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Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 31 » here
Recall watch
An exclusive Republic series, chronicling
the province-wide government recall movement
By Bart Campbell
As this issue of The Republic goes to press, 15,699 BC voters
have signed an online petition at www.petitiononline.com/2005.
They are endorsing the "on-line recall of BC Liberal
MLAs, based on [their] view that the election victory of Gordon
Campbell and the BC Liberals was a fraud." The petition
signers "believe that the BC Liberals have misled BC,"
and the petition gives ten specific examples of how.
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| The wooden Gordon
Campbell as a young man (pictured here with Jiminy Farrell-Collins)
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As I read down the list, I knew I would be signing this
petition too, because whoever wrote it worded it accurately.
I too can remember Gordon Campbell making all those promises
on the TV news about not cutting the public sector, not decreasing
welfare rates and health care and education budgets, and not
violating collective agreements.
Can BC politicians really be recalled for lying? I phoned
the on-line petition author and asked him.
Peter Kelly is a BC Ferries Catering Attendant from Nanaimo.
"Our petition is not really a recall," he told
me. "It has a limited scope and cannot be filed anywhere.
Every single riding will have to make their own recall applications,
and current recall applications cannot be submitted until
18 months have passed from the May 16, 2001 General Election.
Applications for recall petitions for current MLAs will not
be processedarlier than November 17, 2002," he told me.
He said that he started this petition on January 22, 2002
with Sarah Hossack (a Douglas College student from Maple Ridge)
to remind people that they still have rights and time to learn
how to make successful applications for recall petitions.
"And we also wanted to identify the areas of the province
where the most support for recalls is coming from," he
said. "And looking on-line right now [at 7 pm, February
2] there have been exactly 14,217 endorsements, and the most
dense petition endorsements, compared by population density,
are coming from the Bulkley Valley."
Kelly feels they are also providing an important public space
for people to voice their displeasure with the BC Liberal
Government. "Many people are posting comments with their
endorsements because they want to go on record about how much
they oppose all the changes of government policy," he
said. "There are a lot of angry comments from Liberal
voters, as well as NDP and Alliance voters. There are a lot
of angry voters who feel betrayed and want to talk about it.
And they sign their comments and often identify what ridings
they live in, and they are connecting up with each other to
talk about how to apply for and launch recall petitions where
they live."
Still, could BC politicians really be recalled for lying?
I called my MLA's office (Joy MacPhail) for more information
on recalls. The office manager told me that the best source
of information was at the website of the Chief Electoral Officer
at
www.
elections.bc.ca. There I learned that any registered voter
willing to put down a non-refundable $50 processing fee can
obtain an application package from the Chief Electoral Officer.
Apparently, the only essential criterion to meet the requirements
of the Recall and Initiative Act is to submit a "fully
completed and signed application form, and a typewritten statement
of not more than 200 words of why, in the opinion of the applicant,
the Member should be recalled."
If someone fills out the application form correctly, the Chief
Electoral Officer must provide the proponent and Member "with
a list of registered voters for the electoral district as
of General Voting Day at the Member's last election,
showing the addresses where those voters are currently registered"
within seven days of receiving the application. The Chief
Electoral Officer must also "issue, to the proponent,
a cover sheet and signature sheet for the electoral district"
at the same time.
After receiving all of the above from the Chief Electoral
Officer, the proponent has 60 days to get his or her recall
petition "signed by more than 40% of the voters who were,
on the date of the last election of the Member, registered
voters for the Member's electoral district. On the date
a voter signs a recall petition, the individual must be a
registered voter in British Columbia. The number of registered
voters in the Member's electoral district as of General
Voting Day at the last election is used to determine the number
of signatures needed for the recall petition to be successful."
Most interesting of all, for the sake of fair play, is that
there are written guidelines and severe restrictions upon
both the government's and Members' communications,
advertising, financing and spending accounts, and even how
every recall opinion survey (no matter the source) must be
reported. If recall canvassers collect the re-quired 40% of
voters' signatures, the Chief Electoral Officer must
inform the Lieutenant Governor, and a by-election must be
immediately called.
That's it. The Recall and Initiative Act was intentionally
designed so that nothing can interfere with the democratic
process in action. However, after reading though the entire
legislation, I was still not absolutely sure whether lying
could be grounds for launching a successful recall of every
Liberal MLA, including Gordon Campbell, as Kelly and Hossack
are suggesting with their online petition. I decided to ask
the only person who has the responsibility for the final decision,
and I contacted the Chief Electoral Officer by email, and
asked him, "Can Premier Gordon Campbell and all the Liberal
MLAs be recalled for lying?"
The CEO's office replied, "The Recall and Initiative
Act does not state or determine the reason that an applicant
for recall may use. Your statement of opinion as to why the
member should be recalled is not under any guidelines according
to the act, other than it must be 200 words or less. The application
is approved or disapproved based on the completed application,
the processing fee, the receipt of statement of opinion, the
proponent is a registered voter in BC, and was a registered
voter at the time of the General Election that the MLA won
their seat. We make no determination based on the content
of your statement."
That seems a longwinded way to say, Yes, any MLA can be recalled
for lying.
As I read the Chief Electoral Officer's response to
my question, I couldn't help smiling as I recalled wise
Marge Simpson's observation that "the system still
works just as long as everyone carries a video camera at all
times." All those old TV news soundbites that Gordon
Campbell and every other BC Liberal MLA recorded onto videotape
to soothe voters' (justified) fears last spring could
make quite a BC-sized mountain of incriminating- and hard-to-deny- evidence
come November 17, 2002. (I can just imagine all the video
librarians busily going through their old log sheets, high-lighting
all the obvious places to look for juicy, unretractable bits
of speeches.)
Stay tuned and keep informed because, as Peter Kelly of Nanaimo
and Sarah Hossack of Maple Ridge are reminding us all, the
only rights people possess are the ones they know about.
In the next issue of The Republic: Some BC recall history,
and why the BC Liberal MLAs cannot remove the Recall and Initiative
Act from current Legislation.
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