Documents filed in the Court of King’s Bench shed new light into Elections Alberta’s investigation into how a separatist group exposed the personal information of millions of Alberta voters online.
The court documents — which include internal correspondence, sworn affidavits and a complaint analysis — show investigators began looking into allegations of wrongdoing on April 24.
The filings detail how an Elections Alberta official was shown a YouTube video demonstrating how to sign up for the Centurion Project. It was posted by the organization and a supporter.
The Centurion Project is a registered third-party advertiser supporting Alberta independence. The organization denies any wrongdoing and said the datasets in its searchable database came from a third party.
The video showed a person’s address, electoral division and polling station number when their name was typed into the database. An investigator typed the same names into Elections Alberta’s internal database and found they matched.
A search for known fake names was done on the Centurion Project’s database. These fictional identities are embedded in the list to help investigators trace each dataset to their source.
A name was found matching a list legitimately provided to the pro-independence Republican Party of Alberta in June 2025. Another 86 fictional identities were found. It is not clear how the Centurion Project obtained the same list.
David Parker, an experienced political organizer in Alberta who leads the Centurion Project, was served on April 29 at an event the group hosted in Edmonton. A Court of King’s Bench justice ordered the online tool be removed the next day.
Alberta’s chief electoral officer, Gordon McClure, has filed an application for a permanent injunction to destroy any copies that may exist of the voter list it provided to the Republican Party of Alberta.
The application also calls for deleting all information saved from the list. The names of anyone who has seen or been given copies of the list would also have to be given to investigators.
“The public will suffer significant and irreparable harm unless immediate action is taken to secure the personal information contained in the List of Electors,” the application says.
CBC News asked Parker and his legal counsel whether the Centurion Project’s copies of the list had been destroyed and the names of people who had seen it were shared with investigators. They did not respond before publication.
Parker’s lawyer Chad Williamson previously said Parker would not sign a statutory declaration regarding the list of electors and he asserts the agency cannot compel him to do so.
Make them pay for intentionally compromising your privacy– Aaron Paquette, Edmonton city councillor for Ward Dene
Court documents say concerns were raised about the database on April 21 through an anonymous voicemail. Elections Alberta concluded the complaint did not rise to the “reasonable grounds to believe” threshold that triggers an investigation.
Jen Gerson, a journalist and political commentator who co-founded The Line on Substack, told CBC News she told Elections Alberta about her concerns after learning of the database on March 31. She said she was told the agency was unable to investigate.
A spokesperson for Elections Alberta told CBC News earlier this month that the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act, which was passed last year, placed a higher bar on what the agency needs in order to start an investigation.
Heather Jenkins, press secretary to Justice Minister Mickey Amery, previously told CBC News that “any suggestion that Bill 54 prevents it from investigating these matters is completely inaccurate.”
She also told CBC this week that province will wait until the ongoing police and privacy commissioner’s investigations are complete “before determining whether any future legislative changes are needed.”
Breach among ‘most significant’ in recent Canadian history: expert
Elections Alberta says thousands of people may have accessed the database. The Centurion Project’s leadership said its database was intended to help recruit people who might vote in favour of separation in a potential referendum.
The privacy breach has prompted many Albertans to consider what legal options are available, including a former premier and a current Edmonton city councillor. The situation is among “the most significant privacy incidents” in recent Canadian history, McInnes Cooper lawyer David Fraser told CBC News on Thursday.
A privacy lawyer says a major court case could result from the exposure of the personal information of nearly three million Albertans. Elections Alberta says it’s still not certain the data has been contained.
Fraser is based in Halifax and his work focuses on issues relating to privacy and technology.
“I would not be surprised if there is a plaintiff lawyer, a plaintiff law firm, in the province of Alberta that is thinking about, ‘Is this something that is right for a class-action?’” he said.
“Sometimes the damage awards are relatively modest. But when you multiply that across three million people, whose information was improperly used and exposed, that turns into an attractive amount of money for a plaintiff-side, class-action law firm.”
The Alberta NDP said last week it had footage of a meeting where former premier Jason Kenney’s private information was shown during a demonstration of the database.
“I immediately thought, this can’t be good for me, because some of the more over-caffeinated people in the separatist movement are the kinds of people who’ve been making fairly frequent threats against me while I was premier and since,” Kenney told CBC News last week.
Edmonton Coun. Aaron Paquette and his staff say they are helping a woman facing domestic violence relocate because she fears her personal information may have been made public by the database.
Paquette wrote on his BlueSky account that Albertans should consider “every legal option available” following the breach, including a class-action lawsuit.
“Make them pay for intentionally compromising your privacy,” he wrote.
The RCMP and Alberta’s privacy commissioner are also investigating the incident.
Parker has compared the online tool, which was ordered to be taken down by a judge late last month, to a phone book.
Fraser argued this is not an accurate comparison because people can opt-out of appearing in a phone book.
“There’s a whole lot of people … who are at risk if their location, if their home address is made known,” he said. “Just on its face, it’s an invasion of privacy.”
