It sure sounds as if Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party will soon rip a page from the Book of Depression era Social Credit premier William Aberhart and repeal the province’s recall legislation as soon as possible, now that it’s being used against UCP MLAs.
Leastways, in an Oct. 31 social media post with a strong ring of truth to it, Lethbridge resident Daniela Andrea Kutney described a half-hour meeting with her Lethbridge-East UCP MLA, utilities minister Nathan Neudorf, during which she said he told her that “the UCP will be working to repeal the recall system which has been abused.”
Mr. Neudorf advised her during their meeting earlier on Halloween that the repeal legislation “will likely not happen until spring,” Ms. Kutney added.
Intriguingly, she wrote, Mr. Neudorf said that if a recall campaign is started in his electoral district, “he believes it will be successful and we will likely become an NDP riding.”
We can argue, of course, about whether or not using the recall legislation introduced by Jason Kenney’s government in 2020 and updated earlier this year by Premier Smith’s is abusing a law that was clearly intended to be used in exactly the same way against NDP MLAs while a UCP majority government controlled the government in the Legislative Assembly.
Nevertheless, this is an entirely credible account because it is obviously an accurate assessment of what the situation within the UCP Caucus is bound to have been in the past few days.
The Government Caucus having voted in the Legislature on Oct. 28 for Bill 2, legislation that forced 51,000 striking Alberta Teachers Association back to work after a three-week strike, used the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ Notwithstanding Clause to ensure the teachers had no legal recourse, and insultingly imposed a contract 90 per cent of them had rejected in a union ratification vote, many or most of UCP MLAs can now expect to be targeted by recall campaigns.
Ironically, one supposes, it is some of the more moderate UCP MLAs – those elected in Alberta’s cities – who are at the greatest risk of being recalled in the face of widespread public anger about what is seen as abuse of the Charter’s section 33.
So the assessment attributed to Mr. Neudorf by Ms. Kutney describes precisely what rank and file UCP MLAs and not a few cabinet ministers are sure to be thinking and saying right now. Indeed, if Premier Smith – missing in action at the moment in the Middle East – doesn’t come up with some sort of solution, she is likely to be in serious conflict with her own caucus.
So it would come as no surprise if the UCP didn’t find a way to introduce legislation more quickly than next spring. Desperate times, after all, call for desperate measures – especially if it starts to look like the government could lose its seven-seat majority to recall votes.
Until Mr. Kenney came along with his head full of bright ideas, Alberta hadn’t had recall legislation since the Great Depression, when the Social Credit government elected in 1935 decided it would be a good idea to let constituents recall their MLAs if they felt the urge. The Socreds set a threshold of 66.6 per cent of a riding’s voters as the number required to sign a petition to remove their MLA. (No idea how a guy nicknamed Bible Bill came up with that number. If I have a Revelation, I’ll be sure to let you know.)
Regardless, that only lasted until Premier Aberhart himself became the first Canadian politician to be threatened with recall from office. “The law was repealed by Aberhart’s government in 1937 when the recall campaign in his Okotoks-High River riding was gaining momentum and expected to collect enough signatures to trigger a by-election,” explained blogger Dave Cournoyer in his Substack on Oct. 24.
Just to be sure Mr. Aberhart came to no political harm, the recall legislation was made retroactive.
We can probably expect Ms. Smith to start following Mr. Aberhart’s example as soon as she sets foot back here in Wild Rose Country.
Meanwhile, as a stopgap measure on Monday, the UCP effectively defunded Elections Alberta’s ability to process recall and citizen initiative petitions by denying Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure’s request to a legislature committee for an additional $13.5 million to cover the costs of complying with existing legislation, voting to provide about $1 million instead.
The UCP Government created and championed recall and petition legislation supposedly to enhance democracy, noted Thomas Lukaszuk, proponent of the successful recent Forever Canadian petition, in a statement. “Now they’re walking away from that commitment. Unless the Chief Electoral Officer is able to do his job – to approve requests for petitions or recalls and certify the results – the legislation is meaningless.”
Of course, the legislation was never intended or expected to be used against the UCP. Now that Mr. Lukaszuk and others are demonstrating that it can be, that will be the end of it.
NOTE: Someone is sure to ask why I didn’t call Mr. Neudorf’s office and ask him to confirm he made the comments attributed to him. Bitter experience shows clearly that bloggers, especially ones who don’t toe the government line, seldom get their calls about such questions returned. As a result, it’s not worth the effort. We’ll leave the task of seeking Mr. Neudorf’s response, if any, to journalists who are paid to do that work. DJC
“Ironically, one supposes, it is some of the more moderate UCP MLAs – those elected in Alberta’s cities – who are at the greatest risk of being recalled in the face of widespread public anger about what is seen as abuse of the Charter’s section 33.”
