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The Centurion Project is led by longtime political organizer David Parker.

One post showed a picture of a “white pages” phone book with the caption: "Look everyone! I found names and addresses in a nefarious document called a phone book! Call the cops!"

In 2010, the Yellow Pages Group said residential phone directories — often referred to as the white pages — would only be available upon request in many major Canadian cities, including Edmonton and Calgary. 

According to Centurion’s social media accounts, the party’s goal is to “recruit, equip and mobilize a team of community leaders across the province of Alberta to take on the task of winning Alberta's sovereignty.” 

The group, which has offices in Calgary, has upcoming “Operation Secure Independence” events throughout the province.

Centurion registered with Elections Alberta as a third-party advertiser on April 24. It is 

among a number of pro-separatist groups that want Alberta to gain independence from the rest of Canada. 

I’m a provincial affairs reporter based in Edmonton. 

Provincial NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said Albertans should be angry and “deeply alarmed” by how easy people could access their private information while the database was online. 

“There are very, very serious implications for this kind of behaviour,” Nenshi said in response to reporters’ questions at an unrelated news conference in Calgary. 

“It's dangerous. It puts people's lives at risk and it puts our democracy at risk.”

Nenshi also pushed back at suggestions from Centurion Project leader David Parker, posted today on X, that the electoral list contains the same information seen in a public phone book. That sentiment was also in posts from other Albertans who support separatism. 

Nenshi said the voters’ list includes additional information.

He called on the provincial government to ensure Elections Alberta has enough funding to properly conduct an investigation. 

“Every single Albertan who votes has had their personal data breached by these people,” he said. “This is not a joking matter.”

In an interview with The Canadian Press, the leader of the Republican Party said it hadn't received official communication from Elections Alberta.

Cameron Davies said the party has issued a notice to the Centurion Project that any information the group may have allegedly received — if it came from the party — is not to be used.

"We were proactive on that before the injunction today, and we'll be fully complying with Elections Alberta," Davies told The Canadian Press. 

Alberta independence has been a hot topic in recent years, with efforts underway to force a referendum on the topic. 

A group called Stay Free Alberta has a petition underway that aims to trigger a referendum on the province separating from Canada, using provincial legislation. The group says it has already collected more than the required 178,000 signatures.

The petition has a deadline of May 2 and has not been certified. A judge has ordered a month-long stay preventing Alberta’s chief electoral officer from certifying the results.

Another petition, called Forever Canadian, seeks to make it an official policy for Alberta to stay in Canada. That petition was deemed successful in the fall. Alberta law requires the legislature to refer such successful policy petitions to an all-party legislative committee.

Neither petition has made it onto a referendum ballot. 

The province is set to hold a referendum in the fall on several other topics proposed by the government.

Because Thursday's hearing in Edmonton was hurried onto the docket, representatives for the Centurion Project and the Republican Party were not in attendance.

The parties are expected to be served later today, court heard. 

The temporary injunction granted this morning orders the list to be removed from public access, and demands that Elections Alberta be given a full list of everyone who has registered to view it.

It also prohibits the Republican Party from sharing any voter list with unauthorized users. 

This measure was introduced to ensure a "fresh list" cannot be obtained and shared with the public, said Elections Alberta lawyer Joseph Redman.

I'm Janet French, a provincial affairs reporter here in Alberta.

With full names, addresses, phone numbers and electoral divisions of nearly three million Alberta voters becoming publicly searchable, lawyers and other participants in the justice system could be understandably nervous.

Shawn King, president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers' Association in Alberta, calls it a "terrifying" security breach for lawyers, judges, police officers and sheriffs, as well as accused individuals, witnesses, victims and families who have been involved in criminal court cases.

King said he has had death threats yelled at him at the end of murder trials, when officers had to escort him back to a hotel room.

"I don't want a client, a dissatisfied client, or a witness or a complainant or a family member of someone who I've had to deal with at trial, knowing where I live, potentially coming to my home … [when] my wife and my children are there and I'm not there, or sitting outside stalking," he said.

King can't remember a breach of this magnitude happening in Alberta before.

The Elections Alberta list of electors was in the news in March when Service Alberta Minister Dale Nally referenced the list in his official response to a recall petition targeting him. 

Nally was not penalized — even though an investigation found he violated the legislation. 

In November, Nally stated that the constituent behind the effort to recall him didn't vote in the last election and questioned whether that should disqualify the petition.

However, Elections Alberta commissioner Paula Hale said Nally had accessed the list of electors for "a purpose not authorized by the Election Act." 

In a March letter, Hale said there was ambiguity about whether the use of the list would have been appropriate in the circumstances and closed the file without penalty or reprimand to Nally.

Respondents were asked how they would vote if a referendum was held today asking if Alberta should separate from the rest of Canada.

About 27 per cent said they'd vote for separation, while roughly 67 per cent said they'd vote against it. Six per cent responded that they weren't sure.

"What was amazing was how very close the numbers this year were with last year, well within the margin of error," said Calgary-based pollster Janet Brown, whose Janet Brown Opinion Research directed the random survey of 1,200 Albertans between April 7 and 22, carried out by Trend Research. 

The survey has a margin of error of +/– 2.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The survey also asked respondents how they thought a majority of their fellow Albertans would vote. About  nine per cent of respondents thought it was very likely that a majority of Albertans would vote to separate from Canada, while 20 per cent said it was somewhat likely.

Some 34 per cent said they thought it was not very likely, while the same percentage of respondents said they thought it was not at all likely.

An anonymous complaint made Elections Alberta officials aware of the database, court heard Thursday.

Investigators following up on the complaint became concerned about a YouTube video showing how to search the Centurion Project database for names and personal information.

Investigators signed into the database to view the electoral list and discovered profiles for scores of voters. They then used a specialized software program that linked the database to the electoral list provided to the Republican Party of Alberta in June 2025.

This probe left investigators with a “high degree of certainty” that the list provided to the Republican Party and the one being shared to the public are a match, said Redman.

But there is a "question mark" around how Centurion Project obtained the list, the lawyer for Elections Alberta said. 

"How that transaction happened, I can't say," Redman told the judge.

Senior Elections Alberta officials were in the courtroom but declined to comment on the probe. None of the respondents were in court this morning but are expected to be served today. 

During the hearing, the court heard details of the Elections Alberta investigation into the database breach.

The investigation hinged on something called "salted names," according to lawyers.

Each electoral list released by Elections Alberta contained fictitious entries or false names. These allow investigators to trace each list back to its source in the event of a breach or contravention of access laws.

Using a specialized program to probe the database, senior investigators allegedly determined that the list published on the database was the one legitimately given to the Republican Party of Alberta, court was told. 

It’s not clear how the list was shared with pro-separatist group Centurion Project, which hosted the database, but it was "once in the hands" of the Republican Party, said lawyer Joseph Redman.

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