Alberta premier hints at future tweaks to recall legislation

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Premier Danielle Smith says she is willing to consider changes to Alberta’s recall legislation, but not while an active petition campaign is underway.

The premier told that to Calgarian Landon Johnston, who spearheaded the petition to recall Mayor Jyoti Gondek, after he called into her weekly radio show on Saturday morning.

Once on the air, Johnston expressed frustration with the legislation, stating he’s been “left out to dry” by the Alberta government since launching his petition nearly two months ago.

He also claimed other groups — including those both for and against the mayor — have used his campaign for their own purposes.

“There are so many loopholes and gaps in this legislation,” he told Smith. “I’ve been left to fend for myself against so many different groups using this as an opportunity for their own gain. I’m talking people who say they’re with UCP, I’m talking NDP people, I’m talking about mayor’s supporters using this as an opportunity to collect signatures and then destroy them and then collect donations, all under my name.”

He said he’s tried to contact Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver for some direction on how to navigate the legislation, but has yet to hear from him or anyone else in Smith’s government.

In response, Smith acknowledged the threshold to recall a politician is very high, pointing out that to legally oust a mayor in Alberta, a petitioner is required to collect signatures from 40 per cent of the municipality’s population.

She said she’d commit to talking to Johnston and other Albertans who have attempted to recall a politician once the current petition campaign is over.

“We know we need to make some modifications, but what I’ve said is I can’t modify the legislation while there’s an active petition going on,” she said.

“But once that’s over, I really would look forward to getting some input from someone who has gone through the process about what we need to do to change the legislation.”

Current recall rules require physical signatures from 40% of population

Johnston, who owns an HVAC business, has been collecting signatures since early February in an attempt to oust Gondek from office.

He’s abiding by Alberta’s Recall Act, which was introduced in 2021 under former premier Jason Kenney. When the legislation was tabled, Kenney said the bill would give voters a tool to effectively fire elected representatives who had lost the public’s confidence.

The requirements to recall a municipal politician — particularly in a big city like Calgary — are lofty, however, as a petitioner must collect valid, physical signatures from 40 per cent of an electoral district’s population within 60 days.

In Johnston’s case, the 40 per cent threshold equates to 514,284 eligible voters, using figures from Calgary’s 2019 census. That’s over 120,000 more than the 390,383 Calgarians who voted in the 2021 mayoral election.

Despite an army of volunteer canvassers and promotional support from a third-party group of conservative political advocates called Project YYC, Johnston’s efforts appear to have fallen far short of the threshold. On social media on Saturday, he posted that he has counted a little over 51,000 signatures so far. The deadline to submit the signatures to the Elections Calgary office is before 4:30 p.m. on April 4.

The city’s clerk’s office will have 45 days to count the signatures. If the unverified total falls short of the legislative requirement, no further action is needed.

If the total surpasses the 514,284 threshold, Elections Calgary staff will then verify the results using a randomized sample of 369 signatures, with a 95 per cent confidence level, to estimate the total number of valid signatures.

Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University, said there are various amendments the Alberta government could consider to the Recall Act, such as lowering the thresholds, changing financial disclosure rules or adding criteria to justify initiating a recall petition.

“There are quite a few possible revisions that could happen to the legislation, but it’s also tricky and risky,” she said.

“There are lots of really difficult challenges in trying to draft effective recall legislation that won’t just be abused by organized groups that simply don’t like the results of the election.”

While Johnston’s mission to recall Gondek appears to have fallen well short of the mark, Williams noted he can still claim a moral victory in the sense his campaign resulted in widespread media coverage, face time with the mayor and a verbal commitment from the premier to consider amending the Recall Act.

“Certainly, publicity and the meetings with key political officials, those are definitely wins for him in particular,” she said. “He must have a sense that he’s been heard in a way that he hasn’t before been heard.”