After Sunday's election call, the campaigning has officially begun for all current and future members of Parliament whether it's an NDP orange or Conservative blue.

MP for Macleod and soon to be Foothills riding, John Barlow is ready for the October 19th election date.

He says ever since he got the Conservative nomination, to winning the by-election... everyday has been a campaign day.

"Just went through this a year ago," he says. "We campaigned for eight months last year, so my team is ready, and campaigns started long ago, everybody's been pretty much non-stop since the by-election last year, we knew we were going to have to go through this again, and we just want to carry that momentum into the general election."

The last federal election was held back in 2011, which was why there was much speculation to an election call, it was just a matter of when.

This campaign is set to be one of the longest and costliest elections in over 100 years.

Barlow says , the long election call has nothing to do with momentum for the Conservatives, but rather just following standard government protocol.

"That's the fixed election dates," he says. "Which was part of the federal elections act, everybody's know that for a long time that the election date was going to be October 19th, this doesn't change anything, all this does is formalize the campaigns, which realistically have been going on for several weeks if not months already."

This will be Barlow's first general federal election, after winning the conservative nomination after Ted Menzies stepped down in 2013.

He says he's ready for what should be an interesting eleven weeks.

"An election is always a marathon," he says. "It's a long and grueling process, especially when you have a riding as large as what will be know Foothills, but nothing changes, we have our strategy set out, we are going to knock on as many doors as possible, meet as many people as we can."

For the latest local election coverage visit our website.

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email us at news@okotoksonline.com