There are many public institutions that should be trimmed, neutered, or outright eliminated by the United Conservative Party of Alberta. It is just that Elections Alberta is not one of them.
But that is what happened in May 2025: the government passed the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act, raising the standard by which Elections Alberta was to initiate an investigation. The new threshold was a major reason why it took a whole month for the elections overseer to deal with an alleged unauthorized leak of the provincial voter list, in which the personal data of some three million Albertans ended up on the website of the separatist Centurion Project.
The whistleblower who called in the leak back on March 31 was none other than Jen Gerson, an independent journalist (and Post alumna) who initially heard it from a source who used a burner account to join the Centurion Project. Her account from April 30 reports that her source was able to access data on what appeared to be millions of people, including Gerson herself. By April 10, Elections Alberta told her it would not be investigating.
She took the story to other channels, and that seems to have gotten it over the line. On April 27, the elections overseer said in its own timeline of events, it began an investigation based on credible information that the list of electors was in the hands of a separatist group, where it had no business being.
Centurion Project leader David Parker, i.e., the guy who led the Take Back Alberta movement to get Danielle Smith elected UCP leader, and has since moved on to the separatist cause, said on April 30 that a third party provided data that was used to help members of the project find people they know. Volunteers did not have access to phone numbers or emails. Elections Alberta says that third party was the Republican Party of Alberta.
The separatist movement has always been a messy one with a mosaic of different, sometimes contradictory goals within its factions. This scandal shows us this yet again: other factions of the movement are doing what they can to distance themselves from it, knowing full well that there is a chance it can taint them, too.
But there are bigger practical concerns: how far did our name and address data get, and are we safe? There is a chance the information could be used to harass politicians, public figures, witnesses to crimes and victims of stalking or domestic abuse. This is why taking that database down in a timely manner was so important, and why it is a problem that election authorities were so late in doing so.
In the olden times, the provincial elections overseer could initiate an investigation into a potential breach of the rules if it had grounds to warrant an investigation. This meant that it needed to have some evidence to open an investigation, but not a level of evidence that would support an actual charge. In 2025, the UCP raised the Elections Alberta investigation threshold such that it had to have reasonable grounds that an offence had taken place to initiate an investigation.
The UCP has made a choice: disabling the elections overseer's ability to investigate while continuing to fund ideological anti-racism committees. This is a choice that prioritizes political ideology over the protection of personal data and the integrity of elections.
