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.
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.
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.
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.
“This incident demonstrates that it is high time for political parties to be made subject to [the Personal Information and Privacy Act],” McLeod said in a statement.
“What happened here is very serious.”
