Alberta premier Danielle Smith considering changes to recall legislation

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she is considering changes to the province’s recall legislation on Saturday’s episode of Your Province Your Premier.

The legislation, which allows citizens to organize petition drives to recall members of the legislature, municipal 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 an election commitment “to make it clear that at the end of the day, ordinary Alberta voters are the boss in our democracy.”

So far, recall petitions have been filed against 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 verified it met the requirements of the Municipal Government Act. The petition’s representative, Landon Johnston, has until April 4 to collect 514,294 signatures of Calgarians who are eligible to vote – around 40 per cent of the electorate.

Johnston told reporters in February that the single-use plastics bylaw was the “last straw” for him and the petition is meant to “put politicians on notice.” Since then, a political organization called Project YYC has been helping Johnston with the petition, raising data mining concerns. Johnston said he 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 legislation and that he’s been trying to contact Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIvor for the past 55 days.

Johnston previously told Global News about loopholes around 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 legislation. However, she said she can’t change legislation 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 legislation. So I’ll give you my commitment, Landon. Happy to talk to you, once that 60 days is up.”

–With files from Global News’ Adam Toy and The Canadian Press.

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