More than 69,000 people signed petition to recall Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek

A petition filed in January to recall Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek has been deemed insufficient by the city clerk.

At a Special Meeting of Council Monday morning, city clerk Kate Martin said 69,344 signatures were verified by her office. This makes up 5.39 per cent of Calgary’s electorate.

Following the petition’s submission, a random sample and verification was undertaken.

Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) David Duckworth said he directed Martin to take these actions for a few reasons.

“I believe that it was important to provide additional transparency to the public and parties involved in the process about the recall petition that was submitted,” he said. “And secondly, it was a learning opportunity to test the parameters of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) and share our learnings with the Minister of Municipal Affairs who is accountable for the legislation guiding the recall petition process.

“Sharing our administrative learnings is especially important, given that Bill 20, the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, introduced on April 25 proposes that the Minister of Municipal Affairs becomes accountable for verifying recall petitions for members of councils across the province,” Duckworth added.

Martin explained that a random sample of 369 was selected from submitted signatures before being checked for further compliance with the MGA.

Of those, 100 per cent didn’t include the notice of recall petition, which disqualifies them.

Among them, 27 had insufficient or blank addresses and 12 had insufficient affidavits. There were six instances within the sample where witnesses didn’t sign the petition, two where there was no date or the petitioner’s handwriting was illegible, two that were missing the petitioner’s signature, one where a petitioner witnessed their own signature, and one duplicate petitioner.

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Under the Municipal Government Act (MGA), 40 per cent of a municipality’s electorate must sign a recall petition for it to be successful.

The petition was thought unlikely to have been successful as organizer Landon Johnston previously said he believed the number collected to be close to 70,000.

More than 514,000 verified signatures would have been needed in order for Johnston’s effort to be successful.

Martin told council that so far, the recall petition process has cost $30,500. This includes the onboarding and training of limited term staff, the counting of unverified signatures, and the verification of the random sample.

Additional costs not yet finalized, according to Martin, are the offboarding costs for limited term employees, the destruction of the petition, and any potential legal challenges.

Not factored into the cost of the petition process are the salaries of permanent staff in the city clerk’s office, recall petition readiness such as process development and testing, legal consultations, random sampling methodology, and partner support like HR, IT, and legal.

Petition materials are expected to be destroyed in June — six to 12 weeks following the declaration — in compliance with the MGA.

Premier Danielle Smith has previously said she is open to making changes to Alberta’s recall legislation, but couldn’t do so while an active petition was underway.

Gondek seemed to agree in a reaction following Monday’s meeting.

“I think it’s important for the provincial government to reflect on this,” she told media. “The question was raised: Is there a template that can be used by a petitioner, and apparently not. So, I guess it is up to the provincial government to understand how to make this process a little bit more user friendly for folks.”

-With files from Tiffany Goodwein