In a statement on Tuesday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith thanked her constituents ‘for their continued support and trust throughout’ the petition process.Todd Korol/The Canadian Press
A bid to remove Premier Danielle Smith from the provincial legislature has failed, adding to a growing list of petitions that have struggled to unseat elected officials using the United Conservative Party’s own recall legislation.
Heather VanSnick, the organizer behind the effort to oust Ms. Smith from her Brooks-Medicine Hat constituency, said she collected nearly 2,300 signatures over the past three months – far fewer than the 12,070 signatures needed.
Recall legislation requires petitioners to get signatures equivalent to 60 per cent of all votes cast in the most recent provincial election.
The petition to remove Ms. Smith was one of 26 launched late last year during a surge of citizen-led recall campaigns that mostly targeted the UCP caucus.
The party was under pressure on multiple fronts at the time – primarily over its use of the notwithstanding clause, a tool in the Canadian Constitution that the government deployed to shield its back-to-work legislation for striking teachers as well as laws affecting trans and gender-diverse youth from court challenges.
Ms. Smith’s government has also been facing questions about health procurement contracts and its ties to private companies, issues that are being investigated by Alberta’s Auditor-General and the RCMP.
In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Smith thanked her constituents “for their continued support and trust throughout this process.”
“It is an honour to serve this community,” she wrote.
Ms. VanSnick, the petition organizer from Medicine Hat, said she thought the campaign succeeded in bringing like-minded people together despite falling well short of the mark.
“I think the numbers are neither here nor there, to be honest,” she said.
“It was about getting a conversation started, getting the conversation to be loud.”
Had the effort succeeded, Ms. Smith would have faced a recall vote in the riding, where at least half the electors would have to agree to her ouster. A by-election would have then been held to fill the seat.
Citizen recall petition against Alberta Education Minister fails
The Alberta Premier, now in her fourth year leading the province, no longer faces that possibility, and she won’t have to ask voters for their support until the next provincial election, scheduled for fall 2027. She glided to victory in the 2023 provincial election with more than 66 per cent of the vote in her Southern Alberta riding.
So far, 14 recall campaigns have either failed, not submitted their signatures or been withdrawn. Twelve more, including Ms. Smith’s, await official counts from Elections Alberta.
The widespread effort to boot Ms. Smith and her colleagues from the House was enabled by the UCP’s own recall legislation, passed in 2021 under Ms. Smith’s predecessor, Jason Kenney.
Ms. Smith objected to the onslaught of recall campaigns and said last fall she was looking at amending the laws that govern the process.
Calgary resident Ethan Disler also reached the deadline this week to oust Rebecca Schulz, the former Alberta environment minister who announced in December she will leave politics later this year. He collected 210 of the 15,000 signatures needed to remove Ms. Schulz from office.
Mr. Disler said his campaign retreated when the former minister announced her resignation a few weeks after he was cleared to petition.
The petition that attempted to recall Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides – the first MLA to be targeted last fall under the legislation – secured about 6,500 signatures, less than half of the 16,006 needed.