Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream BC Conservative MLA Tara Armstrong.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Tara Armstrong

There really is only one way for constituents to remove a MLA from office and an online petition isn't it, especially since an official recall can't happen until April of next year at the earliest. 

Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong decided to leave the BC Conservative Party and sit as an Independent in support of fellow MLA Dallas Brodie who was removed from the party for denying the experiences of residential school survivors and mocking them on a podcast.

Constituent Nikki Sinclair started the petition yesterday, March 11, in an effort to get Armstrong to resign, but an official recall petition to force Armstrong out of office can't be started until 18 months after the general election. 

“Elected representatives are meant to reflect the collective choices and beliefs of their constituents. The abrupt departure of our MLA from the Conservative Party skews this representation and shifts the balance of power that was decided by us. It's essential to remember that such decisions impact us and the Party we chose directly. The policies we backed and the party we align ourselves with are now undermined due to this shift by Ms. Armstrong,” Sinclair wrote in the online petition.

The petition is a call for Armstrong to resign, but it won’t be able to strong arm her into doing so.

READ MORE: Okanagan Conservative MLA now representing her riding as an Independent

There is a method for voters to force an MLA out of office by recalling them.

A recall is started by a voter who has to collect signatures from 40 per cent of eligible voters. For a signature to count on a recall petition the signer has to be a registered voter in the MLA’s electoral district, and they had to be registered to vote on the final voting day when the MLA was elected.

Andrew Watson with Elections BC said a recall petition can’t be started for 18 months after a general election.

“An actual official recall petition under the Recall and Initiative Act couldn't begin until April 20, 2026. And another thing to note is that under that act, petition signatures must be gathered in person. There's no online option,” he said.

Since the Recall and Initiative Act came into effect in B.C. in 1995 there have been 30 recall petitions, and all of them have failed.

There were 26,000 votes cast in Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream in the provincial election that brought Armstrong into office so any recall petition would need more than 13,000 signatures from eligible voters in the district.

“The threshold for a successful petition is high. It's 40 per cent of eligible voters to sign the petition,” Watson said. “It does take a lot of organization. They need to register all of their canvassers with Elections BC. And then it is a process by which they have to be out on the ground in that riding. So there hasn't been a successful one yet, although there was one case where an MLA resigned when it appeared as though a petition would be successful.”

Sinclair’s petition had fewer that 100 signatures Wednesday morning.

“In the name of democracy, we demand that Tara Armstrong immediately resign and that a byelection be held so that we, the electorate, can decide who truly represents our voices, our rights, and our community. It must be us, the voters, who get to make this important decision and not our MLA,” Sinclair wrote in the petition.

Watson said anyone who is curious about starting a recall petition can contact Elections BC, but aside from voluntary resignation or a death in office, a recall petition is pretty much the only option for voters who want to get their representative out of office.

Click here for the petition.

— This article was updated at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday, March 12, 2025 to include comment from Elections BC.

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