Recall legislation “weaponized” by labour movement: Hunter

Posted on March 5, 2026 by Vauxhall Advance

By Trevor Busch
Vauxhall Advance
editor@tabertimes.com

With more than two dozen Alberta MLAs recently facing recall petitions in their respective ridings, Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter laid the blame for the flurry of petitions not on disgruntled voters but the provincial labour movement.

“It’s not an effort to remove some of these sitting MLAs; if that was the case, then I’d say have at ‘er.”

 “This is actually, unfortunately, an effort by the labour movement.”

“Gil McGowan came straight out and said that he wants to do complete, total recall.”

“So the Alberta Federation of Labour under McGowan has said they want to completely recall every UCP MLA, so they’re not happy with us, their labour unions are not happy with us. They basically weaponized a piece of legislation.”

Hunter, who was recently appointed as the new minister of Environment and Protected Areas, suggested that if people are upset about the policies and actions of the UCP government they can express their displeasure at the ballot box, not through recall legislation.

“Now to put it in context, in BC where they’ve had this for decades they’ve had 32 recalls in 30 years.”

“Now we’re up to over 20 recall recalls being done here in one year. So do you think that’s what the recall legislation was about? That Albertans expect that’s what it’s about? No, I’m pretty sure that Albertans are like, ‘Why are you doing this?’ If you’re upset about what the UCP is doing, you have an election where you can mobilize your people, and you can see whether or not Albertans agree with you.” 

“But Albertans duly elected us in 2023, and back in 2019 we were also duly elected. And obviously there were things we had to do that maybe are not going to fly very well with Gil McGowan and some of the labour unions in Alberta – I know the teachers are not happy with us right now. And so there’s these recalls – they basically weaponized the recall to be able to try to do a tricky move, to try to take us out. And let’s be clear what recall is all about: it’s to replace a duly-elected Conservative government that has been effective at being able to reduce taxes, reduce regulatory burden, and bring back the ‘Alberta advantage’ we lost with the socialist NDP government. That’s what the goal is.”

Make no mistake, argues Hunter, the motivation here is not to replace a few poorly performing MLAs but to bring down the government and send Albertans back to the polls. 

“And so if Albertans are fine with that, then they’ll continue on with the recall petitions. But I hope that Albertans don’t get confused by this, that this isn’t just about some labour disputes or anything like that. This is the labour movement trying to replace a duly-elected Conservative government and replace it with an NDP socialist government. That’s what’s going on right now. And so I think that these guys have weaponized this. It’s pretty sad to see that happen, because I was very much in favour of recall legislation and citizen-initiated referenda. This is sad to see how the left has weaponized this. Take a look at the long ballot, how they had like 200 people on a ballot. This is all designed by the left to cause havoc within our democratic system. Nobody wants to see a long ballot – the polling is quite clear. This is something similar to that.”

The province’s recall legislation, debated and passed by the UCP government, could have used more checks and safeguards to ensure it wasn’t abused by unscrupulous parties, admits Hunter.

“I actually do think it was flawed, but we built it on what BC has done. And as I said, in BC, they had 32 over 30 years, and only one of them was successful. But obviously it has been used by the unions here, not all unions, but certainly Gil McGowan’s team, the Alberta Federation of Labour, has done it to use it to try to be able to replace a duly-elected government.”

The petitions need to be subject to more oversight to ensure they aren’t being used frivolously, says Hunter, who suggests the chief electoral officer be given more purview in the legislation.

“And most of these recalls, if you take a look at the reasons why, it’s very easy to do these recalls. They’re angry about government policy. Well, again, if you’re going to try to recall someone because of government policy, then I don’t think that’s what this was ever meant to do. It was meant to be used as a way to be able to get rid of an MLA if they’ve been charged with some kind of a criminal thing, they just didn’t want to leave, they were truly not doing their job, they were lazy, or they weren’t showing up to work. But this is not the case. Not one of these things that I’ve seen has said that. Even going after the premier, I think in the legal sense, you’ve got judges that can actually say, ‘Well, is this a frivolous lawsuit or not? Is this something that’s real?’ And I would say that these things are being done in a frivolous (context), there’s no way to be able to have the Chief Electoral Officer say, ‘This is a frivolous recall.’ There’s no way of saying it’s frivolous or it isn’t. It’s just we’ve got to accept it. That’s why I think that it’s unfortunate that this is being used this way. I never expected it to be used this way. I don’t think anybody really did. But here we are.”

All of which is not to say that Hunter is opposed to recall legislation, and in fact supports it strongly provided it isn’t being used in a way that trivializes its purpose.

“I talked a lot about this, I was very much in favour of it. I believe in accountability, and I believe in making sure that we have mechanisms within our system to hold people accountable. But again, it was not meant to have an election every two years, which is basically what could happen here. Let’s say that they’re successful at recalling five or six UCP MLAs – and they’ve got 20 now – they would force an early election. Is that really what Albertans want? I doubt it. I would be very surprised if the majority of Alberts want an early election. We elected you to do four years worth of work and get at it and make it happen.”