Education minister urges UCP volunteers to organize against petition to recall him

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides is rallying UCP volunteers to fight against the bid to recall him, prompting the petition leader to warn Elections Alberta that the MLA’s counter-campaign might be overstepping the rules.

Jennifer Yeremiy, a Calgary scientist and parent, is leading efforts to recall her MLA Nicolaides by gathering at least 16,006 signatures of fellow residents of his Calgary-Bow constituency by a Jan. 21 deadline.

That’s the number of people who must sign a petition under the Recall Act to force a referendum-style “recall vote” on whether to keep or oust him as the riding’s MLA.

Nicolaides has cried foul, arguing that activists who oppose the UCP are using the recall process to protest government policy and topple MLAs like him, rather than targeting specific MLAs for individual misdeeds or ethical lapses that may warrant their dismissal.

He went further this week. Nicolaides emailed his riding’s UCP members, urging them to volunteer to help him counter the “politically motivated recall campaign” to unseat him.

“The process to defeat this recall requires a swift, organized and robust response, and we need to defend the mandate you gave,” Nicolaides wrote in the email that circulated on social media, and which he later verified to CBC News.

His message to supporters asks for help with phoning constituents, data entry and “crucial signature verification.” Signatures on a recall petition will be verified by Elections Alberta officials, rather than by allies of the recall campaign’s subject.

Asked about this line Friday, Nicolaides said his team won’t be verifying signatures.

“I think that was a typo,” he said in an interview after speaking at a municipal conference. He doesn’t expect his volunteers to show up at petition sites, either.

Rather, he said his push will be advocacy and communications, in defence of the work he’s done.

“I think we can make sure volunteers are providing information about some of the positive things that have been achieved for the community,” Nicolaides said.

“Obviously in any kind of campaign there's always two sides to a story and I think it's important that they hear about those aspects as well.”

Yeremiy launched the campaign — the first against an MLA since the recall system launched in 2023 — in the middle of the province-wide teacher’s strike.

Her application cites the minister’s funding of private and charter schools and the state of the public education system as her main reasons for launching the petition.