Sorry, if you align yourself with this group of complete incompetents, no matter where you live, you deserve the consequences.
^^^This^^^
If 10 people are sitting at a table with one person playing Yahtzee, there’s 11 Yahtzees players at that table.
Yes, history can repeat itself sometimes amusingly. No doubt Kenney’s recall legislation came after the last person who could remember well what happened before in Alberta was gone. Actually, there is lot of bad history repeating itself these days now that most of those who lived through the Great Depression and WWII are no longer around to warn us about the consequences anymore.
Perhaps it is a good thing for Smith that she didn’t run in High River after all, the similarity would be too much. Also it seems she has at least avoided a biblically uncomfortable number in her law. How the hell did the devout Aberhart miss that one? Smith may hope that at least the discontent and frustration has not yet made it to Medicine Hat. Although I am fairly sure they have schools there too.
Regardless of whether someone tries to recall Smith or not, a slim majority of 7 is not that comfortable in such a situation either. I suspect the UCP has figured out they will need to act quickly if they want to keep it. So it is likely history will repeat and the legislation itself will be recalled.
Those who lived through the Great Depression and the Big One were the people who seem to have learned the least from those periods, at least in this country. There’s a reason ThyssenKrupp is in the running to provide the submarines so desperately needed by Canadians to Make Canada Great Again, with a banker overseeing the deal.
Danielle Smith and the UCP aren’t as popular as they would like people to believe. They are facing turbulent times, and are at the end of their tether. Barely hanging on. This is why Danielle Smith is hiding, and acting in a desperate manner. As it stands, the cards are stacked against the UCP. All kinds of controversies and corruption are not going to get Danielle Smith and the UCP another term. It won’t, because there are Albertans who don’t like what they are seeing. They made a big mistake to begin with, and Albertans have to live with the consequences of that bad decision, of supporting the UCP. The NDP will be left again with a big mess to clean up.
Stop funding Elections Alberta? Repeal recall legislation? UCP current conservatives are “thugs and criminals” (Raj Pannu). Every single UCP member ought to be an infinitesimal part of the political landscape, if at all, since they have proven time and time again to be nothing more than incompetent grifters. Putting a stop to people led initiatives is the epitome of authoritarianism, as if using the Notwithstanding clause wasn’t bad enough. Are Albertans happy to have a corrupt government empowered by a cult, backed by American owned media ( that has a hand in efforts to destroy so called “socialist” Canada – Postmedia) staffed by presstitutes (Maira Ressa)? Hellberta full stop. Definitely time for a general strike.
As per the latest American elections that ushered in a new slate of progressive leaders shunning Trump et al. We can organize in Alberta! General strike now! IF we cannot send the message through legal legislation, we must force the government to call a general election – to get things going a general strike will show the UCP that they no longer hold the cards of power. Stopping funding for Elections Alberta is heinous and the UCP are heinous. Stopping recall legislation is equally insidious. Why vote for heinousness and insidiousness?
I hope they don’t recall the Citizens Initiative legislation. I’m looking forward to signing the petition calling for an end to funding private schools with public money. One thing I have to say about UCP MLA’s and their backroom ‘boys’, they’re not chess players. BTW, rumours abound that Danielle no longer owns a rail car restaurant in High River. Sold – at a huge discount. Almost like someone was trying to fire sale their assets.
I think Danielle is angling for a job with Fox “News” south of the border.
What we never talk about is the system of governance that allows the sitting government to get away with this sort of thing if they want to. We basically have a hopelessly outdated colonial system of government and it needs to be reformed. Basically a majority of seats (with a non-proportional method of counting votes mind you) allows a party to act as a dictatorship and there isn’t a thing the opposition can do about it other than complain in the farcical “questioperiod” or put up Tik Tok videos. This is why citizens are taking matters into their own hands, and it has to change. For one thing arm’s length offices like that of the Auditor General and the Chief Electoral Officer need to be really independent and effective. Yes, the UCP is mocking us. But it should not be possible for any government to mock us. We need constitutional reform in Alberta. It’s time we ensured we have real democracy.
I wonder if the Chief Elctoral officer could accept crowd funding?
Isn’t there any UPC MLAs, that don’t like what’s happening to democracy in Alberta? If there is why don’t they take a page from Smith’s play book and walk across the floor.
