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The deadline for the first of 26 citizen-led recall petitions against Alberta MLAs is Wednesday, marking 90 days since petitioners began collecting signatures in an effort to recall provincial Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides last October.
Organizer Jenny Yeremiy said the petition currently has “somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000” signatures — which is significantly short of the required 16,006 signatures, representing 60 per cent of voters who cast a ballot in the riding during the last provincial election.
Speaking at a gathering of volunteers and supporters Sunday, she said she still considers the campaign a success due to the support that’s been generated.
“I feel really good,” she said. “I feel way more hopeful than I did at the beginning of this campaign.”
Calgary scientist Jenny Yeremiy is behind the petition to recall Calgary-Bow MLA and Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. (Amir Said/CBC)
Yeremiy said she’ll be submitting the petition to Elections Alberta regardless of whether it gets the required number of signatures, and that even if it doesn’t, the campaign has provided an opportunity for countless people to come together and voice their concerns.
“I think this is a really good example of the opportunity to provide more leaders in this space of politics,” Yeremiy said. “This is unfortunately about learning how to govern ourselves … we don’t really see a solid alternative.”
The conclusion of the Nicolaides recall campaign won’t be the end of Yeremiy’s efforts, as she plans to support as many of the active recall petitions as she can.
Petition ‘is meritless’: Minister Nicolaides
In a statement sent to CBC News, Nicolaides said he awaits the final results of the petition.
“The fact that the petition is on track to fail is clear proof that it is meritless, as has been my position all along,” he said.
Calgary-Bow UCP constituency association president Deryck Greer echoed that sentiment in his own statement.
“Recall legislation exists to address substantiated misconduct or serious failures in public duty. It is not intended to resolve policy disagreements,” he said.
“In that context, this recall effort against Minister Nicolaides does not align with the intent of the legislation, and we do not believe it has been brought forward in good faith.”
Recall petitions are ‘a long shot’: analyst
Nicolaides has been the MLA for the provincial electoral district of Calgary-Bow since 2019. He won re-election in 2023 with 49.7 per cent of the vote, finishing 623 votes ahead of NDP challenger Druh Farrell.
The slim margin of victory there may have appeared to be a promising sign for the Nicolaides recall campaign, Mount Royal University political scientist Lori Williams said.
“I think people thought there might be a better chance there, still a long shot, but a better chance in that riding,” she said. “It looked like the support for electing him was quite mixed. But to actually get to the people who might be willing to start the recall process is a difficult thing to manage.”
WATCH | Inside the campaigns to unseat Alberta MLAs:
Inside the campaigns to unseat Alberta MLAs
A school principal and a former Alberta Party candidate are trying to take down two MLAs. One of them is Alberta’s education minister. Demetrios Nicolaides has issued a call to action, urging supporters to help him fight back.
Williams said much of the support for the recall movement also stemmed from last year’s provincewide teachers’ strike. The application for the Nicolaides recall petition application was approved by Elections Alberta on Oct. 14, about two weeks before the use of the notwithstanding clause to send striking teachers back to work.
“So it would make sense that a lot of people would be angry,” she said. “But the question is, are enough of them reachable in that particular constituency, in Calgary-Bow, to actually reach that threshold?”
Ultimately, getting the number of signatures required by any of the ongoing recall campaigns will be a difficult hurdle, Williams said.
Of all 26 petitions, the Nicolaides recall campaign requires the most signatures. The petition targeting Calgary-East MLA Peter Singh requires the fewest, with 8,593 needed. It’s one of five recall petitions requiring fewer than 10,000 signatures.
But even in electoral districts with lower signature requirements, actually getting enough signatures in such a short span of time is unlikely, Williams said.
And even if a recall petition were to succeed, it wouldn’t directly lead to the MLA in question being ousted. Rather, it would trigger a referendum for constituents to vote on whether to recall the MLA in question and then have a byelection.
“It’s a really long, cumbersome process,” Williams said. “And it may be that some of these people, seeing the energy that this has generated, might look to other strategies for trying to channel that energy.”
All 26 active recall campaigns will come to a close over the next several weeks. The final petitions — targeting UCP MLAs Justin Wright (Cypress-Medicine Hat) and Ron Wiebe (Grande Prairie-Wapiti), and NDP MLA Peggy Wright (Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview)— have signature collection deadlines of March 23.