The deadline to sign a petition to recall Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek has passed but the results will not be made public until 45 days later, the City of Calgary said.
In February, the City of Calgary said it received a notice of recall petition against the sitting mayor on Jan. 30 and has verified it complies with the recall criteria laid out in the Municipal Government Act. The recall petition was made public on Feb. 5.
The petition’s organizer, Landon Johnston, had until 4 p.m. on April 4 to collect 514,284 signatures from Calgarians who are eligible to vote, or 40 per cent of the electorate. Johnston previously told Global News the petition was started after the single-use plastics bylaw was passed and then repealed shortly after. He also cited the affordability crisis and the arena deal as reasons he wanted to start the petition.
Once the petition is submitted to the Elections Calgary office in the city’s northeast, it will kick-start a 45-day process. City clerks and Elections Calgary officials will first count the signatures and if it does reach the threshold, Elections Calgary will start the verification process.
The city clerk will then call a special meeting of council to reveal the results, which isn’t expected until mid-May. If the threshold is met, the city will release the number of verified signatures. If the petition doesn’t meet the threshold, the city will release the unverified number of signatures.
Breaking news from Canada and around the world
sent to your email, as it happens.
If the mayor is recalled, council will be required to hold a byelection before September.
Johnston says he counted and submitted 72,271 signatures.
“This has been a pretty good representation of what we’ve dealt with the last 60 days. It’s very hard to collect signatures every single day in -10 C, -20 C weather collecting signatures,” Johnston said.
Johnston added he knew the threshold of 514,284 signatures was an impossible goal but a lot of Calgarians still found a way to sign the petition regardless. He told reporters the recall legislation is flawed and he wants it to be changed.
“This is how important it has been for Calgary residents. It’s been a battle of all angles…. It’s been a whirlwind and a crash course of politics for myself,” he said. “We didn’t get enough for the mayor to resign, but that is more to say about the (recall legislation) than the petition itself.”
Johnston told reporters that all elected officials should be afraid of the “power of the people” and he will continue to push for Gondek to resign.
“I can’t believe the amount of support we’ve had. The mayor should be afraid. All elected officials should be afraid of us. It will only take the legislation to be fair for it to be used as an option for us to hold our elected officials accountable,” he said.
“This legislation should be used all across Canada. It should always be in the power of the people to keep our money in our pockets, to keep our roads safe, to keep our transit safe and this mayor has failed us every step of the way.”
Gondek told reporters at an unrelated news conference on Thursday that the past 60 days were no different from any other day for her as mayor.
“I made a commitment to serve the people of the city well and work with my colleagues to deliver important projects and services to them. I’ve stayed incredibly focused on that. You cannot be distracted by something that’s going on along the sidelines. You have to remain committed to why you ran. And I ran to make sure that Calgary would have a prosperous future for everyone, and I remain absolutely committed to that,” she said.
However, Gondek said she cannot comment further on the petition until results have been released.
“I don’t know what’s going to be submitted, and I won’t know until the count and validation processes are done. I look forward to the clerk and the chief administrative officer advising me of when we need to have that special meeting of council, and you will all be publicly made aware of that at the same time,” she said.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
