Petition to recall Mayor Gondek declared insufficient

The petition to recall Mayor Jyoti Gondek was declared insufficient today in a Special Meeting of Council. Upon finishing the verification process, a Special Council Meeting was called by the Mayor in keeping with the March 14, 2023 Council direction.

At the meeting, the City Clerk, Kate Martin, made a verbal declaration of insufficiency, announcing the total number of unverified petitioners to be 69,344, or 5.39 per cent of Calgary’s population. This fell below the required 40 per cent threshold, as stipulated in the MGA.

While not required to determine sufficiency or insufficiency, in keeping with Municipal Government Act authority granted to him, Chief Administrative Officer David Duckworth further requested that the City Clerk in accordance with the Act, conduct a random sample and verification of petitioners.

The statistically significant random sample size was 369 and after verification, the number of valid signatures in the sample is zero. This is because the notice of recall petition was not included on any petition pages as required by the Municipal Government Act, Sec. 240.7(3)(c).

“This was the first time the Chief Administrative Officer (and City Clerk as my delegate) was accountable for verifying recall petitions. From my perspective, it was important to provide additional transparency to the public and parties involved in the process about the recall petition submitted,” says Duckworth.

“The City’s experience administering the recall verification process can be shared with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, who is accountable for the legislation guiding the recall petition process. Sharing our administrative learnings is especially important given that Bill 20, the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 introduced on April 25, 2024, proposes that the Minister of Municipal Affairs becomes accountable for verifying recall petitions for members of council.” Until Bill 20 is passed, accountability for recall petition verification remains with the Chief Administrative Officer.

The role of Council during the Special Council Meeting was to receive the City Clerk’s declaration of sufficiency or insufficiency for the Corporate Record. The declaration has been provided to the representative recall petitioner, the Mayor, and the Minister of Municipal Affairs as required by the Municipal Government Act.

Within two days of the declaration of insufficiency being published on The City’s website, the representative recall petitioner, or any person acting on behalf of the representative recall petitioner must destroy additional copies of the recall petition. Destruction of the official recall petition will occur by the City Clerk’s Office in June 2024.