Voters leave a polling station after casting ballots in a provincial by-election in Cremona, Alta., in June, 2025.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
A retired lawyer is suing Alberta, its Chief Electoral Officer and two organizations that support secession for their respective roles in an alleged data breach affecting 2.9 million residents in the province.
Clint Docken, a former class-action lawyer, last week filed a sweeping lawsuit stemming from allegations the Centurion Project unlawfully obtained and distributed information contained in the province’s list of electors. He is pursuing a class-action lawsuit, noting some Albertans, including domestic violence victims, health care professionals and elected officials, are especially vulnerable given the alleged spread of their personal information.
Mr. Docken’s lawsuit takes aim not just at the organizations and people accused of inappropriately accessing and distributing sensitive personal information, but also at those in charge of protecting it in the first place. He alleges the provincial government and Elections Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer, Gordon McClure, failed to implement the safeguards, auditing requirements and enforcement procedures necessary to protect the list of electors.
The lawsuit does not contain a compensation estimate.
Mr. Docken alleges the defendants knew or should have known that the “unauthorized disclosure, dissemination or misuse of the information would create foreseeable risks of identity theft, fraud, harassment, stalking, intimidation, political profiling, doxxing, threats to personal safety, and other harms.”
He alleges he suffered damages because of the mismanaged data, including purchasing identity theft insurance.
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Political organizer and separatist activist David Parker is behind the Centurion Project, which earlier this year granted volunteers access to an online database that allowed users to search for other residents by name or address. Mr. Parker pitched the Centurion Project as a powerful tool that would help separatists identify support ahead of a provincial referendum on secession.
But the Centurion Project had much more information than what was available to average users, and the data were not secure. The Globe and Mail accessed the organization’s root database, which contained legal names and addresses for 2,957,857 Albertans. It also contained unique elector identification numbers and 2,083,175 phone numbers.
In a separate legal action launched in April, Elections Alberta alleges the Centurion Project inappropriately accessed and distributed information contained in the province’s list of electors, which the regulator said it legally provided to the Republican Party of Alberta.
Elections Alberta and the RCMP launched separate investigations in April.
Maia Hanrahan, a spokesperson for Elections Alberta, said the regulator has not yet been served with Mr. Docken’s lawsuit.
“We want to reiterate that the unauthorized use of the list of electors by the Centurion Group Ltd. is a matter we take very seriously,” she said in a statement.
Heather Jenkins, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister Mickey Amery, said in a statement that Alberta is reviewing the statement of claim.
“The protection of Albertans’ personal information is taken very seriously by our government,” she said. “As this matter is before the courts, we will not be providing further comment.”
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The defendants listed in Mr. Docken’s lawsuit are Alberta; the Chief Electoral Officer; the Centurion Project; Mr. Parker; the Republican Party of Alberta; and unnamed individuals, corporations, contractors and others “who obtained, accessed, distributed, downloaded, disclosed, or used the personal information” of potential class members.
None of the allegations in Mr. Docken’s court filing or Elections Alberta’s legal action have been proven in court. The Centurion Project and Mr. Parker did not acknowledge requests for comment.
The Centurion Project’s app went dark in late April, after Court of King’s Bench Justice John Little issued an injunction preventing the organization from sharing information allegedly derived from the list of electors.
Cam Davies, the Republican Party of Alberta’s leader, in a statement Tuesday said his organization takes precautions to protect electoral data.
“As a political party we are permitted to conduct the purposes of a party, including utilizing modern applications, vendors and volunteers to perform the tasks of contacting voters,” he said. Mr. Davies is not named in Mr. Docken’s lawsuit.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in March, 2025, warned there would be an “unprecedented national unity crisis” if the winner of the following month’s federal election did not adopt policies friendly to the energy industry.
She then promised a provincial listening tour after the federal election, to gather input on potential referendum questions. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump continued to mock Canada’s sovereignty and Alberta’s secessionists got noisy after the federal Liberals secured a fourth consecutive term in government.
Federalists launched a petition in hopes of thwarting the secession movement, and separatists collected signatures in hopes of triggering a referendum on breaking up Canada, although that effort was stymied by the courts following a challenge from some First Nations.
Ms. Smith, this May, said her government would add a secession question to the Oct. 19 referendum ballot, asking Albertans whether they want to stay in Canada or start the legal process required to hold a “binding provincial referendum” on separation.