A volunteer with the Alberta Independence movement puts up a campaign sign at a petition signing location in High River in February.Todd Korol/Reuters
Jen Gerson is the co-founder of The Line.
Elections Alberta could have known more than a month ago that there was a violation of the province’s voter file, exposing the personal data of 2.9 million electors in the province to unknown numbers of bad actors.
They could have known because I warned them – or, rather, I tried to. I reported an anonymous tip. I got a call from an investigator. Elections Alberta blew me off 10 days later, stating that while they found my evidence “compelling,” they said it didn’t amount to reasonable grounds to investigate.
Almost a month passed before Elections Alberta received “credible” information it then chose to investigate. When they put their minds to it, they seemed to quickly realize that I was right.
Oops.
Anyway, Elections Alberta is now blaming their failure to fully investigate my March 31 tip on the provincial government; they claim that changes made last year with Bill 54 had effectively defanged their capacity to look into complaints.
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Meanwhile, the government is claiming that’s tosh, saying the new rules gave Elections Alberta the license it needed to look into the tip.
In short, Elections Alberta is blaming the government, the government is blaming Elections Alberta, and the separatists are all now in open war with one another on social media.
Friday truly was a spectacular day in Alberta politics, and I’ve seen a few.
That data is now in the wild, and there’s no reasonable prospect of it being rehomed.
So what’s to be done now?
Firstly, in order for Elections Alberta to operate as an independent agency, it needs to be able to operate as an independent agency. If the current legislation doesn’t provide a clear standard for allowing an investigation, then the legislation needs to be changed. The Alberta legislature is in session. The “reasonable grounds” provision can be changed this week. Do it now.
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Secondly, we require real accountability of a variety that has become vanishingly rare in this country. If Elections Alberta officials acted wrongly, or misinterpreted their legal guidelines, someone needs to get fired.
The public needs to see real consequences in order to restore trust in the institution.
Thirdly, this is an incredible opportunity for Premier Danielle Smith to put a destructive and divisive secession question to rest – at least for the time being.
The Premier of Alberta claims to be a federalist. She wants a sovereign Alberta in a united Canada, whatever that means. She’s told rooms filled with angry and aggrieved people that she wants to have the chance to prove that Canada can work for them.
But, then, Ms. Smith says a lot of things to a lot of people. The proof of her convictions lies not in her words, but rather in her actions.
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This has been one of the largest privacy breaches in the province’s history. People are scared and angry – palpably so. The inappropriate leak of the electors list calls into question the verifiability of the just-closed petition process that is trying to force a secession referendum on the province.
Meanwhile, the independent elections authority has lost the trust of Albertans to run a credible referendum; whether they lost this trust as a result of poor legislation or poor execution is a moot point.
Lastly, the data breach has fatally undermined trust in the good faith and competence of the separatists themselves, and this seems to be true even among their own fellow separatists.
If Ms. Smith is a federalist – as opposed to someone who simply claims to be in order to maintain respectability – then she will see this scandal as a political gift.
She’ll say there has to be real consequences for putting Albertans’ safety and privacy at risk. She’ll say that a secession referendum can’t possibly accrue any democratic legitimacy under the current conditions.
She’ll tell the separatists in her caucus and in her party that if they want to put a secession vote on the agenda, they’ll need to go about it the same way that the Parti Québécois did: by starting an explicitly separatist party, standing candidates for office, and securing a true democratic mandate to hold a vote.
And if she’s a federalist, she’ll take this gift quickly, while the anti-separatist sentiment is at a peak.
If she doesn’t, well, then, what we have here is a woman who is willing to put her personal ambitions and her party ahead of the safeguarding of the nation, and the rest of Canada ought to know how to regard her.
Certainly, those of us who are installing extra security cameras and locks on our doors thanks to this mess won’t fail to miss the cue.