Alberta Premier Danielle Smith agrees the bar to recall elected officials is too high, but won’t be amended to give the hook to Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek.In an exclusive interview with The Western Standard, Smith said requiring 40% of the general population to sign a recall petition is an “unrealistically high bar” and should be modified to 40% of the electorate or the actual number of people who voted in the prior election.The distinction is important in the case of the Gondek recall which needs to gather in excess of half a million hand written signatures to even be considered — more than the 390,000 that voted in the 2021 election. .“I want it to be a high bar because I think you shouldn't be able to sort of capriciously launch a campaign just because you're mad over one little thing,” Premier Danielle Smith.Most pundits and observers agree it is virtually impossible to gather that many signatures in 60 days to force her out of office. If it were 40% of the actual turnout — which in turn was less than 50% of eligible voters — then it would be a more manageable, but still significant, 156,000 signatures. But Smith said it’s also too late to amend the legislation while the recall is underway.“I have always felt like the bar was been too high, but I worry now that there's some recall petitions underway, that I don't know that we can change it midstream.”The UCP government under Jason Kenney first tabled the Alberta Recall Act — formerly Bill 52 — in 2021 in response to the folly and foibles of former premier Alison Redford. But Kenney then set impossibly high standards after it became clear it might be used to recall the premier himself in response to unpopular COVID-19 restrictions..It was passed in April 2022 before Smith eventually won the UCP leadership.So far, only one elected official has been recalled in Alberta — councillor Nik Lee from Ryley, 100 km southeast of Edmonton, after 250 of the village’s 460 residents signed the petition. Days after the Gondek recall campaign was launched, similar recall notices were posted for the mayors of Wetaskiwin, south of Leduc and Donalda, northeast of Red Deer.Westaskiwin needs about 5,100 signatures to proceed, while Donalda requires just 88 of its 219 residents to sign.In the US the most famous incidence of a successful recall campaign was in California’s 2003 gubernatorial election that saw Arnold Schwarzenegger replacing incumbent governor Gray Davis. A similar election in 2021 to recall Gavin Newsom failed by a 60/40 margin..The difference is that a recall petition in California only requires 12% of voters in the previous election for the political office in question. Under that formula, the Gondek recall would only need about 45,000 signatures to succeed.That said, Smith said she remains committed to the concept of recall and has been a strong advocate for citizen referendums. She is encouraged by the fact that this particular petition was launched by a grass roots citizen and not an organized political campaign.“I want it to be a high bar because I think you shouldn't be able to sort of capriciously launch a campaign just because you're mad over one little thing,” she said. “But you do want to provide a pathway in the events that citizens feel like they do want to make a change. So we have to get the right balance on it. And so yes, we have been considering changing the bar on that but that won't affect it, the ones that are currently underway.”
