In case you missed some of the worst people in Alberta starting their latest dumpster fire, here’s a recap:
Journalist Jeremy Appel was in the right place at the right time this week and earned himself a massive scoop. While at a meeting for the Centurion Project— religious fanatic and social conservative organizer David Parker’s latest endeavour— Mr. Appel was able to witness an exchange between one of the organizers and an Elections Alberta officer (who was flanked by four Edmonton Police Service members). The EA officer wanted to ensure the cease and desist letter they emailed the day before— sent the day after they received a complaint that Mr. Parker appeared to be in possession of an official List of Electors.
The use of elector lists for purposes other than the specified intended purpose outlined in law is prohibited. It’s personal data, given only to political parties and candidates, and third parties would not be given access to the List by Elections Alberta.
Mr. Parker initially claimed that he purchased the data for $45,000, and also claimed that the purchase agreement precluded him from admitting who he purchased it from.
In order to encourage those given access to maintain the List’s confidentiality, Elections Alberta includes a few fictitious entries among the 2.9 million names, addresses, phone numbers and electoral identification numbers, so they can identify a breach if necessary. Though you’d have to care about the law enough to read that legislation, or even enough not to sell Albertans’ personal information to begin with.
Early Thursday morning, lawyers for Elections Alberta were in court where they were granted an injunction to force Mr. Parker to remove access to the app from his website.
Thankfully, they were also able to identify that the data provided to Mr. Parker was obtained from the Alberta Republican Party’s List of Electors in 2025 specifically.
Elections Alberta is taking seriously the unauthorized use of the Republican Party of Alberta’s copy of the List of Electors by the Centurion Project Ltd.
Elections Alberta is limited in commenting publicly about investigations that we may or may not be conducting. However, the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has a fundamental responsibility to protect and safeguard the information contained within the List of Electors. We wish to reinforce that Elections Alberta is taking every possible action to protect and recover the information.
Further, we wish to reiterate that the Election Act legislates the contents, distribution, protection, and use of the provincial List of Electors. This is sensitive data, and there are many safeguards to ensure the List is only provided to the entities and individuals entitled under the law to receive it and is used only as expressly permitted in the Act.
However, this managed to both appease some of my concerns and make me extremely angry at the same time because, in my opinion, there is no reason I can think of why the Republican Party should have been given access to the entire List of Electors for three by-elections.
I’m only just getting started.
After Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Dale Nally admitted to accessing his copy of the elector’s list to identify the person who initiated a recall petition for him, I decided to lodge a complaint with Elections Alberta (in November, 2025). I received a reply in March stating that although the investigation found that while Mr. Nally had used the list for a purpose other than intended, there was “some ambiguity” around whether accessing the list to identify whether the person was a resident of his riding— and whether they voted, and then subsequently surmising about that publicly— was “appropriate use”.
Mr. Nally received “advice” on future use of the List of Electors.
I imagine he was told to use his freaking head when making public statements.
Mr. Nally, at least, received the List legitimately, but the problem is that every political party who registers a candidate in an election can also legitimately receive one, too. Once upon a time, there wasn’t as much of a threat of particularly slimy people getting their hands on it because those with outwardly nefarious intent tended not to seek public office. Since 2021, we know that is no longer the case.
The first gigantic red flag was raised when Kevin J. Johnston was “running” for Mayor of Calgary. His candidacy unearthed an obvious issue with the system because it didn’t matter if he was a serious candidate. It didn’t matter that he had already demonstrated a pattern of harassment, or that he had already been threatening Alberta Health Services employees, or that he was in jail awaiting trial on additional charges in July of that same year.
Calgary Council voted to withhold the lists because they were the only guardrails available for the public.
It still raised serious concerns about allowing any declared candidate to have access to provincial lists, either to a full list as a party or even just the riding they’ve decided to run in as an independent. The fact that the Republican Party, created the same year of the by-elections, was given full access to the List when only three by-elections were called should not have happened in the first place.
Maybe those who have been fined extensively for breaking the law with regard to election and election spending shouldn’t be able to get access at any time. I mean, it seems like a starting point, at the very (and I mean very) least.
