The Centurion Project and the Biggest Voter Data Leak in Alberta History
A separatist group in Alberta called the Centurion Project has been caught using an app that illegally accessed the personal information of nearly three million Albertans. The data came from the province's official list of registered voters, called the elector list. That list is only supposed to be in the hands of registered political parties. Somehow, it ended up in the hands of a far-right organization with no legal right to it.
Elections Alberta, the RCMP, and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner are now all investigating. A third investigation has since been launched by Alberta's privacy commissioner, bringing the total number of active investigations to three.
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What the Centurion Project Is
The Centurion Project was founded by David Parker, a far-right activist. Parker previously ran Take Back Alberta, a movement that mobilized conservative opposition against former Premier Jason Kenney during the COVID-19 pandemic. That movement helped push Danielle Smith into the leadership of the United Conservative Party.
The Centurion Project is a separatist organization. Its members have a noted preoccupation with Roman history and often frame Alberta's political situation as a kind of civilizational struggle. The name itself comes from a commanding officer's rank in the Roman army. The group was also registered as a third-party advertiser in the separatist Stay Free Alberta petition campaign.
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Where the Data Came From
Elections Alberta says the database used by the Centurion app matches the elector list that was legally provided to the Republican Party of Alberta last year. The match is not just approximate. Elections Alberta deliberately adds fake names to each party's copy of the list for tracking purposes. Those fake names appear in the Centurion database, which means the data did not come from a general breach. It came from the Republican Party of Alberta's specific copy of the list.
Republican Party of Alberta leader Cam Davies has said he granted access to vendors under contract, as is permitted under Alberta's Election Act, for political work such as contacting voters and soliciting donations. He says he later issued cease-and-desist letters to those vendors after the alleged misuse by the Centurion Project. Davies did not respond to questions about which vendors he had hired.
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What Was Exposed
The database was posted online in a searchable format that required no identity verification and was accessible to anyone who had the link. It contained the names, home addresses, phone numbers, electoral districts, and voter registration details of 2.9 million Albertans. The database included the home addresses of prominent politicians, judges, Crown prosecutors, senators, and journalists.
Parker has compared the database to a phone book and said it was intended to be used by volunteers to search for friends and acquaintances while canvassing for supporters.
Alberta's Information and Privacy Commissioner Diane McLeod described the situation plainly. More than 2.9 million Albertans had their personal information breached. For some of those individuals, she said, there is likely a real risk of significant harm, particularly for people who work in law enforcement, public officials, those fleeing intimate partner violence, and other vulnerable individuals.
A former RCMP major crimes investigator put it in starker terms. For organized crime, that kind of information is gold. In the hands of the wrong people, it becomes a criminal record of contacts, not just for one election cycle, but potentially for decades.
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What the App Did
On April 16, the Centurion Project held a demonstration of its app for a group of roughly 80 people attending a virtual meeting. During that demonstration, the app was used to pull up the home address of former Premier Jason Kenney without his knowledge or consent. Kenney has previously faced serious and high-profile threats to his safety.
The Alberta NDP says it has shared footage of this demonstration with the RCMP and with Kenney directly. Kenney released a public statement saying he is seeking legal advice over what he called an outrageous and potentially dangerous violation of his personal privacy.
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The Legal Response
Elections Alberta did not move slowly once it became aware of the situation.
The Chief Electoral Officer issued a cease-and-desist letter on April 28. On April 29, Elections Alberta sent representatives to a Centurion Group event to ensure the database was not being accessed. On April 30, an emergency injunction was obtained from the Court of King's Bench, forcing the Centurion Project to shut down the database. A hearing for a permanent injunction is scheduled for later this summer.
Elections Alberta identified 23 people who received full copies of the voters list from the Centurion Project, and another 545 people who accessed the searchable database. Cease-and-desist letters were issued to all 568. The 23 people who received full copies were given 48 hours to provide a signed declaration of compliance.
