WITHsomething funny happens in Alberta. The people of the province follow the law and it is driving the government crazy.
The roots of the case go back to June 2021, when two bills introduced under then-Premier Jason Kenney received royal assent. They are the key to this story.
The first was Law on Civil Initiativewhich allowed any voter in Alberta to petition for a proposed policy change, a proposed legislative change, or a proposed referendum, provided they collected enough signatures within ninety days (10 per cent of voters for policy and legislative proposals and 20 per cent for referendums).
The second was related legislation, Revocation Law. It allows citizens to organize formal petition drives to recall municipal politicians, school board trustees, and members of the legislature. Alberta had something similar in 1936, but it was abandoned the following year after an attempt to recall Prime Minister William Aberhart.
Fast forward to the spring of 2025. Daniel Smith is the leader of the United Conservative Party and Prime Minister of Alberta. An organization called the Alberta Prosperity Project is traveling around the province presenting its plan. referendum on independent Alberta. The UCP, which has several potential separatists in its ranks, is tinkering with the Civil Initiative Law. The government is reducing the number of signatures required for constitutional initiatives to 10 percent of eligible voters and extending the deadline for collecting signatures to 120 days. This will make it easier to meet the referendum demands and pave the way for a split vote.
The first civic initiative comes from an unexpected player. Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta's former Progressive Conservative deputy premier, is filing. His campaign is called Forever Canadian. His question: “Are you willing to let Alberta stay in Canada?”
Over the next ninety days, his agents appeared everywhere. It's summer, the days are long and pleasant, and Forever Canadian volunteers have set up tables in parks and at bus stops with a petition for people to sign.
Lukashuk submits signatures for his petition at the end of October. Number stunning: 404,293 verified signatures. That's 13.6 per cent of the province's eligible voters and more than 100,000 people are over the threshold. The first referendum question in Alberta appears to be ready to go, asking whether Albertans want to stay in Canada.
While all this is happening, the CEO of the Alberta Prosperity Project is filing his own citizen's initiative application. His question: “Do you agree that Alberta should cease to be part of Canada and become an independent state?”
This petition hits a snag. The Chief Electoral Officer takes the matter to the Court of Queen's Bench to weigh whether the matter is contrary to the 1982 Constitution Act. This process takes some time. So keep that thought. We'll get back to these civic initiatives in a minute.
Something else important will happen in the summer of 2025. Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides is issuing a ministerial order on new province-wide “standards” for school library materials. This is a book ban, although the UCP does not call it a book ban. Order books needed with “explicit sexual content” will be removed from school libraries.
Edmonton Public School Board staff are responding with enthusiasm. They compiled a list of books that met the book ban standards. The list includes more than 200 books, including such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, O brave new worldAnd Jaws.
The government protests: this is not what the ministerial order meant. It had to be offensive material, not well-known classics with sexual material.
Premier Smith announces the list of board of directors in the form “vicious submission” She is most likely referring to “malicious obedience,” a term used to describe deliberately following orders to the point where the result is absurd. The UCP is revising its rules to clarify that the ban does not apply to written passages of sexually explicit content, but only to visual ones.
Autumn is coming. Alberta teachers walked off the job during a strike on Oct. 6, frustrated by increasing class sizes and increasingly difficult classes. The next day, Jenny Jeremiah, a geophysicist and cleaner energy policy advocate who ran and lost as the Alberta Party candidate in the 2023 election, petitions for Nicolaides to be recalled. She says he doesn't support public education, prioritizes privatization and allows misinformation about fossil fuels in schools. She needs the signatures of at least 60 percent of voters who voted for Nicolaides in the last election. That's 16,006 Calgarians.
Before the teachers' strike ends, another recall petition will be approved – this time by Deputy Speaker and UCP MP Angela Pitt. And nineteen days after that, another one. Another one, four days later, and up until today: Twenty-one recall petitions are currently pending, including one for the Prime Minister and one for an NDP MLA. That's nearly a quarter of the sitting MLAs facing potential recall. There are so many of them that Elections Alberta received an additional $6.7 million in funding to cover recall petitions and—oh yeah—the costs of a potential referendum.
“[The UCP] “Imagine how much fun they're going to have using this law, and they're not thinking through scenarios where someone else might use it,” said Janet Brown, an Alberta-based political commentator and pollster. “Passing a law without thinking about how it will be used in reality seems short-sighted.”
These recalls do not appear to be due to widespread uprising in Alberta. Lisa Young, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, suggested that this is what happens when legislation is rushed through without sober reflection in committees or public debate. The UCP has placed time limits on important bills such as the Teachers' Return to Work Act and restrictions on transgender rights.
“[The UCP] they get critical feedback after the fact, and they’re not interested in that,” she said.
The party has used the provision four times since October 27, 2025, in an attempt to block potential legal challenges.
It is unlikely that any of the revocation petitions will be successful. The bar is high. Smith and Prime Minister Carney just announced a memorandum of understanding over Canada's energy future, which will help bring a new oil pipeline to the British Columbia coast and bring joy to many Albertans. Plus, it's winter, and it's too cold to set up petition-signing tables in parks.
Young and Jeremiah suggested that recalling Nicolaides had the best chance of success. Despite this, organizers collected only about 30 percent of the signatures they needed, Yeremiy told The Walrus. They plan to ramp up efforts during the holidays and are organizing volunteers to knock on doors.
Their campaign got under the skin of the UCP. Nicolaides wrote a letter addressing his constituents, criticizing the recall as an attempt to “trigger another election” and “undermine the democratic mandate you gave me just two years ago.” At a December press conference, Justice Minister Mickey Emery suggested the party had even considered changing the law but had decided against it.
Legislation was “are being irresponsibly abused and weaponized for political purposes,” he said. “This is a clear abuse of process. We have made it clear that the Revocation Act should be used for ethical violations and breaches of public trust.”
Emery announced a new omnibus bill that amends the Civil Initiatives Act. again. This gives the Minister of Justice the power to decide whether a petition is too similar to a previous one to proceed. Previously, this power rested with the CEO of Elections Alberta.
So, is this the court decision Albertans have been waiting for on the issue of legal separation? The judge decided that this issue was contrary to Charter and treaty rights. But that doesn't matter anymore. The Justice Minister and his party must decide what question Albertans might face in the referendum: Who will remain? Leave? Or both? This is, of course, unless the UCP changes the legislation again.