That someone from the party would then turn around and share it is an incredible breach on its own but the fact that Mr. Parker (truthfully or not) claimed he paid for it might just compound the illegality of it. The RCMP acknowledged that they have opened an investigation after receiving a complaint “from an individual associated to the Alberta NDP”— which seems like an unnecessary amount of additional of information, but I guess that’s how we’re rolling in Alberta today.
Obviously, if the person selling that information was willing to do so, the bigger question is “who else did they sell it to?”
The Republican Party platform initially included a promise to gauge interest in becoming a U.S. state but has since been removed from their “principles”.
Do they have contacts in the U.S. who would have paid for it too?
There are questions that need answers.
Which brings us to Mr. Parker.
He offered a statement on behalf of his group today, after making some salty commentary on the matter (and deleting it).
STATEMENT FROM THE CENTURION PROJECT:
The Centurion Project was established to train volunteers to be better citizens by partaking in the political process.
Volunteers utilized the Centurion App database to find people they know. They did not have access to phone numbers or emails.
The Centurion Project relied on a third party to provide us with datasets for this tool.
The Centurion Project is aware of recent allegations regarding the app’s data. We have taken action to shutdown the app until we can ensure that the dataset is compliant with Alberta and Federal privacy laws.
The Centurion Project plans to fully comply with Elections Alberta’s investigation.
Will he now claim he didn’t know he was buying a List of Electors which he should have known he was prohibited from accessing, let alone possessing? How did he think the list was created to come up with almost the exact number of electors in the province?
Even though he says that no volunteers had access to search the database, we have to think he wouldn’t have paid for something in which he only received limited access himself. He should have known what he was looking at when he did access it and if he had unlimited access, absolutely anyone he chose to share it with would have the same.
The Globe and Mail was able to obtain access to the root data of the app off Centurion’s website before it was shut down. Who else may have managed to grab it once the story hit the headlines?
The fine for this breach is up to $100,000 and up to one year imprisonment.
At this point, I cannot imagine that they would not prosecute this breach to the fullest extent and seek the maximum penalties. It’s not even because I think they should do that anyway, considering where this breach originated and also where it ended up, but in this particular case, I think they will do it to save face— because they failed to act sooner.
I don’t always read other articles on the topic I’m writing on when I’m writing it because if I see we’re saying the same thing, I’ll restart and try another angle.
Luckily, when I saw Jen Gerson had posted, I did look.
That all sounds like a fast, impressive response. But. Here’s the thing. That summary is, uh, missing a few damn dates.
Like, say, March 31.
That’s when someone reported to Elections Alberta that the Centurion Project appeared to be getting promiscuous with the voter file.
On that date, an email was sent to Elections Alberta titled: “Need to report possible violation - Urgent.” In that email, someone told Elections Alberta this:
David Parker’s new Centurion Initiative appears to be soliciting volunteers. Once accepted - and there appear to be no permissions set up for that acceptance - volunteers are then given access to what appears to be the entire Alberta Voter File.
How do I know this?
I know this because that person was me. I wrote that email.
I highly recommend reading her entire account because it sounds far too much like the dismissive response I received.
Heads will roll for this and they should. There were so many red flags it looks like a parade of fire; it should be treated as nothing less.
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It's disingenuous for Parker to say volunteers didn't have access to the database. When I found out about it on Apr 27, I took a screenshot of the app instructions that clearly shows "search by name or address" Maybe volunteers didn't have access to all the info but being able to find anyone they want put a lot of people in harms way, including some of the recall proponents who were already facing threats of harm.
The bigger concerns are:
1) WTF almost 4 weeks passed after Gerson's notice before any public concern was raised.
2) why whomever in the Premier's comms shop (who clearly wrote the presser for EA) was obviously not advised of the initial concern. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY
3) now that we see why Rath and Sylvestre were so confident in their petition numbers, because they could him the signature of any Alberta elector with this data.
EA will now need to directly verify, with each signatory, every one of their "signatures" for their results to have any credibility! You and I might be on there for all we know and I damn sure didn't sign (but maybe Bob from Goldbar signed my name with information from Parker et allike a good, compliant UCP sheeple separatist should to be one of Dani's useful idiots!),
No amount of random sampling will counter the obvious efforts at electoral fraud by the crooked proponents of this slimy separatist circus!