Changes to the Municipal Government Act — Bill 20 — will go a long way to addressing concerns over the fairness of Calgary’s failed recall petition to oust Mayor Jyoti Gondek, according to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.Speaking in Calgary on Wednesday, Smith said the most significant improvement is removing the authority to certify petition signatures from the various municipal administrative departments and transferring it to the minister of Municipal Affairs.Smith said allowing Calgary city staff to invalidate every single one of more than 69,000 petition signatures — as happened in the Recall Gondek campaign last month — essentially amounts to a “conflict of interest” that casts doubt on the fairness of recall legislation altogether..“One of the things that we realized wasn't very fair was asking the Chief Administrative Officer of the city — who is an employee of the council — to make the decision to validate the petitions. And so one of the changes that we made in Bill 20 was that that role will be taken on by the Minister of Municipal Affairs,” she told The Western Standard.“I think we've we addressed one of the issues by ensuring that you don't put a chief administrative officer in an impossible position of essentially having a conflict of interest against the very people that they work for.”.Smith said the government was wary of introducing changes while multiple recall campaigns were going on across Alberta. According to Municipal Affairs at least 18 elected representatives have been the subject of petitions.Smith said her government is also considering changes to the thresholds required to remove elected officials from office, especially in the larger cities where campaigners would have had to acquire 50% of all residents — more than 514,000 in Calgary — to sign the forms, every single one of which in turn had to be certified and formally notarized within a 60-day period.It added up to an insurmountable hill to have Gondek formally removed. In hindsight, it’s remarkable campaigners managed to get as many signatures as they did.In US states like California that have had multiple successful recall campaigns for governor, the threshold is 12% of registered voters for executive officials and 20% for state legislators and judges (which are elected). In addition, the notice of intent to file a recall petition requires at least 50 signatures to be filed.By those measures, the Recall Gondek petition would have passed handily..“You can question whether everything should have been disqualified, but that's not up to me to question.“Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek.Under the existing rules recall petitions can’t be filed within six months of an election — meaning those changes can’t be implemented until next May ahead of the next municipal vote in October of 2025.For her part, Gondek agreed that the Alberta government ought to be responsible for administering the recall petitions and not the city. And even though she was the target of the campaign, she insisted her officials did everything in their power to maintain the integrity of the process.“I think it's also important to understand that our team in administration went well above and beyond what they needed to. They could have simply said there's no signatures and dismissed everything outright,” she said in response to the same query.“You can question whether everything should have been disqualified, but that's not up to me to question. The rules were clear, they were laid out by the provincial government and unfortunately they did not meet the test that was established by the province.”
Changes to the Municipal Government Act — Bill 20 — will go a long way to addressing concerns over the fairness of Calgary’s failed recall petition to oust Mayor Jyoti Gondek, according to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.Speaking in Calgary on Wednesday, Smith said the most significant improvement is removing the authority to certify petition signatures from the various municipal administrative departments and transferring it to the minister of Municipal Affairs.Smith said allowing Calgary city staff to invalidate every single one of more than 69,000 petition signatures — as happened in the Recall Gondek campaign last month — essentially amounts to a “conflict of interest” that casts doubt on the fairness of recall legislation altogether..“One of the things that we realized wasn't very fair was asking the Chief Administrative Officer of the city — who is an employee of the council — to make the decision to validate the petitions. And so one of the changes that we made in Bill 20 was that that role will be taken on by the Minister of Municipal Affairs,” she told The Western Standard.“I think we've we addressed one of the issues by ensuring that you don't put a chief administrative officer in an impossible position of essentially having a conflict of interest against the very people that they work for.”.Smith said the government was wary of introducing changes while multiple recall campaigns were going on across Alberta. According to Municipal Affairs at least 18 elected representatives have been the subject of petitions.Smith said her government is also considering changes to the thresholds required to remove elected officials from office, especially in the larger cities where campaigners would have had to acquire 50% of all residents — more than 514,000 in Calgary — to sign the forms, every single one of which in turn had to be certified and formally notarized within a 60-day period.It added up to an insurmountable hill to have Gondek formally removed. In hindsight, it’s remarkable campaigners managed to get as many signatures as they did.In US states like California that have had multiple successful recall campaigns for governor, the threshold is 12% of registered voters for executive officials and 20% for state legislators and judges (which are elected). In addition, the notice of intent to file a recall petition requires at least 50 signatures to be filed.By those measures, the Recall Gondek petition would have passed handily..“You can question whether everything should have been disqualified, but that's not up to me to question.“Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek.Under the existing rules recall petitions can’t be filed within six months of an election — meaning those changes can’t be implemented until next May ahead of the next municipal vote in October of 2025.For her part, Gondek agreed that the Alberta government ought to be responsible for administering the recall petitions and not the city. And even though she was the target of the campaign, she insisted her officials did everything in their power to maintain the integrity of the process.“I think it's also important to understand that our team in administration went well above and beyond what they needed to. They could have simply said there's no signatures and dismissed everything outright,” she said in response to the same query.“You can question whether everything should have been disqualified, but that's not up to me to question. The rules were clear, they were laid out by the provincial government and unfortunately they did not meet the test that was established by the province.”
