His pro-separation Centurion Project having essentially doxxed the entire adult population of Alberta, it would seem some of David Parker’s political allies don’t want to be associated with him just now.
“Neither Stay Free Alberta or the Alberta Prosperity Society are affiliated with the Centurion Project or David Parker,” the ubiquitous separatist Jeffrey Rath said on social media yesterday. “Neither SFA or APS have had access to any lists in the possession of either the Alberta Republican Party or David Parker or the Centurion Project.”
Mr. Parker’s former wedding guest Danielle Smith has apparently never even heard of the guy. “We are aware of the situation involving a potential data breach of electors’ personal information,” Alberta’s premier said on the same social media platform.
“Protecting the personal information of Albertans is of the utmost importance, and those responsible should be held accountable under the law,” Ms. Smith continued piously. “We understand both Elections Alberta and the RCMP are looking into this matter thoroughly and we will wait for the results of those investigations before commenting further and assessing whether any future legislative changes need to be considered.”
This sure sounds to me like the premier is getting ready to throw someone under the bus.
As for the separatist Republican Party of Alberta, whence came the copy of List of Electors used by the Centurion Project to create an online database according to Elections Alberta, neither it nor its leader Cameron Davies seem to have anything at all to say publicly about this imbroglio.
Now, I recognize that this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Mr, Parker has done all Albertans a huge favour by exposing the inexcusably sloppy way the Government of Alberta has protected confidential personal data about nearly three million of us.
Likewise, what may turn out to be the largest data breach in Canadian history has revealed the incredible irresponsibility of Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party, which seems to have paid no attention at all to Elections Alberta data security while focusing instead on ensuring that a separatist referendum question proposed by someone else makes it onto a ballot this fall. The breach also exposes the amateurish conduct of Elections Alberta, albeit after being defanged by the UCP in the party’s effort to make things easy for Ms. Smith’s separatist allies.
Notwithstanding stating in a news release that it found out about the Centurion Project’s use of the List of Electors only last Monday, it turns out Elections Alberta was told about it by conservative commentator Jen Gerson at the end of March.
“The public record deserves to be corrected here,” Ms. Gerson told independent journalist Jeremy Appel in a videocast published Friday. “They chose to lie by omission by not including the fact that they had received a complaint a month earlier.”
Or, as she put it in the lead of the right-wing Substack she contributes to, “Elections Alberta had reasonable grounds to know that separatists had access to the province’s voter file at least a month ago, and as far as I can tell, they did sweet fuck all about it.”
Mr. Appel broke the story on Wednesday night after he showed up at a Centurion Project meeting in Edmonton at the same time as an Elections Alberta official and several police officers arrived with a letter saying the group was under investigation for improperly accessing the province’s List of Electors.
Since it is not a registered political party, the Centurion Project cannot legally hold the data on the List of Electors. But in Alberta, any political party can – even if it has no seats in the Legislature or any prospect of ever holding any. Chances are, therefore, that other copies of the list are also in the wind.
For its part, Elections Alberta pleads innocence on grounds of necessity – insisting in its “message to Albertans” Friday that its reluctance to investigate Ms. Gerson’s tip was the government’s fault because of legislation passed in May last year.
“The legislation requires that we must have ‘reasonable grounds to believe an offence has occurred’ to start investigations,” the Elections Alberta statement complained. “‘Reasonable grounds’ is a much higher standard than ‘grounds to warrant’ (the previous standard in the legislation), or ‘what might seem obvious’ based on a complainant’s suspicions or beliefs.”
Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi has called for Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure to be summoned to testify before an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on Legislative Offices. “The UCP Government must reverse Bill 54’s provisions that came into effect in 2025 and weakened Elections Alberta’s investigative powers,” he said. Everyone should understand that the UCP is unlikely to allow any of this to happen.
This is still a developing story, of course, but if history is a guide, most of the effort expected by official bodies from now on will be to find a fall guy to take the blame and ensure that no consequences stick to them.
Meanwhile, it’s starting to sink in that the serious consequences of the Purloined List of Electors being scraped by Artificial Intelligence go beyond the personal and financial safety issues identified on Friday when the story first broke.
“Separatists have been gathering signatures,” observed Mount Royal University political scientist Duane Bratt in an interview posted to social media yesterday. “Did they actually acquire signatures or did they just use this to identify people as signatures and they had other people sign it off on them? So that’s one possibility and I think that is hugely problematic.”
That question is sure to be asked again tomorrow when the Stay Free Alberta petition calling for an unconstitutional separation referendum question on the ballot is brought to Elections Alberta for verification. That’s now going to require a heck of a lot of phone calls to do right!
