It may have been the fringy Republican Party of Alberta that got caught letting data from its copy of Alberta’s 2.9-million-name voters’ list be published online in violation of the law, but it is the law-bending style of politics embedded in this province by the United Conservative Party that made such a breach inevitable.
Meanwhile, it’s the giant sucking sound south of the border known as Artificial Intelligence that makes it a potential disaster that could linger for years.
The story was broken by independent journalist Jeremy Appel Wednesday night when he showed up at a meeting of a separatist group sophomorically called the Centurion Project – and so did police with an Elections Alberta official and a letter from the chief electoral officer saying the group was under investigation for improperly accessing the province’s List of Electors. By now, thanks to Mr. Appel’s scoop, the facts are well known and have been widely reported.
With the horse out of the barn, Elections Alberta has said in a news release that it “is taking seriously the unauthorized use of the Republican Party of Alberta’s copy of the List of Electors by the Centurion Project Ltd.”
“We wish to reinforce that Elections Alberta is taking every possible action to protect and recover the information,” Elections Alberta said.
OK, then! Know, though, dear readers, that protecting and recovering the names, addresses, phone numbers and voter-registration numbers on the list is impossible because it is bound to have been gobbled up by the AI monster. The massive leak is guaranteed to be used for fraud, identity threat, harassment, abuse and legion other evils. The name of virtually every Albertan reading this story is on the list!
Despite Elections Alberta’s unachievable aspiration, its release includes a useful timeline of how its investigation developed after the agency learned that the RPA’s copy of the list, which is distributed to all registered political parties, had found its way into the hands of the Centurion Project.
The group, registered as a third-party advertiser, was ordered by a judge to pull down the searchable database created from the list to help its supporters press friends, neighbours and family members to vote yes on the separation plebiscite Premier Danielle Smith and her UCP Government are determined to hold next fall, come what may.
Centurion Project leader David Parker, known for his past association with Take Back Alberta, said yesterday it had done so. “The Centurion Project plans to fully comply with Elections Alberta’s investigation,” he tweeted.
However, we have to face it, that information was gone with the wind by merit of the fact it had been online for more than 30 seconds.
“What happened here is very serious,” said the province’s information commissioner, Diane McLeod, stating the blindingly obvious.
“More than 2.9 million Albertans have had their personal information breached,” she continued. “For some of these individuals there is likely a real risk of significant harm given that their home address and phone numbers have been made public. This could be especially harmful for certain individuals. Some examples might be those who work for law enforcement, who are public officials, who are fleeing intimate partner violence and other vulnerable individuals.”
All true, of course.
“This incident demonstrates that it is high time for political parties to be made subject to PIPA,” Ms. McLeod added, a reference to Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act, which does not apply to political parties because, of course, political parties drafted the legislation.
This was the first useful and practical observation to be made by an official since this story came to public attention. It is unlikely to happen but is probably the best we could hope for.
I would go further, though. While it is unreasonable to think any Alberta political party would agree to such a thing, there would be no harm and much good in depriving all political parties of this information altogether. Leastways, it’s hard to imagine how it would hurt democracy for parties to have to get out and make their case to all voters instead of cultivating their most extreme party base and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of the population as the UCP does.
We can count on such breaches happening again because the sort of “gentlemen’s agreements” made because no democratic politician wanted to get caught stepping outside the bounds of propriety are no more. Donald Trump, his Canadian imitators, and the Wild Rose MAGA movement have put an end to that. They have no shame, so they can’t be shamed. Other parties can be expected to follow if only out of an instinct to survive.
The United Conservative Party’s voting universe encompasses a whole ecosystem of registered far-right agitators like the Centurion Project, Take Back Alberta and the Alberta Prosperity Project; separatist parties like the RPA, the Independence Party of Alberta and the Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta; and fund-raising and advocacy parties like the Pro-Life Association of Alberta. The activities of these groups often appear to be co-ordinated with each other and with the UCP. Their personnel, as we have seen, are frequently interchangeable.
Some seem to work to crack the Overton Window wider to extremist ideas already supported by Premier Smith’s inner circle; some to give the UCP leadership’s separatist and MAGA inclinations plausible deniability; some to advance social conservative causes like anti-“woke” hysteria, anti-abortionism and religious home-schoolery widely supported within the UCP Caucus.