Really, Mr. Neudorf? You finally understand? You do know that recalling recalls is likely to trigger a general strike, right? Failure to certify the Forever Canadian petition is likely to do the same. All these triggers at the same time mean the same thing: a general strike. Either way, you come out on the wrong side of history, mate. I mean checkmate.
66.6% (actually, 66.666…. without end) is simply 2/3 expressed as a percentage. It’d be better to write it as 66.7%, using the rules of rounding I learned in school.
Pedantry aside, could it be that, in the 1930’s, the Book of Revelation (that’s the one with the Antichrist, right?) simply wasn’t a widespread topic of conversation? I seem to recall that the American religio-political movement called the Rapture shot to prominence in the 1980’s. Wasn’t that why “the Number of the Beast” became sensationalized? Likewise, the term “supermajority” probably wasn’t a thing till the Reagan era, either.
Today, of course, we’re all somewhat sensitized to such memes, like an allergic reaction. Doesn’t mean there’s any special significance to 66.6 per cent—other than that it’s a whole lot of pissed-off voters….
Mike: Martin Luther argued at one point the Book of Revelation didn’t belong in the Bible. Others did the same during the Protestant Reformation. But there it is. My favourite Belgian beer is Duvel 666, which contains 6.66% alcohol, although while the number may repeat endlessly, it’s prudent to only repeat your glasses of Duvel 666 only one or two more times. By Belgian standards, by the way, that’s a light beer. DJC
It’s also the title of one of Iron Maiden’s greatest and best-selling albums, and the title track to boot. It was their third studio album, but their first with vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who is also a licensed air transport pilot.
On tour he often flies their plane (it was a Boeing 757 for a while, but I’m not sure they still have that aircraft; it was branded “Ed Force One”, after their mascot Eddie).
Now that the UCP is finally learning that what goes around comes around, we should remind them that the more they use the notwithstanding clause , the more other people will use it. Why, I bet someone could even use the NWC to stop a pipeline in its tracks.
Well, according to City News,21 UCP Members of the Legislature are now under threat of recall petitions. Dale Nally of Morinville-St. Albert declares this to be a well organized and financed leftist scheme/plot/cabal. Dang those sneaky leftist Syndical Anarchists. Anyhow, snuffing the viable campaigns for recall out will cost the UCP big dollars. If they continue to toss wrenches in the works at the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, then it is like to cause a proverbial prairie firestorm amongst Alberta’s electorate, who are already restive. Premier Ditzy needs to be gittin some better diviners and strategists I think. Maybe also some Adderall or fish oil to help her focus on essential matters.
So the recall system has been “abused,” Mr. Neudorf? I guess that means “You’re supposed to recall the NDP! Not us!”
Has Danielle Smith finally, at long, long last, gone too far? Not content with insulting all teachers (except those working in private and charter schools, of course), she’s using the Notwithstanding Clause to make damn good and sure that Alberta’s teachers can’t fight back. On top of all her other blunders—most significantly, her MAGA attitudes and her “I’m not saying (out loud) that we should break up Canada (until we win the referendum with the question we wanted)”—the blatant dishonesty and ham-fisted tactics of the UCP have finally damaged their popularity.
“Dishonest”: The UCP set up a centralized bargaining agency to negotiate with the Alberta Teachers Association. Then, they passed a law making it legal for the UCP government to run the negotiations in secret—by ordering the “bargaining” committee to offer only what the UCP wanted to give.
“Ham-fisted”: the Notwithstanding Clause was supposed to be the last resort of a government that needed to “Do Something” that violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was never supposed to be the first option on the list for beating down and defeating the rights guaranteed under the Charter. For a professional assessment of how and why Smith et al screwed up royally, see:
https://drjaredwesley.substack.com/p/can-they-must-they-should-they
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that the UCP is running scared of both public outrage, and their very own recall legislation. Therefore, recall legislation has to be trashed. It’s better to outrage the majority of Albertans and NOT face recall—because the alternative is to face the wrath of David Parker and his “We’re the real victims” mob and the reality-challenged separatists who, for now, support Danielle Smith.
Re ”reality-challenged,” see:
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/07/04/My-Strange-Canada-Day-Alberta-Separatists/
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2025/07/08/Ugly-Underside-Alberta-Separatism/
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/separatists-alberta-culture-1.7536311
Mike J Danysh: Danielle Smith and the UCP are about to see the end of their reign of power. It’s why they are in full blown panic mode.
