Data breach investigation ensnares Alberta separatist movement as independence petition hits deadline

Stay Free Alberta, delivered the signature documentation to Elections Alberta headquarters in Edmonton on Monday afternoon, surrounded by a sea of supporters with Alberta flags. A potential data leak by an unassociated separatist organization could nonetheless hurt the efforts more broadly, lending their federalist opponents arguments that undermine their credibility in the eyes of voters. Photo by Shaughn Butts /10111498A

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A suspected data breach has dealt a credibility blow to Alberta separatists, underscoring the lack of designated leadership behind the grassroots movement and causing a rare rupture between the various organizations and social media groups that support it.

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On Thursday, Elections Alberta announced it was investigating the potential mishandling of the province’s official voter list by the Centurion Project, a pro-separation group, and the Republican Group of Alberta, a political party.

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While a breach has not been confirmed, the agency believes that Centurion may have given volunteers unauthorized access to its database of 2.9 million registered voters, including their voter IDs, addresses and other information. RCMP have confirmed they are also investigating.

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Centurion is distinct from Stay Free Alberta, the organization that just finished collecting signatures for a petition that proposes Alberta’s separation from Canada. Still, the potential data leak could nonetheless hurt separatist efforts more broadly, lending their federalist opponents arguments that undermine their credibility in the eyes of voters.

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“It gives the anti-separatists—basically, the traditional political parties—something to shoot at,” says Barry Cooper, professor at the University of Calgary.

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Cooper said that these sorts of missteps are all but “inevitable” among fragmented movements like the one pushing for Alberta independence. While opponents of Alberta’s separatists tend to frame them as a unified force, they are in fact made up of a number of small and independent advocate groups with differing strategies, focuses and messaging.

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“When you have this kind of grassroots, non-organization trying to get something done, you’re bound to have all kinds of problems,” he said.

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Barry Cooper, a professor at the University of Calgary. Photo by Stuart McNish/Special to the Sun /PNG

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After Elections Alberta announced its investigation into Centurion and the Republican Party, several pro-separatist voices and social media sites began to lash out against Centurion. On Facebook, an account called Unapologetically Albertan decried that the “harm [Centurion] have done to every Albertian [sic] is irreversible,” and blamed the group for giving their opposition “ammunition to use against us.”

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Responses such as that one across social media suggested a rare rift within the separatist movement that, according to Cooper, has enjoyed “relatively little infighting.”

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The apparent mishandling by Centurion and the Republican Party echoes the sorts of pitfalls that have long ensnared Alberta’s right-wing movements, said Cooper, where a few rogue actors or fringe voices have damaged broader political efforts. (As Preston Manning, one of the godfathers of small-c conservatism in Alberta, famously put it: “a bright light attracts some bugs.”)

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David Parker, founder of the Centurion Project, said in a statement on X on Thursday that volunteers used the group’s internal Centurion App to “find people they know,” but did not have access to phone numbers or emails.

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“The Centurion project relied on a third party to provide us with datasets for this tool,” he said.