All appear influenced by the idea prevalent in the U.S. Republican Party and MAGA movement that the rules are only for the other side.
Consider what happened when Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally, MLA for Morinville-St. Albert, breached the law by accessing the list of electors in his riding for “a purpose not authorized by the Election Act” – to wit, to discover information about a citizen of his riding who launched a recall petition against him.
The Elections Alberta official who investigated that case closed the file without levying an administrative penalty or writing a letter of reprimand. Instead, she wrote, Elections Alberta, “provided advice to support future use of the List of Electors.”
Perhaps they will do the same thing for the RPA. After all, This Is Alberta (TIA).
I believe this isn’t over yet. It’s far too serious to bury. The UCP are up to their scalps in corruption.
Will See. The rule of law again will do nothing about it, the Parkers and Smiths will party and make us feel like idiots AGAIN and so it goes until one day it will be impossible to understand what is it that we turned into. It is sad to witness these scum bags destroying our way of life and we do nothing about it. TRUMPS just flourish and we continue to scream murder without even making a dent. I guarantee, just like all the cheatings from Jason Kenney this will go nowhere. We will forget it and soon these criminals will control everything. I have seen it in my previous lives. Hard to wake up aloofness.
Carlos: I have heard about what goes on in places like Mexico, and in the Philippines. Corruption happens, and the police turn a blind eye to it. The UCP believe that they are above the law, and that’s why they are establishing a provincial police force. Regardless of what the UCP does, I doubt this is over. Even the UCP supporting Sun News had this on the front page of Friday’s paper. That’s how serious this is. Danielle Smith is coincidentally out of the province and country, in England, for who knows what reason. UCP press conferences still happen, and when Danielle Smith gets back, she will have a hard time explaining to reporters what happened, and what she intends to do about it.
It is very easy to see corruption in other countries but we are not that much different, we just know how to do it in sophisticated ways. These other countries are not as good as we are because their corruption levels are so bad they do not need to hide it. This point fingers to others is not the way. We should strive for zero corruption period. It is 2026.
Carlos: I agree with you. Absolute power can corrupt, and power can corrupt, absolutely. Look no further than what is happening in the United States. We should have zero corruption in 2026, but we know that will not happen, unless people start being more engaging, and less complacent.
Corruption has 49% support, we are already past fixing this crap.
Carlos: It will take a long time to undo the damage of the UCP.
This will never be undone and that is the problem.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I don’t think that there is any reason that political parties should have access to the voters’ list or the actual list itself. The risks to voters is too high.
AGREE !!!
Political parties have always handled the voter list responsibly. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.
At some time in the future, perhaps years, we can expect the perpetrators of the leak to step forward for the ceremonial tap on the wrist. One has to wonder if any mainstream media was aware of the story and sat on it.
Apparently, Elections Alberta was aware of it for ~30 days before they took any action.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11826216/alberta-voter-list-danielle-smith/ DJC
Thanks for writing another interesting, and important, column, David.
For clarification, it WAS the Republican Party that leaked the voters list to the Centurion Project. Elections Alberta (so far) apparently injects a few fake names in the lists they issue to each party, and each party’s list has different fake names, so EA can easily discover the leaker by looking for the fake names on the released list.
I totally agree with your point about more leaks in the future if something isn’t done. Given the value of a couple of million people’s personal information, it isn’t hard to imagine someone setting up a party just to get the data to sell it. Sadly, now that the method Elections Alberta has released how they determine the source of the leak, it can be easily overcome by a determined individual: create two parties, get two lists with different fake names, then eliminate the names that do not appear on both lists.
I agree that things have deteriorated to the point that Elections Alberta should discontinue the practice of releasing voter lists to the parties. As things stand now, it appears people need to decide if they want to vote badly enough to risk having their personal information leaked. This is effectively denying some people the right to vote. If nothing else, the rules should be tightened so that the list is only accessible to parties that have party status in the legislature.
There have been many questions raised about whether the folks organizing the independence petition could – if they were given access to a copy of the voters list – use it to bolster the numbers. Hypothetically. Could they go poll by poll writing in the names, addresses, etc. of people on the voters list? And forging signatures? In ink, of course, because they’re paranoid about Elections Alberta lying and cheating. (Oh, the irony!) Hypothetically, what happens next? Do they hand in the petition sheets – knowing full well that EA will be going over them line by line? Risk that EA staff might find one of the ‘salted’ names from the copy given to the Republican Party of Alberta? Can’t remove the added names remember because they’re in ink! Or maybe refuse to hand in the sheets and instead – hypothetically – demand Premier Smith recognize their effort with a gold star and unilaterally put their question on the ballot in October? That would be a conundrum. Hypothetically.
