As bad as the release of the personal data of three million Albertans in the province’s list of electors to virtually every fraudster and propagandist in the world turns out to be, it could have been worse!
And it’s only because a public employee had the good sense and courage to stand up to the Alberta’s Conservative government two decades ago that it isn’t.
Back in 2006, soon after Ed Stelmach had replaced Ralph Klein as premier of Alberta, someone in the Progressive Conservative government had the bright idea that the province-wide voters list should also include everybody’s birth date.
“I refused,” Lorne Gibson told me in an email last weekend. “I asked them why they wanted the DOB for voters and the response was that they wanted to ensure that the people on the list were eligible to vote. I told them that was my job and there would be no one on the list that was not 18 years of age or older.”
Readers will recall that from June 2006 to March 2009, Mr. Gibson was Alberta’s chief electoral officer. Nine years later, in the spring of 2018, he was hired by Rachel Notley’s NDP government to serve Election Commissioner, the position from which he was fired in 2019 by Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government for doing his job too independently and effectively with regard to election irregularities in that premier’s own successful leadership campaign.
Casting his mind back to 2006, Mr. Gibson remembered: “They said they would change the legislation to require birth dates on the list, so I enlisted the support of the Privacy Commissioner at the time to make the argument that this was not necessary nor was it a good idea in case the voters list ever got lost, stolen or leaked.”
“The government backed off,” he said. “Can you imagine how much worse this situation would be for identity theft if the list also contained birth dates?”
Remember that in 2006 the Internet was not exactly brand new, but social media was just getting started. Facebook had just stopped calling itself “The Face Book” and started letting folks sign up who weren’t university students. Twitter launched that spring. The first iPhone wouldn’t be introduced till the spring of 2007. Online identity theft was only starting to be a thing.
Who knew that the Internet would become the magnet for fraudsters of every stripe it is today? Well, apparently Mr. Gibson – who now runs an election consulting business in Manitoba – had an inkling, and it’s a lucky thing for us hapless Albertans that he did.
“The government also passed legislation for my office to provide them with all of the poll books from the elections so they would know who had voted, and when they voted, and who had not,” Mr. Gibson added. “I objected to this on privacy grounds but lost this battle.”
“It is my view that political parties, MLAs, prospective candidates, constituency associations, and leadership contestants should not be provided with the list of electors,” he told me.
“This information is collected from voters for the purposes of determining who is eligible to vote in our elections in order to protect the integrity of elections.” Voters who provide their information in good faith have no idea that it will be shared with a wide range of people, some of them pretty shady, he explained.
“The bar for becoming a candidate in an election or the leader of a political party is not set very high,” he observed. “I for one would prefer that my personal information not end up in their hands or the hands of the thousands of volunteers they hire as door-to-door canvassers or scrutineers at the polls.”
The huge breach in Alberta discovered late last month, thought to be the largest leak of personal information in Canadian history, should be a wake-up call for election-management agencies throughout Canada, Mr. Gibson argued. After all, data is managed the same way in most jurisdictions, and political parties and their agents that receive the information are not subject most places to privacy legislation or meaningful penalties.
He calls for a full public inquiry into the breach. He argues the inquiry should have “a wide ranging scope to cover not only what happened with this specific data breach but also into the conditions that allowed something like this to happen and the tools that provincial and law enforcement authorities have to deal with this.”
As things stand, Mr. Gibson said, Elections Alberta is one of the main actors in this debacle – “after all they provided the data to the Republican Party, they are responsible for safeguarding the privacy of the voter register and list, and they have been given the responsibility for investigating breaches of the elections legislation” – and yet they have now been assigned the responsibility to investigate themselves. “There is something wrong with this picture.”
Once upon a time there was an agency that could do that job, Mr. Gibson wrote. That was the Office of the Election Commissioner, which had the power to investigate how Elections Alberta did its job.
“It was not for reasons of cost saving that this agency was eliminated, as the government at the time first stated,” Mr. Gibson observed. “Nor was it to make election law enforcement in Alberta more consistent with the way it was enforced in other provinces and territories, as they later stated.”
No, it was all about making sure no one pulled back the curtain on how a certain political party was operating. Now Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP 2.0 has gone even further to make it all but impossible to investigate election jiggery-pokery.
Now why, dear readers, do you think that might be?
DJC— great follow up. And a big Thank You to Mr. Gibson.
So is this why Mr Kenny was getting out in front of the story that keeps getting more traction? Because the buses are already rolling, and the more material that comes out, the more finger pointing seems to be going on.
D’rump is still blaming Biden, maybe Marlaina is going to start blaming Kenny for initiating the policy changes.
