Alberta’s United Conservative caucus confirmed Tuesday that staff attended an April 16 Centurion Project online meeting — but Premier Danielle Smith has not personally addressed the disclosure, leaving the opposition to demand answers about what she knew and when.
The confirmation came from caucus Director of Communications Shanna Schulhauser, not Smith’s office, after the Alberta NDP released screenshots appearing to show two names in the meeting’s attendee list: Rob Smith, listed on the UCP’s governance page as party president, and Arundeep Sandhu, identified by the NDP as the UCP caucus director of stakeholder relations.
Schulhauser confirmed staff attended but denied that party president Rob Smith was among them. “Caucus staff regularly attend events of political interest, including the meeting in question,” she said. “The organizers of this meeting were adamant that the data being used was obtained legally. At the time, the staff observing the meeting had no reason to believe the website in question was unlawful.”
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UCP party communications director Dave Prisco was more direct, calling the NDP’s allegation false. “Naheed Nenshi is using a common name to drag our president through the mud,” Prisco told Global News. “Rob Smith was never at that meeting, nor has he been at any Centurion meeting. It is a flat-out lie.”
The April 16 session drew roughly 80 attendees. The video the NDP passed to the RCMP allegedly shows Centurion members demonstrating the database by searching for former Alberta premier Jason Kenney’s name and address — displaying his personal information on screen for all participants.
Kenney said Tuesday he is retaining legal counsel. “Over the past few years I have received no shortage of threats from people broadly associated with the separatist/antivax/far right movement in Alberta,” he wrote on X. “So it is disturbing that my personal information is now broadly available, particularly in those circles.”
NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi accused the Smith government of inaction. “The premier’s own staff and her most senior party officials knew about this data breach and did nothing,” he said, adding that only two explanations exist for Smith’s claimed ignorance: “One is that she did know and she’s lying about not knowing, or that caucus staff keep her in the dark.”
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Smith appeared in question period on Tuesday but did not address the staff attendance. She distanced herself from Centurion co-founder David Parker, saying he “has not been supportive of this party for some time.” Smith has previously said she learned of the breach through media reports — a timeline the NDP says is impossible given that caucus staff attended the April 16 session nearly two weeks before the story became public.
The NDP said it notified the RCMP on April 17, one day after the meeting took place. Schulhauser questioned why the opposition waited weeks to do so. “We also remain concerned that members of the NDP, including the Leader of the Opposition, may have suspected the list was illegal but did not bring this information forward to the government for several weeks. Perhaps instead of pointing fingers and playing politics the NDP should let these independent bodies do their job and investigate.”
The Centurion Project, co-founded by Take Back Alberta organizer David Parker, built the database from the provincial electors list traced to the Republican Party of Alberta — a registered separatist party that legally received it from Elections Alberta. Elections Alberta obtained a Court of King’s Bench injunction April 30, ordering the database taken down; the Centurion Project complied.
Read: RCMP Investigates Alberta Separatist Group Over Alleged Misuse of 2.9 Million Voter Records
The list exposed names, addresses, electoral identification numbers, and over two million phone numbers belonging to nearly 2.96 million Albertans. Unauthorized distribution under Alberta’s Election Act carries penalties of up to $100,000 or one year in prison.
Three bodies are now scrutinizing the breach — the RCMP, Elections Alberta, and Alberta’s privacy commissioner, who warns her office may have no jurisdiction over political parties at all. Calls for a public inquiry are mounting.
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