This is the only reason why they want the voter list. Once we know they have it, it becomes impossible to validate the signatures. And EA does know, by the separatists’ own admission. They don’t even need the “salted” names. EA must throw out the entire petition.
The Alberta Show is almost as hot as the America Show this season!
The Kons do not squeeze into any “Overton Window”. They initiate what their masters tell them to, and this has always been so. Their modus operandi is that of the dry gulch. Radical shifts are simply shoved into the faces of the population, who have been conditioned to self-soothe with absurd notions about democracy and incrementalism. When the Kons make cuts or undertake their Koch Bros. social engineering kookery, they don’t wait on a mental adjustment from the people. It’s a kick to the loins and a shirt pulled over the heads. Progs have done as much lying about the nature of this beast for the last sixty years as the Kons themselves. Rob Anders and Logan Day were running amok in Ottawa over three decades ago. Dinning built his sluices in that same era, which had already been kicked into gear by the Great Lougheed’s anti-labour oily schemes. All that has changed is the power at the top, greater than ever in appearance, is very rickety.
I watched David Parker on the news this morning, justifying what he did and that he didn’t break any laws, because he legally rented it. then he flipping posted it for all to see and use, in whatever way they see fit . The man doesn’t give a shit about Alberta, or any of us Albertans. Lock him up, throw away the key. Then the RPA should be fined and dis-banded. And Smith…., I wonder what was her role in all this. No matter what part she played, it’s like water off a ducks back.
This is absolutely disgusting. David Parker should be in jail and pay at least $100,000 fine. Sadly it is doubtful that anything will happen because of course David Parker helped throw out Kenney and put Smith in.
While interviewed, he said this is really no different than “looking someone up in a phone book”. The big difference is you have a choice if you want you name, address and phone number in the phone book or not. I wonder if Dingy Smith or any of the other UCP clapping seals are happy with their information being out there for all to see. Perhaps the odd lunatic will try something by looking them up and harassing or worse to one or more of them?
Why is he even being interviewed? It’s like interviewing a bank robber and giving him the opportunity to justify himself (“I need the money and after all nobody was hurt, even though I did have to aim my gun at this baby to make people understand I was serious”). A large part of the reason why characters like Parker are poisoning our political system is because they are treated as serious political agents. They are not.
Forgive me for being a little cynical about this one. All my information was shared in 2024 with the Australian billionaire so that Bennett-Jones, with Jason Kenney’s blessing, could promptly courier out their disinformation package to my home address. I believe I still have a standing coffee invitation with Mike Young; he knows where I live too. He was eager to explain the wonderful Alberta advantage to me, that is to say that water doesn’t actually run downhill here-stays tidily on the mine site, sweet, who knew?
My coordinates, along with every proponent and opponent, were shared once again in March of this year. EVERYONE who made a submission to the AER about the Terms of Reference for Grassy Mountain got everyone else’s email. Oops. Can’t remember if you wrote about that. It’s already forgotten.
All this to say, this isn’t an oopsie, a couple of buffoons gone rogue. There is design here. Single minded purpose, cold-eyed intention. Got to the cranky but earnest old lady busybodies with bad knees from messing with the big boys’ wheelings and dealings. Grind us down and spit us out. And it’s all coming from far, far away and way up high. Don’t look up!
The Gong Show continues. It’s hard to believe how stupid these people and their supporters really are isn’t it? Reformers and Friends, trying hard to get themselves jailed like the Conservative fools did in Saskatchewan under Grant Devine in 1991.
I haven’t forgotten how we tried to inform our fellow seniors how dangerous Danielle Smith was yet they literally laughed in our faces. Instead they believed every lie Smith and Jason Kenney had fed them, that’s how stupid they are. As long as politicians hide behind the word Conservative that was good enough for them, that’s how stupid they are.
