Breakenridge: Government created recall mess, now they have to live with it

The UCP has avoided the temptation of a William Aberhart-style switcheroo on voter recall, but the ever-expanding list of recall campaigns is putting a real strain on the status quo.

Almost a century ago, an Alberta premier introduced voter recall, only to repeal it after becoming a target. It feels increasingly likely that we’re headed to a similar conclusion this time around.

While the embarrassment of these campaigns may rankle the premier, surely she doesn’t want the more lasting ignominy of an Aberhart-style monumental flip-flop. If change is to come, it must wait until after the next election.

As of this writing, the recall campaign against Danielle Smith has not been officially confirmed by Elections Alberta. We do know, though, that 18 others have been authorized.

This free-for-all may end up discrediting direct democracy altogether, which would be of little consequence to many progressives who never wanted it in the first place. To once again have the spectacle of a government birth and then, conveniently, strangle voter recall would render it farcical beyond repair.

Bill 14, unveiled last week, demonstrates that the government is prepared to tinker with the very rules it has implemented when politically expedient. The legislation makes further changes to the rules around referendum petitions, but rumoured changes to voter recall did not materialize.

The next day came the subsequent announcement of four new approved recall petition campaigns. Interestingly, one of the four is a New Democrat MLA (Calgary’s Amanda Chapman) — all the others so far target UCP MLAs.

It is hypocritical for the government to introduce voter recall — and amend the legislation to make it easier — only to turn around and complain about it being used. It would be another level of hypocrisy for the UCP to denounce these campaigns as violating the intent of the law and then opt for the fight-fire-with-fire approach.

If every MLA is going to be recalled, there’s one obvious way to package all of that into a simple, unified provincewide process.

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It was interesting to see the comments last week from former premier Jason Kenney, under whom these direct democracy bills first originated. Kenney maintains, not unlike his successor, that voter recall was intended to be used only in “extraordinary circumstances,” if a politician did “something absolutely egregious, illegal or grossly unethical,” and that it was never to be used as a tool for when “special-interest groups disagree with the government’s platform implementations.”

There was never anything preventing the former premier from enshrining those principles into the legislation. There was never anything preventing the current premier from doing the same when she decided to amend the legislation.

The former premier is also well aware that none of his identified “extraordinary circumstances” were cited in last year’s recall campaign targeting Calgary’s then-mayor. In the midst of that campaign, the current premier reiterated her firm belief that “voter recall is part of our democracy to hold all elected officials accountable in between elections.”

In her petition application, the organizer of the recall campaign against Chapman complains of “harsh partisan attacks” from the MLA and accuses her of prioritizing “public sector unions” over “families’ real priorities.” That’s arguably even more frivolous than the complaints underlying the many other campaigns, but it’s all fully in line with the legislation as written.

The government needs to stop blaming the folks making use of voter recall and take some accountability for designing and implementing the system that has unleashed this chaos. Again, keep in mind that the rules in place now were drafted after an unsuccessful recall campaign.

This is their mess. Until they have a new mandate, voter recall should be left alone.

Rob Breakenridge is a Calgary-based podcaster and writer. He can be found at robbreakenridge.ca and reached at rob.breakenridge@gmail.com