minister from Calgary, will not seek re-election in 2019.

McLean, minister for Service Alberta and status of women, said the decision was not easy, but she is eager to pursue her legal practice.

“Serving the people of CalgaryVarsity and working in the Notley government has been, and remains, an enormous honour,” she said in a statement Thursday.

“At the same time, my life’s ambition has been the law. And as a young lawyer, I am eager to pursue my practice. I have no doubt that all I have learned and come to appreciate in government will make me a better lawyer advancing the cause of justice in a meaningful, if less public, way.”

McLean was elected on May 5, 2015. Before serving as an MLA, she started a small business practising law and later partnered to create GTM LLP, where she practised family and criminal litigation, according to her biography on the province’s website.

She was the first MLA in Alberta to give birth while in office. Two other Calgary cabinet ministers, Brandy Payne and Kathleen Ganley, have also had children while in office. Payne announced in late March she will not seek re-election in 2019, citing a decision to spend more time with her family. Ganley is seeking re-election in the riding of Calgary-Mountain View.

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt said these kinds of announcements are not uncommon in the lead-up to provincial elections.

“There’s going to be those that say, ‘They’re not going to get reelected and they’re pulling out,’” he said. “I’m not convinced of that because this type of turnover happens all the time.”

Bratt said before the 2015 election, since 1971 in Alberta, an average of 25 to 30 per cent of MLAs opted not to run again.