Alan K. Spiller: There are people who have a hard time learning, at any age. An 18 year old, first time voter, will vote for the Conservatives, just because their 60 year old dad always did, and their 94 year old grandfather, and their 92 year old grandmother always had. Their 59 year old mother, and their 93 year old grandfather and their 91 year old grandmother always voted for the Conservatives, so that’s why they are voting for the Conservatives, without hesitation, even though it’s only the name Conservative, and nothing more.
As the Privacy Commissioner emphasizes, there are dangerous risks for women who’ve escaped abusive relationships. It is not an exaggeration to say that this could result in femicide, especially given the overlap between RWNJs and abusive men.
According to Jen Gerson, Elections Alberta knew about this problem on March 31. The information sat online for anyone to use for a whole month before they did anything.
https://www.readtheline.ca/p/scoop-jen-gerson-elections-albertas?utm_medium=android&triedRedirect=true
Premier Danielle Smith happens to be out of the country and unavailable for comment once again during a serious crisis. David Parker is her friend. She attended his wedding. Just a reminder that Parker seems to think nothing will come of his past transgressions with Elections Alberta. He’s likely right. He’s untouchable.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2025/10/02/Parker-Vows-Take-Back-Alberta-Escape-Punishment/
This is a major assault to democracy and the electoral process in Alberta. It won’t stop with this province. Canada’s electoral process is at risk, too. Yet we have heard nothing from our premier or the UCP.
Glad to see CBC had this story at #16 on its website yesterday. Stolen peacocks were higher. The Janet Brown poll was of course much higher.
Parker’s organization has the same name as a US group that has much the same objective. “Republican Party” run by a dual US/Canadian citizen and former US Marine, IIRC? Foreign interference, much? Let us recall the article above about foreign funds contributed to the cause.
Dale Nally dipped his toe in the water, a test run for the nightmarish action that has revealed itself this week. What happened? Absolutely nothing.
Crime and no punishment is how Danielle Smith’s Alberta rolls. She can sleep easy in her four-star Mayfair Hotel bed, or wherever, while abuse survivors are sleepless in Stettler, wondering whether to get a guard dog or a firearms licence. Life in Dani’s World!
Calgary housing prices down 5.7% for the month of April. Who will be Alberta’s Moses? Let my people go. Did the head Pooh Ba’s not recently state that people were arriving from elsewhere in droves? Was it not also stated that their were insufficient dwellings for rent or sale? Lions and tigers and bears oh my. 🙂
While I am a huge fan of Jeremy Appel I think that another investigative journalist deserves credit as well. Jen Gerson stumbled on this breach over a month ago and tried to warn Elections Alberta but was stymied. I am posting a link to her story for those who are interested…
https://www.readtheline.ca/p/scoop-jen-gerson-elections-albertas
Elections Alberta: We really really want to do something… but absolutely nothing can be done because the people we are required to regulate don’t allow us to do our jobs. Rather than show any ethical character or professional integrity, we will stay in our sinecures and collect massive public salaries. Thank you Albertans!
How conveniently did dingy smith have to be out of the country when this all went down. Tax payer holiday away from tax funded scandal.
Class- Action lawsuit material here. Any lawyers here to advocate for this?
How long until we see class action suits against the RPA and The Centurion Project?
For starters.
Lars: In such an event, I believe you would soon find they conveniently have no assets. DJC
No assets besides David Parker’s boundless grandiosity. Centurion Project, indeed.
Still worth it. Legal fees depleting their exchequer, leaving them little to nothing … sign me up.
No, a lawsuit needs to be directed against the province for exposing its citizens to this risk and enabling what just happened by changing laws to make it so.
A class action lawsuit naming
1) the provincial government
2) Elections Alberta
3) Parker himself & Centurion Project
4) Republican Party of Alberta for facilitating
5) if Alberta Prosperity used the list, them too
Given the careless and negligent way personal information for Albertans has been handled here, someone should go to jail.
This being Alberta, Premier Smith will probably say something about mistakes made, convincingly say they will look into it and we will hear nothing further about it, because it involves her supporters.
The only reason why a separatist gang would want names and addresses of Alberta electors is to forge signatures on their referendum petition. There is no other reason. Although Elections Alberta does call up some of the signatories, it can only be a small percentage. The fact alone that the separatists have the list must invalidate the petition immediately, as it is impossible to verify the signatures. The Republican Party and the Centurion Project must also be shut down. There must be zero tolerance for this behaviour. The list is valuable to political candidates, as it allows them to collect information about their constituents that is essential for canvassing and getting out the vote. Serious candidates respect the need for confidentiality and there’s never any problem.
