Recall campaign revs up against Speaker Plecas
VICTORIA — A recall campaign targeting Speaker of the legislature Darryl Plecas will begin at the end of January, says the organizer.
Robin Roy, who runs the BCrecall2018 Facebook page, said his group plans to submit recall paperwork to Elections B.C. in the last week of the month to target Plecas, the MLA for Abbotsford South.
“If it gets approved, we’ll be starting as soon as the start of February and running for the 60 days to collect all the campaign signatures,” said Roy, a Langley resident who runs a computer consulting firm.
Under B.C.’s recall law, voters can remove an MLA from office if they can collect signatures from at least 40 per cent of eligible voters in the MLA’s riding within a 60-day campaign.
Abbotsford South had 41,002 registered voters in the 2017 election, setting the recall threshold at around 16,400 votes. Plecas won 52.48 per cent of the popular vote in 2017, or 11,683 votes.
“We have over 300 volunteers to campaign throughout the riding,” said Roy. “With having all the volunteers, we’re breaking the entire riding up to a grid system and will have every home hit, morning, mid-day, night, twice every time until every signature is collected. We have a plan.”
Roy said he has no political experience but he’s organizing the campaign against Plecas because of the MLA’s decision after the 2017 election to defect from the B.C. Liberals to become Speaker during a minority NDP government. Plecas now sits as an independent MLA.
“He totally betrayed all his constituents,” said Roy.
Roy also cited Plecas’s investigation into the legislature’s two highest-ranking non-partisan officials, the clerk and sergeant-at-arms. Both were suspended in late November, after Plecas turned over information on still-unrevealed allegations to the RCMP and two special prosecutors.
Plecas has promised to make his concerns public at a Jan. 21 meeting, launch forensic audits and resign if the public is not outraged at what is found.
The Opposition Liberals, who still hold a grudge against Plecas for his defection, have been sharply critical of him, saying he withheld from MLAs his role in the investigation, exceeded his authority and tried to install an aide who helped him investigate into the vacated sergeant-at-arms job.
Plecas, formerly a criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley, has accused the Liberals of wanting to oust him as Speaker.
Plecas did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
Roy said he does not like the NDP government of Premier John Horgan, but was also “not thrilled of Christy Clark’s running of the province either and how she messed up ICBC and all those other things. I was one of the people asking her to step down. I’m not tied into any party.”
He said the B.C. Liberals aren’t working on the recall campaign. “We will not work with any political party,” said Roy.
Attorney General David Eby changed B.C.’s recall laws last year to ban corporate and union donations.
B.C.’s recall legislation is unique in Canada, but comes with a steep threshold that previous organizers have described as almost unworkable.
None of the 26 campaigns approved by Elections B.C. since 1995 have been certified as successful. However, in 1998, then Parksville-Qualicum Liberal MLA Paul Reitsma resigned before signatures were verified showing a successful recall.