Joseph Schow commented on the ongoing recall petition saga during his media availability on Thursday, December 11th following the adjournment of the fall session of the Legislature.
He believes a lot of people are conflating a recall petition with a recall election. Schow says “lets be real, this is a coordinated effort by a handful of union cronies who want to try to destabilize our government – that was never the intent of the recall legislation. The point was to make sure MLAs are held accountable for things like egregious actions that they take as an elected official, to remove someone if it has been something that is really just beyond the pale. This is not used to remove someone over matters of dispute or disagreement on policy.” He expects all of the recall petitions to fail.
Once officially issued by Elections Alberta, the recall petitions require a certain amount of signatures from eligible voters in that specific constituency to trigger a by-election. Included on the list of over 20 recall petitions issued on the electionsalberta.ab.ca website is one for Premier Danielle Smith in Brooks-Medicine Hat.