Alberta may be rat-free, but it is rife with Magats of the lowest life form. A media that resembles Fox. I can feel it coming, just like the ill-fated Kamala campaign for hope. Nenshi is no Kamala, Smith is a Trumper, and all that implies.
So three questions:
1) Is there anyone (other than my unspoken choice) who can be brought forward to save Alberta, and without exaggerating, Canada?
2) How much does Nenshi care about Alberta and this flimsy federation? Carney may be able to carry it alone, but it would be so much easier and faster with 3 bad actors gone (Smith, Moe, and Ford).
3) Will Nenshi stand down?
My desperation note from the Bonnyville separatist enclave.
TENET: Naheed Nenshi isn’t the problem. The media who supports the UCP is, as they ignore Naheed Nenshi as much as possible, and so is Danielle Smith for shutting down the Alberta Legislature so it barely even has sessions. There are already cracks in the media, because this made front page headlines on The Sun newspaper. I believe this is far from over.
Judging by all the rat traps I see these days outside businesses in my city, I’d say rat-free is a myth. Ratatouille is real. Another cover-up? Shhh!
Of course we all know about the metaphorical rats that infest our province, spreading plague.
To coin a phrase from the great Larry Holmes, Kamala Harris couldn’t carry Nenshi’s jock. Progs are ostensibly smarter than Kons and yet you people seem incapable of grasping the simplest aspect of the US political structure, which is that it is a single Money Party with two right wings. Harris and friends literally admonish people for failing to vote for her just because she supports the freakiest imperialist mass murder outside Africa, that of the Stern Gang nation in Palestine. I genuinely believe that prog fairy tales have driven the great unwashed into the arms of the Koch Bros. machine because those fibs are more absurd than the nonsense spun by that machine. Happy belated May Day!
The fact remains that this government and all the individuals that associate themselves with this government continue to have an adversarial relationship with the judiciary, that is the law and the courts themselves. That has already been well documented and its intellectual history is also well known, both before and after the Covid style blockades. See for example,
“Premier Danielle Smith stated she wants the court system to refrain from interfering with the decisions of elected officials when it comes to matters of public interest, while diminishing its democratic role of holding public representatives accountable. “Democracy is when the elected officials make decisions,” she said when asked about her response to those who are concerned about the implications of Bill 2 for democracy. “Democracy is not when unelected judges unilaterally make decisions.”” “Her comments — which, according to a University of Calgary law professor, had an “authoritarian flavour””
But the student is only following the directives and policies of her long time mentors and close academic associates/mischief makers:
“Rainer Knopff and Ted Morton looked at judges and their rulings. They concluded there was often another unelected political party operating in Canada: The Court Party, the title of one of their books on the subject. That attention to the judicial backrooms of the nation allowed Ted and Rainer to expose the growing politicization of the courts.”
Generally the electorate in Alberta appears to be both comfortable and unconcerned with such questionable activities as long as the economy remains on a growth trajectory and the consumer lifestyle is unaffected. The economic losers and the critics generally have always been little more than an afterthought in a provincial economy where everyone except certain privileged social segments, is expected to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps in an environment that constantly celebrates the myth of rugged individualism.
Mr Climenhaga should hardly be surprised at this latest development as he is fully aware of how things operate and how things are managed in this Province and for whose benefit, that is,
https://albertapolitics.ca/2015/11/if-wed-been-paying-attention-perhaps-we-wouldnt-be-so-shocked-by-the-u-of-cs-corporate-influence-scandal/
Lastly, anyone that voted for the current Premier and her government also voted by default for David Parker, the separatist gang, Preston Manning and his ‘think tank’, the good old boys at the ‘Calgary School’, etc. Not forgetting that, “Of course I’m going to take advice from CEOs; who else would I take advice from?”
It always was and continues to be a package deal.
HF, will this UCP maga freedumb republican APP nightmare ever end??