She’s already got the two candidates lined up in front of the bus, ranked from the bottom up; just waiting to see who is going to “volunteer ” to take one for the team.
Naughty boys for not telling the boss what was going on while she was conveniently out of town (country).
What a shame that the majority of people don’t trust her and the people she associates with. Social media definitely has it’s drawbacks because of the things that are posted online**; but if people don’t trust you, they like to keep receipts because you never know when they will come in handy.
What was the old saying ” if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”…
**All the Ditchbillies that are destroying and defacing their census (not senses) forms, must have $500 kicking about to spend on fines. Things aren’t that financially tough for them obviously.
About those chemtrails….sigh!
I’m sure they consider $500 a small price to pay for sticking it to the libs so hard, eh?
Their mentor, David Parker, has taught them that fines can be ignored with no consequences
I see little Caesar is refusing to cooperate with the cease and desist order. What has he been doing with our personal information all this time?
Danielle Smith and the UCP are partakers of this unprecedented data breach. The separatists are who they suck up to. Bill 54 has compounded the problems with all of this. There is a lot more to this. It is far too serious to shrug off. Legal consequences will have to happen with this.
There are several headlines from this that should be in our mainstream media. One of them is “Former Alberta Elections Commissioner calls for a Public Inquiry into data breach”, or something similar. Hopefully they will cover this.
It is good Gibson succesfully resisted a government’s at the time idea to include birthdates. It is unfortunate the UCP has since reduced funding for elections administration because it might make things difficult or uncomfortable for a party that wanted to play fast and loose with or ignore certain inconvenient rules.
As well as the legal aspect, there are a lot of public administration and policy issues that need to be examined as a result of the data breach, which is another reason a public inquiry is needed now.
All of this and more is part of the Danni Dictatorship!
The giving those useless UCP Parliamentary secretaries a $500 / month raise, while not raising minimum wages for 7 years and now being the lowest in Canada is a start.
Also doing nothing about the breach other than claiming the folks investigating need to do this without political interference when it was their interference that caused the whole. She is simply ignoring this until it goes away, just like the other scandals.
The playing stupid by some the UCP committee members and slow play on the Forever-Canadian petition is another indication.
And so it goes on but at least the ridiculous point of privilege was dismissed yesterday by the speaker.
“It is my view that political parties, MLAs, prospective candidates, constituency associations, and leadership contestants should not be provided with the list of electors”
I agree totally. As this data breach has shown, it has become apparent that residents now have to choose between their right to privacy and their right to vote, since apparently they can’t have both. I wonder how many people have requested their name be removed from the voters’ list. Will women’s shelters now advise people escaping domestic violence to give up their right to vote?
Thank you for advocating for the people of Alberta, Lorne Gibson. I agree with you fully.
Never again should political parties have access to the electors’ list. We’ve all been exposed to fraud and identity theft. This is bad enough but it could have been so much worse. The people should not have to live in fear of their government, or in fear of the government putting them in harm’s way, yet they’ve done just that. I will never forgive the UCP. No one should. We’re at the mercy of criminals now.
Thanks for reminding us there was a time, long ago, when the Conservatives would actually listen to people and senior officials. Obviously those days are long gone. But of course one should not confuse the UCP with Conservatives because they are two completely different beasts.
A question… Are the various separatist formations and deformations just an engineered kamikaze project to boost the image and legitimacy of the separatist party in government? The original signatories of the firewall letter sure have their grubby little fingers still firmly gripping the public policy wheel after all.
Emily >>separatist formations and deformations <<
Perfect description …lol
It gets “better” when you consider the UCP will have unfettered access to the long form census data. This contains everything including name, birth date, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation at birth of everybody in Alberta answering the long form census. In my observation decent people like Mr. Gibson are increasingly rare in Alberta’s political establishment.
What you have here is a smear campaign. A disgruntled former employee.
Open, you have clearly lost your mind!
Openminded voter: No smear campaign at all.
Hi Jason! I didn’t know you read my blog! Welcome. DJC
In related news, quelle surprise, a certain Mr. Parker is refusing to cooperate with officials. With the separatists’ zeal for all things American, the affluent and well connected escaping accountability for breaking the law seems to be well underway. Not sure, but it is my understanding that Mr. Parker has not paid the fines he was issued for past electoral malfeasance. The bonds one builds as a wedding guest seem to be unbreakable.
With all that is going on provincially, the UCP’s focus is on the important things………….. like banning bike lanes in cities. If there is anything rural small town MLAs know (step right up Mr. Dreeshen) it’s how things work in the big city. Squirrel!!!!
