Separatist leader behind voter list leak unco-operative: Elections Alberta

EDMONTON – The man at the centre of a massive public data leak isn’t co-operating with an investigation by Elections Alberta, says the agency.

Chief electoral officer Gordon McClure said in a statement that David Parker, leader of the Centurion Project, has so far refused to comply with a cease-and-desist letter sent last week. 

The letter says Parker is required to sign a statement declaring he would stop using the official voter list, which contains the names and addresses of close to three million Albertans.

Late last month, a judge ordered Parker’s group to take down an app it created that made the list publicly accessible.

Parker has said the goal of the app was to more easily identify and keep track of those who support separatism ahead of the expected fall referendum on the issue.

Elections Alberta, RCMP and the provincial privacy commissioner are all separately investigating the leak.

Elections Alberta has said it traced the group’s database to an official voter list provided last summer to the pro-independence Republican Party of Alberta. 

Parker didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. His group previously said it would be complying with the investigations.

Parker, a longtime political organizer in the province, has had a combative history with Elections Alberta.

Last year, the agency gave a $120,000 fine to another political activist group run by Parker called Take Back Alberta for breaching electoral financing rules, including knowingly making false statements on financial reports.

At the time, Parker called the penalties politically motivated “lawfare” and denied any wrongdoing.

And on social media last month, before the investigations into the Centurion Project were announced, Parker called Elections Alberta an “evil institution.”

“I will not rest until everyone responsible for the lawfare being waged out of that den of evil are brought to justice,” he said.

Most of Take Back Alberta’s fines have been sent to debt collection but Elections Alberta’s website says one penalty has been referred to Crown prosecutors.

The Centurion Project has said it relied on an unnamed third party for its database, while the Republican Party has denied wrongdoing. Elections Alberta has said how the list changed hands was unclear.

Michelle Gurney, a spokesperson for Elections Alberta, said in an email that the agency couldn’t provide further details on Parker’s non-compliance and what options it has moving forward.

The agency said last week that it sent 568 cease-and-desist letters to those the Centurion Project had identified as accessing the list while the website was active. It had said 23 were given full copies of the list.

On Tuesday, Gurney reduced that figure to 21, saying Elections Alberta sent two duplicate letters.

Gurney didn’t say how many others have failed to sign and return the declaration to stop using the voter list. She said further updates would be provided when available.

The leak has been a key point of debate in the legislature, with Premier Danielle Smith facing questions about when she knew about the breach and whether her government would retreat on a bill from last year that increased the amount of evidence Elections Alberta needed to have before launching investigations. 

The agency blamed the change for why it didn’t act to shut down the Centurion Project’s app sooner, saying the higher threshold was equivalent to police having enough evidence to make an arrest.

The government has denied that its bill served as a roadblock despite Elections Alberta saying it couldn’t act on a tip about the voter list app that was received a month before it officially started investigating.

An affidavit filed in court late last month by Elections Alberta says it had received another tip on April 21, but again it determined that not enough evidence was presented.

Smith defended the bill again on Tuesday, rejecting an accusation from Opposition NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi that it amounted to an “evisceration” of Elections Alberta’s enforcement arm.

‘There’s been no evisceration,” Smith said. “(Elections Alberta) has the powers that they need because they have gone to court, they have demanded the names, they have issued cease-and-desist orders.

“We all want to get to the bottom of this.”

Nenshi told reporters he wanted to see Smith take accountability.

“These friends of the premier, who’ve been empowered by the premier, have no respect for the law and they operate in a world without any consequences,” Nenshi said. 

“That’s because the premier’s empowered them to do that.”

Parker has ties to the United Conservative Party government.

With Take Back Alberta, he helped organize UCP members in casting ballots to unseat former premier Jason Kenney in a confidence vote. The group later helped galvanize support to help Smith win the party race to take Kenney’s place.

Smith also attended Parker’s wedding. But two years ago, the pair had a public falling out and the premier said she no longer considered him a supporter.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2026.