Sorry, not sorry. Danielle Smith will be sharing a stage with Pete Hoekstra next week to preach the freedom gospel. So what if more than 2.9M people had their full names, phone numbers, addresses and voter ID numbers posted on the world wide web for a month by her friend David Parker? “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
https://substack.com/@sarobertson/note/c-252345365
Chances are several foreign countries have Albertans’ data. If a country near us planned to invade, they could starting by bombing every journalist’s home, as Israel is doing in Gaza and Lebanon.
Val: Bloggers, maybe. But I reckon that the typical Alberta journalist poses no threat. As Humbert Wolfe famously said in a verse that could be applied to ‘Berta with a vengeance …
“You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”
DJC
Ha! I can only respond with:
“And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!”
The question arises whether these voter data should be shared with anyone other than the electoral authority. The answer has been provided in an unfortunate, irreversible way–the fat’s in the fire, so to speak– and there’s real risk to safety, health, and human life for many Albertans as a result. There needs to be serious consequence to the consequences that will inevitably occur because of this massive data leak.
The Alberta Republican Party (now, there’s a party name that should have been banned while the UCP was at it!) has succeeded in advancing its secessionist cause, but one wonders how realistically it can ever evaluate the risk of punishment whilst basking in the warmth of favour the UCP heaps upon it. Recent polls favour the UCP, punditry suggesting NDP Opposition leader Nenshi’s tepid performance is effectively defaulting the lead to an objectively terrible government. We’ve seen how big right-wing heads get when the default they need to win power actually happens, and we’ve seen them rage in righteous indignation when it is withdrawn, as if genuinely surprised by the inevitable, yet instantly prepared to accuse the victors of evil-doing.
Ironically the decade of Liberal infighting which defaulted nine years of power to the HarperCons was terminated in 2015 by the same Justin Trudeau who, a decade later, terminated his own prime ministership that was defaulting a huge lead to the PolyCons–which of course terminated their heady hopes of winning back power as well as snuffing Poilievre’s 21-year representation of his Carlton riding in Ottawa.
(We might include Joe Clark’s 1979 victory when Pierre Trudeau’s unpopularity defaulted power to the ProgCons: Mr Who’s head got so big he forgot he only had a minority, tabled a budget like he had a majority, and made his the shortest government in Canadian history when the default was terminated by a non-confidence vote: they say opposition parties don’t win power so much as incumbents lose it all by themselves.)
But defaults are unpredictable so what the partisan-right depends a lot more on is favour, and that means cheating ( law-bending, system-gaming, voter-suppression, dirty tricks, smearing, fear-mongering, &c). For the furthering-right today there’s a certain logic adherents agree with and feel must be true: the world is so wokely corrupt that the self-righteous are perforce a beset minority through no fault of their own, so it’s only fair they allow themselves some advantages in order to win, otherwise they would never get their turn to rule–therefore it’s not cheating. This kind of logic has the American Redoubt written all over the palimpsest of Deseret, the Latter Day Saints’ aspirational nation centred around Utah, the Mormons’ 18th century redoubt.
American Redoubt generally refers to Montana, not so long ago one of the only jurisdictions of North American to lose population, census after census. By way of an exceptional kind of American exceptionalism the Redoubt would reserve the remote, sparsely populated state exclusively for conservative Christians who, redoubters allege, are otherwise everywhere victims of persecution because proximity to an excess of nonChristians deprives them of their right to worship the way they want to. The greater vision, like never-realized Deseret, includes longtime, far-right militia-friendly Idaho, Wyoming and the cold deserts of eastern Washington and Oregon states. Here they say they can live in peace, separately.
Redoubters are bold, imaginative theorists but, for all that, they’re really quite sophomoric: grandiose yet constantly tripping over important details they don’t or don’t want to see, ever having to embellish ad hoc and to stopgap the unbridgeable constitutional conundrums that keep blocking their way. It helps to consider themselves the last real Americans, preserving authenticity. The real America can’t be independent of itself so that’s not its goal; it’s the rest of the country that’s become independent, become intolerably 50.001% nonwhite and left the real America.
The Redoubt would have a different, or confederal deal with the remaining federated States of America, fancifully to exempt the unique confederate from certain parts of the US Constitution, and to implement laws no other state could legally have. It’s a plan as moot as the separatists’ claim that Alberta may unilaterally secede from Canada. Neither Constitution has a mechanism to allow any of its federates to secede or acquire a separate deal from other provinces, although the SCoC opined that it’s possible to add a secession mechanism to the Canadian Constitution by way of amendment. But what kind of conceit does it take for any American to entertain confederacy when, after all, that experiment killed more Americans than all other US wars combined and left a festering wound scar across the soul of the nation that beggars politics every day, ever since the Civil War ended in 1865?
