MLA recall needed?

Despite former premier Alison Redford resigning from her Calgary-Elbow seat on Aug. 6, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) still believes that a citizen-led MLA recall option should be available to voters.

And West Central Alberta Wildrose MLA Bruce Rowe thinks so too.

The CTF had amassed “thousands” of signatures on a petition to oust former premier Redford from her seat after she treated taxpayers' money with disrespect, say CTF officials.

“We even had volunteers on the ground in Calgary-Elbow collecting signatures of people. But in the end, a number of reasons combined to force Alison Redford out of her seat and so the urgency of that has now passed, but we still believe that she is a great example of why the voters need the tool to recall their MLA,” Derek Fildebrandt, the CTF's Alberta director, told the Gazette.

Fildebrandt said while an election is usually the appropriate time to “recall” an MLA, every so often a politician's behaviour is so egregious that recall is needed before the next election.

“It's like if we hire an employee on a four-year contract and that employee steals the company car and crashes it. Well, then you end that contract early. But in the vast majority of cases, you keep your employee until that contract is over,” he said.

Bruce Rowe, MLA for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills, said Wildrose has long supported recall for MLAs who underperform.

In the three years Rowe has been an MLA, it's been a Wildrose policy to support recall.

“That was one of (the party's) firm policies that there would be MLA recall if we form government, and we will follow through with it. I think it's a valuable tool for Albertans. The party just feels that it can be used for an MLA that has gone totally off track or has been removed from caucus for one reason or another,” said Rowe.

It would take “an extreme case” to get enough public support to recall an MLA, he said.

Rowe said he doesn't think Redford's resignation will quell the momentum for recall legislation.

“Wildrose has felt that that was a tool that constituents should have at their disposal. I don't think it's just (the Redford revelations) that has brought it up. It's been mentioned before,” he said.

Fildebrandt said the CTF wants to emulate the B.C. model that currently requires 40 per cent of a constituency's eligible voters to sign a petition within 60 days in order to recall an MLA.

Many U.S. jurisdictions have a much lower threshold and in many cases recall legislation there is abused to re-fight the last election, he said.

In B.C., the legislation almost recalled one MLA, but they stepped down when faced with the prospect that the campaign was going to succeed once the petition was validated by the chief electoral officer, he said.

The B.C. legislation has been in place since 1995.