Will Alberta Kill Recall Laws Now That UCP MLAs Are at Risk?

It sure sounds as if Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party will soon rip a page from the book of Depression-era Social Credit premier William Aberhart and repeal the province’s recall legislation as soon as possible, now that it’s being used against UCP MLAs.

In a social media post Friday with a strong ring of truth to it, Lethbridge resident Daniela Andrea Kutney described a half-hour meeting with her UCP MLA, Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf. He told her, Kutney said, “the UCP will be working to repeal the recall system which has been abused.”

Neudorf advised her during their meeting earlier on Halloween that the repeal legislation “will likely not happen until spring,” Kutney added.

Intriguingly, she wrote that Neudorf said that if a recall campaign is started in his electoral district, “he believes it will be successful and we will likely become an NDP riding.”

We can argue about whether using the recall legislation introduced by Jason Kenney’s government in 2020 and updated earlier this year by Smith’s government is abusing a law that was clearly intended to be used in exactly the same way against NDP MLAs.

Nevertheless, Kutney offers an entirely credible account based on the realities the UCP caucus is facing.

The UCP MLAs voted for Bill 2, legislation that forced 51,000 striking Alberta Teachers’ Association members back to work after a three-week strike, used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ notwithstanding clause to ensure the teachers had no legal recourse and insultingly imposed a contract 90 per cent of them had rejected in a union ratification vote.

Many or most UCP MLAs can now expect to be targeted by recall campaigns.

Ironically it is some of the more moderate UCP MLAs — those elected in Alberta’s cities — who are at the greatest risk of being recalled in the face of widespread public anger about what is seen as abuse of the Charter’s notwithstanding clause.

So Kutney’s version of Neudorf’s comments likely describes precisely what rank-and-file UCP MLAs and not a few cabinet ministers are sure to be thinking and saying right now.

Indeed, if Smith — missing in action at the moment in the Middle East — doesn’t come up with some sort of solution, she is likely to be in serious conflict with her own caucus.

So it would come as no surprise if the UCP found a way to introduce legislation to end recall petitions more quickly than next spring. Desperate times, after all, call for desperate measures — especially if it starts to look like the government could lose its seven-seat majority to recall votes.

Until Kenney came along with his head full of bright ideas, Alberta hadn’t had recall legislation since the Great Depression, when the Social Credit government elected in 1935 decided it would be a good idea to let constituents recall their MLAs if they felt the urge. The Socreds set a threshold of 66.6 per cent of a riding’s voters as the number required to sign a petition to remove their MLA. (No idea how a guy nicknamed Bible Bill came up with that number. If I have a Revelation, I’ll be sure to let you know.)

Regardless, that lasted only until Aberhart himself became the first Canadian politician to be threatened with recall from office. “The law was repealed by Aberhart’s government in 1937 when the recall campaign in his Okotoks-High River riding was gaining momentum and expected to collect enough signatures to trigger a byelection,” explained blogger Dave Cournoyer in his Substack on Oct. 24.

Just to be sure Aberhart came to no political harm, the recall legislation was made retroactive.

We can probably expect Smith to start following Aberhart’s example as soon as she sets foot back here in Wild Rose Country.

Meanwhile, as a stopgap measure this week, the UCP effectively defunded Elections Alberta’s ability to process recall and citizen initiative petitions by denying Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure’s request to a legislature committee for an additional $13.5 million to cover the costs of complying with existing legislation. Instead it provided about $1 million.

The UCP government created and championed recall and petition legislation supposedly to enhance democracy, noted Thomas Lukaszuk, proponent of the successful recent Forever Canadian petition, in a statement. “Now they’re walking away from that commitment. Unless the Chief Electoral Officer is able to do his job — to approve requests for petitions or recalls and certify the results — the legislation is meaningless.”

Of course, the legislation was never intended or expected to be used against the UCP. Now that Lukaszuk and others are demonstrating that it can be, that will be the end of it.