The Redoubt looks unworkable. Not everyone is on the same page. Some adherents tout “Judeo-Christian” exclusivity as if it should absolve charges of white supremacism. Others are blunt xenophobes who consider even in-migrating California Republicans too woke (besides, they should stay in their own Red State of “Jefferson,” carved out of northeast California). Some exalt and ritualize US state boundaries while others dream of annexing parts of other states–like the Greater Idaho movement which, along with eastern Washington and Oregon, would also annex a corridor to tidewater through southern Oregon. It’s the kind of fun game pre-electronic-era boys used to play on their bed-quilts when home from school with a cold. Like certain pipelines, this is 99% pure pipe-dream; the real concern for us is that Danielle Smith has also ruminated about how the map of British Columbia might be redrawn so Alberta could have its fair share of tidewater. It always sounds so familiar somehow.
Ordinarily all this is idle speculation, but when MAGA tRumpublicanism is blatantly attempting to rig American elections, undermining public trust in democratic government, perhaps permanently, and when we see ample evidence of Maple MAGA taking its cues from it, any offence against our own electoral integrity in this unprecedented way must be met with stricture. With the advent of internet we don’t have the luxury of slow-walking tricky cases like Jim Keegstra (1982), Ernst Zundel (1984), and Malcolm Ross cases (1991) for years and years. Social media have since made a mockery of Canadian hate-speech laws, but artificial intelligence –the “monster”–has capacity to slop-swamp our already sluggish judicial system, rendering it incapable of trying suspected cases of foreign and domestic interference in our elections–to say nothing of seditious treason; we can only hope Alberta’s happily-boasting fifth-columnists are being seriously investigated by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. I just pray nobody employs Ai to adjudicate the existing backlog.
There’s common sense, even horse sense, often good sense too, but Ai sense? Has anybody at the electoral authority checked this out with a good ole ethical-relativism meter to see if it matches the basics every school kid knows instinctively? The conduct of elections must be impeccably nonpartisan to be trusted as a fair representation of voters–so we can all live together without spite, suspicion, jealousy and revenge. Who can’t figure out that it means parties, politicians, special private interests may not be involved in conducting elections or redrawing riding boundaries because they’d probably be tempted to bias the result in their own favour instead of what voters want? Who needs Ai for this?
The answer is, “no,” voter lists and data should not be provided to anybody outside the electoral authority. Great damage has been done, culpability and intent must now be thoroughly investigated and the culprits must be punished–here justice absolutely needs to be seen to be done. Activities aimed at breaking Canada’s federation –an attack on our sovereignty–must be denied leniency. Albertans must be assured there will be justice and remedy if any of them are negatively impacted by this disaster. This shit has gone way too far already.
Is Ai running the show south of the border? Is Gs (Genuine stupidity) bringing it across the border? What’s the matter with genuine intelligence bettering human nature? Ai has huge potential to make us worse. Bad time for that–I mean, it should be for the perps who corrupt the holy shrine of democracy: voting. Social philosophies and fine points of law we can do later, but now has to be time for a meting.
Scotty: The Mormon Church was founded by Joseph Smith (as the Church of Christ, if memory serves) in 1830. Brigham Young didn’t show up in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake and declare “this is the right place” for the putative nation of Deseret until 1847. Definitely a 19th Century phenomenon. DJC
Oh are these not the ones that arrived in a space craft??
Thank you, you are of course quite right. If there had been an 18th century “Mormon” church it night have become MAGA today. Thank Christ that didn’t happen.
If politically parties and/or their friends can’t play by the rules, then the rules ought to be changed. Listing all the voters’ names, addresses, phone number, etc. is violating a game rule. Don’t expect much of anything to be done about it. I get the impression if it works for the ruling party or their friends, its all o.k. Like who is going to do anything about it. Smith has her own opinion on things and that is the only thing that counts. But hey why be surprised she is simply following the e.g. of her friend dumb trump.
I’m waiting for the medical records of some to be released, hey you don’t think that can’t happen. During the Harper reign some government officials accessed the medical records of Veterans who they considered a “problem”.