Calgary City Clerk outlines next steps in recall petition process

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The Calgary City Clerk’s office is in full prep mode as it prepares to receive the results of a resident’s attempted petition to recall Mayor Jyoti Gondek next week.

On or before 4:30 pm on April 4, local business owner Landon Johnston must bring the collected signatures to the Elections Calgary office on 22nd Street NE.

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The arrival of those signatures triggers a process under the Alberta government’s recall legislation, which City Clerk Kate Martin described to the media on Wednesday.

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He said the city clerk’s office plans to hire up to 10 election clerks who will help his office count (and, if necessary, verify) signatures.

“We’ve gone through a number of processes to determine how the count will be done (and) we’ve gone through processes to make sure we have capacity on the day the petition is due,” Martin told reporters.

The threshold to formally recall Mayor Gondek is 514,284 verified signatures, which is equivalent to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population according to the 2019 census. Those who signed the petition must be Calgary residents over the age of 18, whose signatures were witnessed by a commissioner of oaths and included an affidavit.

Last Friday, Johnston told media that he had counted approximately 42,000 signatures to date, but still had “another pile” to count.

Regardless of whether the petition meets the threshold, Martin said the city has committed to counting the total number of signatures Johnston submits.

But the public won’t know the results of that recount for quite some time, as Martin said the city has 45 days to process the petitions and won’t inform the public throughout the process.

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If the total doesn’t meet the legislated threshold, he said, Alberta’s recall legislation does not require the city to verify those signatures.

But if the petition gets the required number of signatures, Martin said the city clerk’s office would have to verify the results to determine whether the petition is deemed sufficient or not.

Instead of verifying each signature individually, Martin said secretariat staff would use a random statistical sampling method with a 95 percent confidence level to determine the overall sufficiency of the petition.

He noted that the sample would include 369 randomly selected signatures, which would be evaluated against a system of criteria to assess whether they were valid and had been collected correctly.

The sample size was determined after the city consulted with Leger, the public opinion polling organization, as a third party.

The team would then extrapolate that data to estimate the overall total of valid signatures, Martin said.

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“The legislation is very prescriptive in terms of what the municipal clerk must tell,” he said. “Things we will be looking for: Does each page of the recall petition contain the notice of recall, as stated in the law? Does the petition include names? Does it include an address? Is each signature witnessed? “We will also seek an affidavit.”

At the end of the 45-day process, Martin said a special city council meeting will be called after May 18. At that meeting, Martin will verbally report the unverified total and whether the request is deemed sufficient or insufficient. The statement will also be posted on the Elections Calgary website.

If the petition is deemed sufficient, Gondek would be immediately revoked and the vice mayor would assume her duties as president. In that case, a mayoral by-election would have to be held within 180 days, which would likely take place in September, according to Martin.

He noted that Gondek would be eligible to run in that election.

Under Alberta law, politicians can only face one recall attempt per four-year term.

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