Many things led to the collapse of support for Premier Jason Kenney from his own base. A large factor in his political demise was his tendency to promise big and deliver small..Jason Kenney promised many things while running for the leadership of the newly formed UCP. He promised to shore up provincial autonomy within Canada and to stand up to Ottawa. Upon becoming premier, Kenney struck the Fair Deal panel which traveled the province for months talking with Albertans on how to change Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa. The panel returned with suggestions ranging from the formation of a provincial police force to a provincial pension plan. Kenney never implemented or even started toward the implementation of most of the panel suggestions while he was in office..Kenney also promised democratic reform. That was a promise that made me perk up because I've always been a strong believer in direct democracy and political accountability..Kenney did deliver on his promised democratic reforms, but he did it in a way even worse than not even tabling legislation at all..The Kenney government created the Recall Act and purposely made it completely unworkable. They did the same thing with their Citizen’s Initiative Act..What the Kenney government did in creating those acts was to tell Kenney’s former supporters: “I think you are stupid enough to accept this as a promise kept.”.It turned out supporters weren’t as stupid as assumed and Kenney is now a former premier due to that..A bar has to be set to initiate a recall or a referendum and it has to be fairly high. We don’t need every elected person to be constantly fighting off recall campaigns and we don’t need a bunch of referendums held on trivial matters. The bar can’t be impossible to meet though or the legislation is useless — that's where the Kenney government set the bar..The reason we're hearing about the recall act now is because the 18 month post-election waiting period for trying to initiate a recall is approaching for municipal politicians. There are many folks who've been eagerly awaiting the chance to recall municipal officials who are now discovering that they can’t really do it..To initiate a municipal recall in Alberta, a person or group has to garner witnessed signatures from 40% of the population of the ward within 60 days. That number could be, and often is, actually higher than the total number of people who voted in the prior election..These are real petition signatures too. Not some online thing. You need to have the constituent sign the petition in person with a witness, and they have to provide their address and phone number so the signatures can be confirmed if need be. How many people are willing and trusting enough to provide that information to a petitioner? Going door to door, a person would have to work their ass off to get 100 signatures a day. They would somehow need to get tens of thousands of signatures in 60 days. Yeah right..Likewise, to initiate a referendum the bar is ridiculous. A person has a 90 day window to collect signatures from 10% of the provinces eligible voters. The number goes to 20% if it's a constitutional issue. That’s hundreds of thousands of signatures to be garnered. It just isn’t going to happen..Anybody who claims those bars to initiative referendums or recalls are achievable is either lying or has never pounded the pavement for an official petition before..The Kenney government was well aware their legislation was garbage when they crafted it. Many jurisdictions around the world have direct democracy legislation and they have learned where reasonable bars can be set. There was no need to re-invent the wheel here and one can’t pretend such legislation is unprecedented..To give citizens such useless legislation was akin to promising a person a gun for protection, but banning the use of bullets. It was a slap in the face to supporters and was insulting..The legislation can be amended and we should be calling for that. It doesn’t need to be totally rewritten. The government can put amendments before the legislature and make both the Recall Act and Citizen’s Initiative Act into functional pieces of legislation just by changing the signature requirements..Will the Danielle Smith government do that, though?.Politicians love to talk about empowering citizens until it comes to giving citizens those tools of empowerment..I like to think Premier Smith will be receptive to repairing the broken pieces of legislation if she's encouraged to. It will be up to citizens to put on that pressure though..When it comes to acts bringing about political accountability, politicians often need some firm encouragement to bring it about.
