Petition seeks to recall B.C. Premier David Eby

Elections BC has approved an application for a petition to recall Premier David Eby.

The provincial election agency announced Tuesday that it had received an application that met the requirements of the Recall and Initiative Act.

The petition will be issued on Jan. 17, at which time canvassers will have until March 20 to secure the signatures of 16,449 voters in Eby's Vancouver-Point Grey electoral district who were eligible to vote in the last election on Oct. 24, 2020.

If the petition receives at least that many signatures – representing 40 per cent of the electorate – Elections BC will have 42 days to determine that the signatures were valid. If enough valid signatures were secured, Eby's seat would be vacated and a byelection would have to be held.

Recall petitions are fairly common in B.C., but none of the 27 that have been attempted since the Recall and Initiative Act was adopted in 1995 have been successful.

According to Elections BC, just six of the 27 were returned for verification. Five of those six did not have enough valid signatures, while the sixth was halted during the verification process because the member of the legislature the petition was targeting resigned.

Two of the province's previous recall petitions have been issued in Vancouver-Point Grey, both of them targeting former BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell, one in 1998 and one in 2003. Each time, the petition was not returned by the deadline, according to Elections BC.

The proponent of the petition to recall Eby is Salvatore Vetro.

In his statement explaining why the premier should be recalled, Vetro calls Eby "a dictator," and writes that his government's Bill 36 "breaks many existing laws including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the international Nuremberg Code." 

Bill 36 was passed into law with little fanfare in the fall. It overhauls the province's system of professional colleges for health-care workers, and has been the target of criticism from doctors, nurses and others.

Those who spoke to CTV News last month mainly took issue with the law's changes to the administration of professional colleges, as well as what they called a lack of consultation before the bill was passed into law. 

Concerns about Charter rights and the Nuremberg Code – which is a code of ethics for medical experiments and not a formal international treaty – did not make the health-care workers' list of complaints about the bill. 

"Under the Recall and Initiative Act, any registered voter in British Columbia can apply to have a recall petition issued for their electoral district," Elections BC said in a statement.

"They must submit an application form, a $50 processing fee, and a statement of 200 words or less on why they feel the member should be recalled. Applications must be approved if these legislated criteria are met. Elections BC does not have discretion to evaluate applications on any other criteria."