He’s no doubt confident that Danielle Smith will grant him a pardon for any charges he’s convicted on.
I believe the access to the voters’ lists is not being applied in a logical way: the RPA ran a single candidate in a single byelection, so by all means their candidate should have access the list of voters in that constituency, not the entire 2.9 million Alberta voters. Same goes for the rest of the parties: if you run 3 candidates in a general election, you are allowed only the list of electors in those constituencies, not the entire province. Regardless of whether a party is officially recognised by Elections Alberta, there is no reason to disperse the entire list of voters in any riding they are not contesting. That would solve a myriad of problems having the Advantage Party of Alberta (2023 general election – 4 candidates), Wildrose Independence Party of Alberta (2), Communist Party – Alberta (3), Pro-Life Alberta Political Association (1), The Buffalo Party of Alberta (1) – since renamed the Republican Party in recognition of their American benefactors, etc., having this information.
Surely, none of the 22 independent candidates received the entire list of registered voters from across the province (I hope).
Unbridled
Criminality
Professionals.
I’m not using the “royal we” by saying we need a public inquiry into the most massive data breach in Alberta history because it’s also the worst one in Canadian history. To the extent that MAGA tRumpublicanism is infiltrating our nation, we need to be mindful of Donald’s F tRump’s increasingly blatant attempts to rig US elections (his most recent, inspired by consistent polling that the tRumpublican party is headed for a sound thrashing come midterms in November, is to order “patriotic Republicans” to cordon the precincts of voting places to “protect” them from citizens who vote for the other party, skin-colour being the dead giveaway).
So far, his tactics have devolved from whining (2016-17, 2020-24, and 2026) to bullying (GOP primaries) and, finally, to yesterday’s veiled threats/licensing of physical violence, but another devil in the details that Canadians (and most Americans) probably don’t pay much attention to is the extent to which MAGA has inspired so-called “red states” to implement every possible tactic to tilt elections in tRumpublican favour–adding safe GOP seats to the federal House of Representatives, subtracting the number of voting places where minorities live, and gerrymandering so blatant it exceeds its own caricature that once ridiculed the practice in newspaper editorial cartoons of yester-century, among many other arcane psephological perfidies. Maybe Canadians heard the US Supreme Court recently gutted the Voting Rights Act so hard-won by civil rights activists over half a century ago, but in the current atmosphere of “fake news” it’s hard to discern well-warranted alarm that US democracy is under serious attack from unwarranted fear-mongering that aliens are replacing white Americans–and hard to stomach too. It reminds that although the attack from the top is sharp and targeted, the less attention-getting erosion is a pervasive death of a thousand little statutes which the US Constitution allows its federates (in contrast, ours may not interfere with federal elections).
What Canadian wasn’t shocked by Jan6, 2021 insurrection, and even more so by the copycat Freedom Convoy which besieged Ottawa a year later, replete with Ivermectin anti-vaxxerism, and Nazi and Confederate battle flags? Who wasn’t amazed by the legal defences of Convoy organizers charged with various offences during imposition of the Emergencies Act which their own actions precipitated (some claiming 2nd-Amendment rights of the US Constitution in Canadian court)? After all this I was filled with trepidation when the CPC impugned that Prime Minister Trudeau knew one of his caucus had received some sort of gratuity while on campaign from a Chinese source; I thought: here we go! Trump-style Russiagate and accusations of rigged elections has finally penetrated Canadian politics! So I was pleasantly surprised that the investigation ordered by the PM found that whatever it was did not appreciably sway the election result one way or the other–and fairly astounded that the CPC didn’t accuse the PM of lying as well as cheating. Should we be complacent that Canadian politeness beaded the drip-drip of MAGA leakage like water off a goose’s back?
Of course not because, as we know, Alberta’s premier tends to copy tRump and affects a pretty realistic succubus whose unabashed lust is to conceive a MAGA cambion to rig elections in her own province. Given Smith’s interest in cider squeezings from apples of national discord, enthusiastically recommended by the Gadsden rattlesnake, Canadian patriots have legitimate concern about her breezy hallucinations of secession but are only now awakening to the fact that it’s not just an Albertan problem. Adjacent BC isn’t as immune to Maple MAGA as it is to Alberta measles. Every province probably has its own La Meute version of Alberta’s Soldiers of Odium. We might have razor-thin riding contests and recounts, but as yet we’ve been spared accusations of vote-rigging which so undermines trust in elections, thence government and democracy itself.
