Alberta Premier Danielle Smith mentioned that she is thinking about making changes to the law about recalling government officials in a recent episode of Your Province Your Premier.
The law, which lets people gather signatures to try and remove members of the legislature, local politicians, and school board trustees, was first introduced in 2021 under former premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government.
Kenney said at the time that the bill fulfills a promise made during the election to make it clear that ultimately, regular Alberta voters are in charge in our democracy.
So far, petition drives have been started to recall the mayors of Wetaskiwin, Donalda, Medicine Hat and Calgary.
In February, the City of Calgary said it received a notice-of-recall petition against Mayor Jyoti Gondek and has confirmed it met the requirements of the Municipal Government Act. The person leading the petition, Landon Johnston, has until April 4 to gather 514,294 signatures of Calgarians who are eligible to vote – about 40 percent of the total voters.
Johnston told reporters in February that the ban on single-use plastics was the final straw for him and the petition is meant to send a message to politicians. Since then, a political group named Project YYC has been helping Johnston with the petition, raising concerns about the use of personal data. Johnston mentioned that he had collected 32,000 signatures as of March 20.
On Saturday, Johnston called into Your Province Your Premier, telling Smith that there are “loopholes” and “gaps” in the law and that he’s been trying to contact Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIvor for the past 55 days.
Johnston previously told Global News about issues with signatures gathered by volunteers.
“There is nothing stopping anyone from using this for their own gain. It’s my name on the petition so people have free reign,” he said on March 20.
Smith responded to Johnston’s call, saying she is committed to potentially changing the law. However, she said she can’t change the law when there is an active petition.
“Let me give you this commitment because, what I have observed from the process you’ve gone through is that it’s an extremely high bar to try to get the number of signatures because you have to get 40 per cent of the population, which would be 500,000 signatures,” she said on Saturday.
Smith said she wants to talk to people who have gone through the recall petition process, including Johnston.
“I don’t think Landon’s a partisan. I think he’s a good, civic-minded Calgarian who is really concerned, as he mentioned. And I know that there are a number of different groups who … it has been said in the media that they have been involved in this,” she said.
“I just don’t want to interfere until the signature date is over. But once that’s over, I really would look forward to getting some input from somebody who’s gone through the process about what we need to do to change the law. So I’ll give you my commitment, Landon. Happy to talk to you, once that 60 days is up.”
–With information from Global News’ Adam Toy and The Canadian Press.