As a strong believer in Karma, I am enjoying the current display.
I find the UCP to be so deplorable that hey make me more ill than angry. The formula for Trump and the legions of Republican kooks applies equally to Smith and her hinterlander Albertans.
The BC Socreds governed for 38 years (with a single NDP term, ‘72-‘75) until premier Bill Vander Zalm dragged the tired party down and cabinet forced him out as the 1991 election neared. A Citizens’ Initiative proposal was put on the ballot as a referendum question which the party hoped would be popular with voters. CI was indeed heartily approved —but not the incumbent Socred party. It never recovered from that NDP victory.
The binding referendum required development of details by an all-party legislative committee: the Recall and Initiative Act was passed in 1994. Critics grumbled that the Recall threshold—signatures from 40% of the number of voters in the recent election—is too high. IMHO, 50% would be preposterous and 30% too easy to destabilize consistent governance. But 30 Recalls between 1997 and 2023 have failed to unseat a single BC MLA, almost all failing to meet either the number of signatures or the deadline, or both. One exception in 1998 achieved both criteria—except the targeted BC Liberal MLA resigned before being forced out by this process. Thus Recall remains 0 for 30. Maybe 40% really is too high.
The really historic use of CI in BC was the Anti-Harmonized Sales Tax Petition which needed only 10% of the number of voters in the most recent election in every riding in the province. Not without some irony, “The Zalm” returned nearly two decades after getting the bum’s rush, and sponsored the Petition—perhaps even more ironic that the old Socred’s co-sponsor was longtime NDP advisor and pundit, Bill Tieleman. This odd fellowship represented the broad antipathy towards the HST which crossed commonly-supposed polarized partisan lines.
The reason for this extraordinary ire was that BC Liberal premier Gordon Campbell promised not to implement the HST during his 2009 election campaign, but went ahead and did just that after winning it. There was much outrage but, I must say, it didn’t seem as much as that incited by the UCP for using the notwithstanding clause to force striking Alberta teachers back to work.
Campbell survived many scandals since becoming premier in 2001 when he promised on campaign not to privatize BC Rail but went ahead and did it anyway soon after winning (eventually his biggest scandal), but the HST lie was the last straw for voters of every stripe. I’m not sure the outrage was very well informed or articulated, despite citizen’s enthusiastic participation during the 2010 Petition and subsequent 2011 HST Referendum; I’d initially thought anger was so intense because Campbell had colluded with prime minister Stephen Harper to sneak in the HST, but just a few months later the CPC won its first (and last) majority in Ottawa—including a handsome number of Conservative seats in BC.
During the 2010 Winter Olympics Campbell was caught on camera looking furious at an aloof Harper who was visiting Whistler to drum up support for the approaching federal election; whatever was discussed, Campbell, willingly or not, got to wear BC voters’ full HST fury while Harper got off scot free (or perhaps the CPC’s 2015 defeat was a delayed vengeance?) Maybe Harper made Campbell defer to his need to maintain the best numbers the two-minority CPC ever had and carry the whole HST can alone in return for a plum patronage position in the Canadian Consulate in London UK. Campbell looked like he knew his political career was finished.
Gordo’s popularity dropped to 9%, Gallup’s lowest polling number for a politician, tied with US president Nixon after Watergate. The BC Liberal cabinet forced Campbell to resign. Banished to London, he had to sneak back like a pariah to pick up his perfunctory Order of BC awarded to every premier—his in a private ceremony.
Before his ouster, Gordo did some curious things in response to the HST Petition drive: first he fired the longtime Chief Electoral Officer who would have conducted the Petition process and replaced him with a hand-picked “Acting” Officer which avoided the usual all-party committee appointment process. When the signatures were delivered by deadline, the Acting Officer refused to reveal the results until Petition organizers got a court order. It looked like Campbell was trying to derail the Petition which, as it turned out anyway, met the criteria, legally forcing the government to address the issue. But then Campbell looked incongruently contrite by deciding to send the matter to referendum and setting the threshold at a simple 50%+1 when he didn’t have to do either. It was conspicuously inconsistent with the two electoral-systems Referenda under his watch which had supermajority thresholds of 60%.
I know Albertans get how eerie it is to have a failed politician return like a phantom from several years hosting right-wing talk-radio: it happened in BC after Campbell’s ouster when Christy Clark hung up her headphones and won the BC Liberal leadership during which she introduced another wrinkle in the relationship between the government and the independent Electoral Office by promising to look into online voting, an ominous commitment given the recent electoral irregularities.
