UPDATE: Petition for Davies Recall unsuccessful

Update: Comments from MLA Dan Davies have been added to the article.

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Elections BC has announced that the recall petition for Peace River North MLA Dan Davies was unsuccessful. 

According to the release from Elections BC, the petition failed due to not being submitted by the deadline of April 4th. 

The petition required 10,487 signatures, though Elections BC’s recall petition summary doesn’t show how many signatures were attained. 

Davies told Energeticcity.ca that the petition coming to an end was a weight off his shoulders.

“It’s one less thing to have hovering over me and sitting on my shoulders.”

Davies also reiterated his support of residents exercising their rights within democracy and said the petition even made him look at how he communicated with the community.

“It made me reflect on a few of my office procedures, which I changed to make sure that we are serving the constituents better, trying to engage and reach out to them better,” Davies said.

“Just the sheer volume of emails and phone calls we get, sometimes people get missed. We’ve made changes to make sure that doesn’t happen. Even just looking at myself trying to use different platforms. I get it, not everyone’s on social media. Not everybody reads traditional media. What other angles can we improve to ensure we are getting our message out there?”

The petition was announced on January 27th and officially issued on February 3rd, 2023, to proponent Joseph Wayne Bell, a Cecil Lake man who is part of a northeast B.C. group that discussed having Davies removed as MLA at a meeting in early January. The petition had 23 registered canvassers, according to Elections BC.

As part of the attempted petitioning process, the group circulated a pamphlet of what Davies called “misinformation” in February.  

Since the Recall and Initiative Act came into effect in 1995, 29 recalls have been attempted in the province of B.C. None have succeeded. 

For more information on the recall process, visit Elections BC’s website.