MAGA started poisoning politics the moment tRump started campaigning –which happened to poke the Canadian partisan right in the annus horribilus of 2015 when the nine-year federal Conservative regime’s first and last majority was defeated by the 3rd-place Liberals midst the smouldering wreckage of Alberta’s 44-year ProgCon regime which was upset by the 3rd-place NDP some months earlier (The CPC survived, the Alberta PCP didn’t). Naturally in this light, royally peeved conservatives viewed tRump’s 2016 victory as exemplary. What Canadian wasn’t worried about the Orbange One’s false claim that he won a second term in 2020, that the Democrats rigged it so he’d lose, that he thought repeated lawsuits to overturn the result would do the trick, and that pressuring the Georgia governor and electoral officer to find him tens of thousands of votes after the counting was done would do the trick better?
Half a dozen years later, tRump is worse than ever–but so is Danielle Smith’s UCP. Cocking a snook at the Constitution by way of repeated resort to the notwithstanding clause is as ordinary as the nose under her thumb, but MAGA is now wobbling as the rest of the world punishes tRump’s idiotic foreign policies, and the partisan right everywhere is doing what it always does–advancing their agendas rashly in the rush to beat their comeuppances to the finish line–the UCP’s gratuitous stacking of riding boundary commissions with their own partisans is a sign of both their desperation and of their danger. They can’t trust Albertans to re-elect them even as polls suggest they would win an election if it were held today–which kinda makes one wonder how unpopular their legislations will be in the interim. The solution is typical MAGA: destroy, therefore, the metric of trust.
Certainly only Albertans may vote in Alberta, but the democratic right to fair and democratic elections is guaranteed in the Canadian Constitution. While I agree with former Alberta Electoral Commissioner Gibson that an inquiry into the worst data breach ever should be broad, I would expand it further in the interest of all Canadians because, naturally, it pertains to the highest priority of every nation: defence of its territorial integrity.
The thin part of the wedge might no longer visible, but the diminishment of fair and democratic elections is at the leading edge. As the SCoC opined, secession is a national issue, not the “sovereign” jurisdiction of a single federate. When Smith tells the annoying SCoC and the ROC to piss off and mind its own business, she needs to be reminded that a roll in silky hay with Morpheus is susceptible to somnia interruptus. And that should be a full Canadian public inquiry in the context of our constituted democratic rights–which are immune to the notwithstanding clause, btw, Danielle. And for once Alberta won’t have cause to complain that it’s being left out.
I doubt I will be voting again in this province because it is obvious no one can trust these nut cases. I wish we could demand our names to be taken off the list for good until such time we have a real government. Jason Kenney again is playing the victim when he is the one that has the dirtiest hands. This guy should be banned from politics, what a fake jerk.
An important side effect of the data breach will be that more people will be discouraged from voting. We already have unacceptably low voter turnout. I hope you will change your mind about not voting, which would not change the effect of the data breach that has already happened.
Alfredo I agree with you about voting and I have never missed an election, but we have to figure out a way to get to these idiots. We are constantly being abused by people that have no principles, no scrupules, no nothing. I am at the end of my interest in this circus, so if this continues they can have the party themselves. If we do not vote the result is the same. They find ways to run this place as they wish. The rule of law only applies to those who follow the rules. It is disgraceful that we have no protection whatsoever on this database issue. This will die and this Dave Parker guy refuses to collaborate with the investigation and is free to do whatever he wants. If this is democracy, they can keep it. No wonder around the world democracies are failing. Who the heck wants a system that does not work other than for those that know how to take advantage of it? This is a joke.
To be clear, canvassers do not have access to the full database, and they only access the poll they’re canvassing at the time. Also the one time there is a major data leak it is not caused by a canvasser, but by the leadership of an officially recognized political party. Beware of throwing out the baby with the bath water. For smaller parties with less money door knocking is essential. Take away that information and you’re handing the election to the Conservatives, with plenty of money from big donors for advertising. Rather, there need to be severe consequences for those responsible, and real political independence for the Elections Commissioner, as well as a budget that is commesurate with their responsibilities. Also build safeguards into the voter databse itself. For example the apps that the parties use could be provided by the government so that parties only access the database indirectly and it could not be downloaded. That would have prevented the data breach that just happened. And on a related note, could we please do something about this class of scummy operatives, like David Parker and Cameron Davis (who by the way was tied to Jason Kenney who is now bitterly complaining)?
If we don’t vote, then the bad guys win.
Well BAC they win anyway. They are now applying their trump brains to make themselves permanent. What tools do we have to counter balance these mafiosi?
Justice Leonard’s ruling today on separation referendum petition has put premier Smith in an awkward position. Playing with the separatists is playing with fire.