Alberta's United Conservative Party government is now facing the direct democratic weapon it forged, as organized recall campaigns target its MLAs following the contentious use of the Charter's notwithstanding clause to end a teachers' strike.
The Recall Law Becomes a Political Weapon
In October 2025, the Alberta legislature passed a back-to-work bill to end a strike by schoolteachers. To circumvent the right to strike recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015, the government invoked the Constitution's notwithstanding clause. This move triggered a strategic response from teachers, the Alberta New Democrats, and their political allies.
Their strategy involves launching coordinated voter-recall campaigns against individual UCP legislators within their own ridings. This effort leverages the very Recall Act the UCP itself introduced in 2021 and later amended in the summer of 2025.
How Alberta's Recall Rules Were Changed
The original recall legislation, often called the Jason Kenney version, required petitioners to gather signatures from 40 per cent of a riding's registered voters within a 60-day window. This high threshold, modeled on British Columbia's law, was seen by many conservatives as too restrictive for a genuine direct democracy tool.
Under Premier Danielle Smith, the UCP government adjusted the rules. The new standard, enacted in the summer of 2025, sets the signature requirement at 60 per cent of the total votes cast in the riding's most recent general election. Given the 2023 election turnout, this lowered the needed signatures by an average of nine per cent. Campaigners also now have 90 days instead of 60 to collect names.
Calgary-Bow: The Front Line of the Recall Fight
The most prominent recall effort is unfolding in the riding of Calgary-Bow, where organizer Jenny Yeremiy is leading a campaign to unseat Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides. This campaign is considered one of the strongest, as Nicolaides is the minister most directly responsible for the use of the notwithstanding clause against teachers.
The political landscape in Calgary-Bow makes the recall attempt particularly viable. Nicolaides won his seat in the 2023 provincial election by a narrow margin of just 623 votes, indicating a competitive riding where the opposition NDP maintains significant strength.
The situation presents a stark political irony. A recall mechanism championed by the governing conservatives as a tool for populist accountability is now being wielded by their opponents, turning a policy instrument against its creators in the wake of a major constitutional and labour dispute.
