Alberta premier calls for accountability as separatist group faces voter list investigations

RCI

Online app made public the personal information of millions of Albertans.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says those responsible for exposing voters’ private information to the public should be held legally accountable.

In a statement issued Friday, Smith made her official comments on claims that an Alberta separatist group illegally obtained the province’s voter list before making it publicly available online.

We are aware of the situation involving a potential data breach of electors’ personal information, Smith said in her statement.

Protecting the personal information of Albertans is of the utmost importance, and those responsible should be held accountable under the law.

Both the Alberta RCMP and Elections Alberta are investigating a pro-separatist group, known as the Centurion Project, for its alleged involvement in illegally obtaining and publishing an electoral list that was legitimately provided to the Republican Party of Alberta in 2025.

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• Judge orders Alberta separatist group to pull down online database of voter information (new window)

The voter list has been taken down from Centrion’s website, after Elections Alberta was granted a temporary court injunction to have it pulled from public access.

Smith said her United Conservative Party government would not comment further on the situation until the results of the investigations are released. It’s also waiting on what investigators find before considering whether any legislation needs to be changed.

Smith, who is on a trade mission to the United Kingdom this week, couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday, when details of the unauthorized use of voter information came to light in an Edmonton courtroom.

Court heard that the Centurion Project obtained a copy of an electoral list and turned the dataset into a searchable app, making public the names and addresses of nearly three million Albertans.

• Recap: Read our live coverage (new window) of this story from Thursday

Centurion members have said the voter list was obtained through a third party. Its goal, they said, was to identify and recruit supporters of Alberta’s separatist movement ahead of a possible referendum question this fall.

Voter lists are only distributed by Elections Alberta to elected officials, political parties and party officials and their distribution is strictly constrained by legislation contained in the Elections Act.

Elections Alberta said its investigation revealed that the data shared by Centurion came from an electoral list provided to the Republican Party of Alberta.

But how the list managed to changed hands remains unclear. That will be the focus of the Elections Alberta and RCMP investigations.

Commissioner calls for legislative change

Alberta’s privacy commissioner, Diane McLeod, is also reviewing the case. But she said it’s possible her office doesn’t have jurisdiction over the privacy breach, as political parties aren’t currently covered under the province’s main personal information privacy law.

She has called for legislative changes that would improve protections for Albertans’ private information and expand the rules for political parties.

Her office has been calling for amendments to tighten rules for political parties for decades, McLeod said.

This is evidence of a concerning gap in Alberta’s privacy laws as it relates to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information by political parties, McLeod said.

While the Elections Act has some controls concerning the electoral lists, it does not protect the privacy rights of Albertans concerning their personal information, nor does it have strong privacy protections such as those included in the Personal Information and Privacy Act (PIPA), McLeod said.

In an expanded statement issued Friday, McLeod said her office is still working to examine the facts of the case to determine if its in their jurisdiction and an investigation can proceed.

With more than 2.9 million Albertans learning their personal information was made public, the situation is very serious, she said.

For some of these individuals, there is likely a real risk of significant harm, she said.

This incident demonstrates that it is high time for political parties to be made subject to [PIPA].

Wallis Snowdon (new window) · CBC News