Sooner or later, Albertans are probably going to start to suffer from petition fatigue. But not just yet.
Too many of us are having too much fun with the understanding that, sometimes, turn about really can be fair play.
Last month, Elections Alberta approved a petition in the Calgary-Bow riding to recall United Conservative Party (UCP) MLA Demetrios Nicolaides, who just happens to be the education minister in Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet. The petition applicant alleges Dr. Nicolaides is undermining the education system and thereby failing in his duties.
You can argue that’s not how the law was intended to be used, as Dr. Nicolaides did in a whiny letter to his constituents. But that’s not what the legislation says. Accordingly, Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure gave the petition his official stamp of approval.
And in the wake of the tone deaf passage of Bill 2, the Back to School Act, by Smith’s government on October 28, a lot of Albertans are in a mood to try to punish the UCP for using the Constitution’s Notwithstanding Clause to force 51,000 striking school teachers back to work with a contract 90 per cent of them voted to reject.
The teachers could have been sent back to their classrooms without using the Notwithstanding Clause, but the government obviously wanted to punish and humiliate their union, the Alberta Teachers Association, for effectively opposing its policies, as well as to set an example for other public-sector unions. So their fundamental right to free association by bargaining collectively is gone for four years. The contract they have been forced to accept cannot be called a collective agreement as there is no agreement.
With many Albertans in a surly mood, concerned about the threat they perceive to all Albertans’ fundamental rights by a MAGA-influenced government with an authoritarian bent, recall legislation originally introduced by former premier Jason Kenney’s UCP government in 2021 is a suddenly convenient medium for public frustration with this assault on the teachers, who were winning the battle for the public’s hearts and minds.
That’s not only given legs to the petition to recall Dr. Nicolaides, but has prompted calls for more recall petitions – maybe even against every UCP MLA!
On Monday, The Canadian Press reported, McClure told a Legislature committee he had approved another recall petition, this time for Airdrie-East UCP MLA Angela Pitt. He didn’t give the petitioner’s reasons but, whatever they are, we can assume Ms. Pitt will complain loudly.
A group calling itself Operation Total Recall says more are in the works – naming Speaker Ric McIver, MLA for Calgary Hays, and Nolan Dyck, MLA for Grande Prairie. Constituents also shouted “Recall! Recall!” at Indigenous Relations Minister Rajan Sawhney, MLA for Calgary-North West, during a recent constituency event.
So, count on it, there will be many more recall petitions before we are all sick of being approached for our signatures.
When Jason Kenney’s UCP introduced the Recall Act (along with its sister legislation, the Citizen Initiative Act), in June 2021, I’m sure conservatives imagined it would only ever be used by their supporters against their political foes.
Nevertheless, they set the bar for recalling a politician high enough that the Opposition NDP’s critic complained the law was “toothless and fake because the UCP knows that a genuine recall act could put many UCP MLAs in danger.”
Just the same, a couple of Kenney’s ministers – including Kaycee Madu, who as justice minister was the bills’ sponsor – had been abrasive enough to make folks think about using the recall law if it were ever proclaimed into law. Alert readers will recall the names of Madu and Shandro fondly, I have no doubt. Both have since been removed from office by voters without the need for a recall petition.
Still, that’s probably why Kenney left both acts, which were to come into force on proclamation, gathering dust on the shelf for nearly a year while he shuffled Madu and Shandro around like a deck of cards.
By March 2022, Kenney had obviously decided it was safe to get on with his performative gesture and, in a press release the day before April Fool’s Day, announced the bills would come into force on April 7. “This is another promise kept,” he boasted. “Albertans can now hold elected officials in Alberta accountable outside of the four-year election cycle,” Shandro, by then the justice minister, pitched in.
Fast forward to earlier this year. Smith was premier and a bundle of changes to various election laws were introduced that the government thought would benefit conservative candidates in upcoming municipal and provincial elections.
Among the changes in Bill 54, the Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, was a change in the number of signatures required for an MLA recall to 60 per cent of the number of people who voted in the riding in the previous provincial general election from 40 per cent of all eligible voters in the riding. This might have been an unwise move for a party that includes voter suppression and low voter turnouts among the strategies it relies on in elections.
Passage of Bill 2 wasn’t the only thing that happened on October 28. That was also the day organizers of the Forever Canadian campaign delivered the petitions with nearly half a million Albertans’ signatures supporting a pro-Canadian question intended to block a referendum petition by separatist allies of Premier Smith.
The Forever Canadian petition signatures had been collected in three months under the rules of the Citizen Initiative Act, easily surpassing the required number. Hitherto, most political observers had thought that couldn’t be done.
Petition proponent Thomas Lukaszuk, a former Progressive Conservative deputy premier, told a Postmedia political columnist that his supporters used AI data analysis to figure out where to look for petition signers.
Arguably, this changes a lot. At least citizens, and not just conservatives, realize that under current rules an engaged public just might be able to use recall and referendum legislation to their own advantage.
As a result, presumably, we can expect the UCP to repeal, or at least declaw, the legislation, probably sooner than later. In the meantime, though, it looks as if the UCP will resist giving Elections Alberta the funds it needs to process all these petition applications.
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