Christy won the BC Liberal leadership and successfully won a by-election in Campbell’s vacated riding. The HST Referendum took place under her watch. It was rejected by voters as pollsters had predicted; however, the margin of victory looked suspiciously like the narrow point-spread between the governing and Opposition parties instead of the much larger margin predicted by heavy polling leading up to the Referendum. Did the Acting Chief Electoral Officer convert a huge margin of rejection into a small one for the sake of appearances for the pro-HST BC Liberal party to which he sure looked favourably inclined? (The Office is supposed to be totally impartial and nonpartisan.) He certainly had the opportunity, his motivations already having been demonstrated when he tried to stifle the HST Petition results before the court forced him to comply with the law. Well, who knows? His ethical scruple was to be tested again a decade later.
After the 2011 HST Referendum, Christy re-appointed him parliamentary clerk, a permanent position. In 2022 he was convicted of breach of trust and fraud related to his official duties and sentenced to three months house arrest—which I and many others suspected was an indication of his trust-worthlessness all along.
A permanent Chief Electoral Officer, Keith Archer, was legitimately appointed by the all-party committee process and in 2014 he submitted his report on online voting which condemned it, practically from the first paragraph to the last. I highly recommend everyone read it (online, of course!) because it succinctly shows how online voting fails at every single one of several essential criteria listed for fair and democratic elections. It is short, in plain english, interesting and informative. Maybe that’s why Christy never mentioned it again.
The BC Liberals were the worst government BC ever had; I feel the same way about the UCP in Alberta. As much as I think Christy Clark was the worst premier BC ever had, it is not without irony that, IMHO, she actually did the right thing with respect online voting: instead of saying, Elect my party and I will implement online voting, or, Elect me and I’ll have a referendum on online voting—either way making the issue into a partisan political football, she instead asked the appropriate nonpartisan, independent agency to review and report (Archer studied online voting in every nation it is used. I suspect Christy really promised something about online voting to help her leadership campaign, testing driving it, as ‘t were, for a general election, but sent the matter to the proper, impartial authority quite inadvertently.
The matter is about politicians interfering with electoral and voting processes. The partisan right isn’t the only offender: in BC’s 2017 campaign, NDP leader Horgan promised to hold an election-systems referendum —BC’s 3rd in a dozen years—, something I disapprove of (that political football thing again). Anyway, he followed through in 2018, but in a very inappropriate and interest-conflicted way by letting cabinet design the ballot and the pick the alternative choices to First-Past-the-Post instead of asking the Electoral Office to review the entire situation and, if he recommended, delegating all of those decisions to that impartial office. Even worse, one option was to have a two-term trial period if one of the alternative systems was approved by voters, followed by another referendum—a very foolish move that would have made electoral and voting systems partisan political footballs in every election thereafter. Finally, the voting system was mail-in ballot with a 50%+1 threshold which risked resulting in a win-loss margin smaller than the margin of voter fraud or interference expected with mail-ins, either side thence accusing the other of vote-rigging, and generally undermining trust in elections.
I was livid. I contacted the Chief Electoral Officer and he was sympathetic but, he said, powerless to do anything about it. I let my feelings be known to Horgan—but this time he didn’t call me back.
We were just lucky that voters stuck with the status quo FPtP by a safe margin, obviating the trial-option choice. The fact that the NDP incorrectly called the exercise “Changing How We Vote” instead of ‘How We Elect’ was a comparatively small quibble.
The rules are simple—or should be: politicians should always delegate electoral and voting issues to the independent authority. Indeed, politicians have spoiled every pro-repper’s hopes for changing how we elect. No politician is capable of promising “electoral reform” without partisan conflict.
But I bet that’s exactly what Danielles Smith will do.
FYI, the HST Referendum result was the first time in eight centuries of Westminster parliamentary history that a legislated tax was rescinded by force of popular measure.
In closing, may I suggest a constitutional amendment that would require governors of the eleven sovereign governments in Canada to automatically dissolve any parliament and call an election the instant a bill is passed that avails the notwithstanding clause? Off topic, I know, but what the hell…
I would assume that if the UCP reverse the recall legislation that whatever recalls are in progress would continue as they were accepted by elections AB prior to any new or reversal legislation
Jodi-Anne: Not necessarily. As noted, there is the 1937 precedent in which the Social Credit Government retroactively repealed the recall legislation that was being used against Premier William Aberhart and didn’t even repay the deposits that were required of proponents by that law. So don’t count on it. DJC