Congratulations, proud Albertans. You will soon have the power to fire a politician in mid-term, via recall legislation.
But will you actually manage to get rid of anybody? Not likely at all.
Alberta’s Recall Act is based on British Columbia’s legislation, which had public support when it was adopted in the 1990s.
But in the 25 years since, only one person has been deprived of political employment through recall.
Here’s a summary of misfires from the Elections B.C. website:
“The Chief Electoral Officer has approved 26 recall petitions since the Recall and Initiative Act came into force in 1995.
“Six of those petitions were returned to Elections BC for verification.
“Of the six, five did not have enough valid signatures and one was halted during the verification process because the member resigned.”
OK, one MLA threw in the towel rather than fight on. But overall, that’s a pathetic haul of unpopular politicians.
The B.C. experience shows that the process —
— is too arduous and complicated.
People get mad at an MLA or hope to take out a partisan grudge but soon stumble on the many hurdles, lose interest and give up.
The B.C. tally shows, remarkably, that in a quarter-century not a single petition garnered enough signatures to proceed to the next step, a formal vote on whether to recall the politician.
Alberta’s law is much the same. It will work (or rather, not work) like this:
First, a person annoyed with their MLA must give the chief electoral officer a 200-word summary of their complaints.
If the electoral officer feels this “meets requirements,” a petition will be approved.
Then the malcontent and friends must get signatures from 40 per cent of the eligible voters in that riding, within 60 days. That’s a very high bar to clear.
If there are enough valid signatures, a vote is held to decide if the person should be recalled.
An MLA who loses that vote by a simple majority is then out but can also run in the byelection to choose a replacement.
This is not just tortuous and clumsy, but very expensive.
Did you really think politicians would pass a law making it easy to fire them?
But on Monday the UCP made this sound like the Magna Carta, saying Bill 52 finally puts regular folks in the “driver’s seat” where they can exercise their right to “people power.”
In reality, it’s window-dressing for the direct democracy crowd that doesn’t think regular democratic elections are good enough.
But while the provisions for MLAs are mostly for show, the rest is far worse.
Alberta will be the first province to extend recall to municipal councillors and school board trustees.
Now, a lot of people would love to hoist Calgary city councillors and Calgary Board of Education trustees out of their chairs. The province, in fact, already has the power to do that.
That’s not enough, says the UCP. Citizens should also have the right to eject the people they elected.
But there is a big difference — an unfair difference — between the pathways for ejecting provincial and municipal politicians.
A successful petition would bring immediate ejection of a trustee or councillor. There would be no recall vote.
They can lose their post because 40 per cent of the defined voting pool signed a petition. Local politicians could actually be ejected in mid-term by a
minority
of voters.
None of this is likely to have much practical effect, because the signature thresholds are so high that petitions are unlikely to succeed in the first place. This gives the UCP freedom to write a bad law for show.
Alberta has a history with recall. The Social Credit government enacted it soon after being elected in 1935.
But when Premier William Aberhart himself was seriously challenged in his Okotoks-High River riding, the government repealed the law.
Aberhart’s only mistake was to write a recall law that was going to work. This will not happen twice.
Don Braid's column appears regularly in the Calgary Herald.
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