Vernon Monashee MLA Harwinder Sandhu with BC NDP leadership candidate and attorney general David Eby. (Photo credit: Harwinder Sandhu/ Twitter)

By Liam Verster

Recall Petition

Vernon woman believes MLA recall will spark moves to remove NDP

Aug 9, 2022 | 12:21 PM

A Vernon woman said she has launched a recall petition against Vernon-Monashee NDP MLA Harwinder Sandhu in the hopes it will trigger more recalls across B.C.

Genevieve Ring, the proponent of the recall petition, told Vernon Matters that she believes “the provincial government is broken, and there’s no way to repair it without something drastic.”

Ring’s application for a recall petition was approved Monday, and she said she hopes to use it to engage the population.

“With the petition, I feel it will get the people back into politics, back into governance and paying attention because I think people become so jaded about politics that they just don’t bother with it anymore,” Ring said.

“So you get a government that is more and more out of touch with the people that they’re supposed to serve and they just serve their own party.”

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While she said she wants to have more people play a role in politics, Ring said her job will end with this petition.

“I wouldn’t run [in the by-election],” said Ring, adding that taking a role in politics means giving up a person’s business and sacrificing personal time. However, she still hopes to see someone else step in and challenge Sandhu.

“But now I think people are saying ‘I do have to take my stand. I do have to stand up and do something here for the good of the town, for the good of the riding and the good of the province.'”

Ring added that she is 73 years old, and would want to see a younger person step in and challenge Sandhu.

Ring, who is listed as president of Loreto Strata Management on her Linked In profile, told Vernon Matters that she hopes this petition could be the catalyst to spark further recalls across B.C.

“I think now that this has started, maybe a few more [ridings] will, but you have to start somewhere and it might as well start in Vernon,” said Ring.

If Ring is successful and triggers an election that removes Sandhu from office, the B.C. NDP would still hold a majority government. However, Ring said she is not concerned about not having a representative for Vernon-Monashee in the governing party.

“I see [Sandhu’s] work as top down. Told what to do, ‘this is our agenda, this is what we’re doing, this is how we do it, do it,'” said Ring.

“It’s not from the people of the Vernon-Monashee area. What do they want, what do they need?”

Ring’s main complaints with Sandhu and the NDP have to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent restrictions and regulations.

“They mishandled it, they didn’t know how to do it properly, they didn’t have a good plan,” said Ring, claiming the actions taken by British Columbians to mask up, lockdown and limit their exposure to others did not help lessen the curve.

She also stated the hospitals were empty, and that the B.C. NDP broke the health care system, though could not provide specific details on those claims.

Sandhu does not hold a powerful position within government but Ring said she still backed the NDP in the creation of the COVID-19 regulations, adding that “she’s part of the government, she went along with it.”

Ring also stated that the mask regulations for children in schools were “detrimental one for their breathing, two for their psychology, three for the decrease in their ability to learn over this past two years,” but could not provide a source to support her claims.

Ring also said she believes that the province’s COVID-19 regulations have hurt the bottom line of people and businesses in B.C. However, the province currently has a record low unemployment rate, and when asked about this she said “quite frankly, I don’t have a response to that,” before claiming that the government is paying people not to work and that she would “need to look into that more.”

Ring’s next step is signing up canvassers to go door to door and collect signatures from eligible voters in the Vernon-Monashee riding.

Ring said she also plans to appeal to different organizations, including unions, who she believes are upset with the B.C. NDP due to issues with removing the secret ballot process.

In order to be successful, Ring and her team of registered canvassers must collect 21,268 signatures or 40 per cent of the eligible population.

Sandhu won her seat in the 2020 election with 10,222 ballots or 36.6 per cent of the vote. A total of 27,959 people cast a ballot in that election, out of 53,169 eligible voters in the riding.

Ring and her team of registered canvassers will be able to start campaigning and gathering signatures on August 12, 2022. She will need to submit the signatures to Elections B.C. no later than October 12, 2022.

Recall petition applications were made available in B.C. in 1997 through the Recall and Initiative Act. Since then, there have been 26 applications submitted throughout the province, but the only one to succeed came with the MLA resigning during the petition period.

MLA Sandhu issued a statement to Vernon Matters, saying she will not be intimidated by those she calls “a small group of extreme activists that do not represent the vast majority of people” in the riding.

The MLA, who worked as a registered nurse at Vernon Jubilee Hospital before being elected in 2020, says she stands behind the decisions the government has made to keep residents and frontline workers safe during the pandemic.

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