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A Warning That Went Unheeded
What makes the legislative response harder to accept is that Elections Alberta saw this kind of problem coming.
On May 9, 2025, a full year before this breach became public, the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to all members of the Legislative Assembly outlining serious concerns about Bill 54, the Justice Statutes Amendment Act. The letter warned that requiring "reasonable grounds" in the legislation would eliminate the majority of the compliance activities undertaken by the Election Commissioner and would impact Albertans' trust that the rules were being followed.
That letter was sent. The bill passed. Elections Alberta has since confirmed that requiring reasonable grounds in legislation did directly impact its ability to act in this matter.
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The UCP Connection
The Alberta NDP identified two UCP-connected individuals as attendees of the April 16 virtual meeting: Arundeep Singh Sandhu, the United Conservative Caucus director of stakeholder relations, and a Rob Smith, who shares his name with the President of the UCP.
The UCC's official response was that caucus staff regularly attend events of political interest, and that the staffer present had no reason to believe anything unlawful was happening because the organizers claimed the data was obtained legally.
What makes that explanation harder to accept is a set of details that emerged after the initial report. Screenshots of the April 16 demonstration show that the web browser being used by Parker during the demo had bookmarks saved under the name "arundeep." The icons on those bookmarks appear to link to CTV News and the City of Edmonton website. The only Google result connecting that first name to the City of Edmonton website is Sandhu's campaign disclosure from a 2016 city council by-election.
Sandhu and Parker also share a documented history. They both worked on Erin O'Toole's federal Conservative leadership campaign in 2020. A photo from that year shows the two of them sitting at the same table. It was taken from Parker's Facebook page before he made it private.
When contacted by Canada's National Observer, Sandhu said he could not explain why his name appeared in the bookmarks. He said he was on his phone during the meeting and referred the reporter to the caucus statement.
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What Was Not Done
Political scientist Lori Williams from Mount Royal University put it plainly. She said the big question is how a political staffer could watch a demonstration that accessed the home address of a former premier who has faced violent threats and not report it to their boss or to police.
That question has not been answered.
The NDP has also asked publicly why no UCP official or government representative reported to the RCMP or Elections Alberta that the Centurion Project appeared to have unauthorized access to the elector list. No answer has been provided.
Premier Danielle Smith has said she only learned about the Centurion Project's unauthorized use of the elector list when it was first reported in the media. If any UCP staffer reported what they saw to their superiors and nothing was done, that contradicts Smith's account. If nothing was reported at all, that raises its own set of serious questions.
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Voter data is not supposed to move outside of registered political parties. It exists to support democratic participation, not to be used as a targeting tool by private organizations with no legal right to it.
What happened here was not a technical glitch or an accidental exposure. The data was posted in a searchable, publicly accessible format. It was demonstrated live to a room of volunteers. It was used to look up the home address of a former premier with a known threat history. And at least two people connected to the governing party were in that room.
Three separate investigative bodies are now involved. Calls for a full public inquiry are growing. The answers to how this happened, and who knew what, are still outstanding.
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Sources
Canada's National Observer, May 8, 2026
"UCP staffer appears to have been more than just 'observing' the doxxing of Jason Kenney"
Rory White and Jeremy Appel
Global News, May 3, 2026
"Alberta voter list leak is a potential public safety disaster: Enforcement experts"
Global News, May 7, 2026
"3rd investigation launched into Alberta voter database accessed by nearly 600 people"
CBC News, May 7, 2026
"Elections Alberta says it has issued 568 cease-and-desist letters over Centurion Project leak"
Wallis Snowdon
The Tyee, May 4, 2026
"Alberta's Voters Data Breach Was Very Bad. And Inevitable"
The Tyee, May 6, 2026
"The Centurion Project Scandal Ensnares the UCP"
Elections Alberta, May 2026
"Message to Albertans from the Chief Electoral Officer re: Unauthorized Use of List of Electors"
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