The petition to recall BC Premier David Eby has failed..Issued January 17 in the Vancouver-Point Grey electoral district, the petition was spearheaded by Salvatore Vetro, a local actor and retired HandyDART driver. A total of 271 voters registered as canvassers to collect signatures..Any registered voter in BC can apply to have a recall petition issued for their electoral district, as per the Recall and Initiative Act..To be successful, canvassers must collect signatures from 40% or more of the voters eligible to sign the petition. In Vetro’s case, that meant 16,449 voters..An eligible signature means it comes from the hand of a voter currently registered in the Vancouver-Point Grey electoral district, and one that was registered on general voting day for the last provincial election on Oct. 24, 2020..If canvassers met that threshold, Elections BC would have had 42 days to verify the legitimacy of the signatures..However, the petition wasn’t submitted by the Monday deadline..The reason behind Vetro’s attempt revolved around Bill 36, also called the Health Professions and Occupations Act, which will further consolidate the various colleges under a more collective framework and fundamentally change how colleges function..Calling it “groundbreaking legislation,” the province says Bill 36 will streamline the process to regulate new health professions, provide stronger oversight, and provide more consistent discipline across the professions..BC currently has 15 health colleges providing a regulatory framework for 25 health professionals. The act will whittle the number of colleges down to six..READ MORE: Independent BC MLA tables petition against Bill 36.The merging of colleges, which is nothing new in BC, is not where the backlash stems from, but rather changes to how the colleges are governed and regulated..Under the act, board members who hear and make decisions regarding professional misconduct will be appointed by the province, as will the superintendent tasked with overseeing the colleges..Concerns of more smoothly imposed vaccination requirements under the act were raised by Vetro, among others, prior to launching the recall petition..An exchange between BC Health Minister Adrian Dix and and opposition member Shirley Bond on the matter of vaccination mandates in the context of Bill 36 can be viewed here..The Recall and Initiative Act was adopted in 1995. Since its conception there have been 29 unsuccessful attempts, including two previous petitions in the Vancouver-Point Grey district against former premier Gordon Campbell in 1998 and 2003. Both petitions against Campbell failed because they didn’t make the deadline..The closest a recall petition has been to success was against BC Liberal MLA Paul Reitsma in 1998, securing more signatures than necessary, but Reitsma resigned before the signatures could be verified.
