Given his longtime self-assigned role as Rabble’s resident expert on Alberta politics, it’s no surprise that David Climenhaga has been been filing regular dispatches on the rapidly unfolding — and expanding — controversy over the apparent leak of the provincial voter list by the avowedly pro-separatist Centurion Project, starting with what would turn out to be an eerily prescient off-the-cuff analysis of the root cause posted shortly after the story broke.

“It may have been the fringy Republican Party of Alberta (RPA) that got caught letting data from its copy of Alberta’s 2.9-million-name voters’ list be published online in violation of the law, but it is the law-bending style of politics embedded in this province by the United Conservative Party (UCP) that made such a breach inevitable,” he wrote on May 1.

For those who may have lost track of the timeline, that was the day after Elections Alberta confirmed the “unauthorized use” of the data, and advised Albertans that it was “taking every possible action to protect and recover the information,” a reassurance that left Climenhaga unmoved.

“It’s the giant sucking sound south of the border known as Artificial Intelligence that makes it a potential disaster that could linger for years,” he warned.

“Protecting and recovering the names, addresses, phone numbers and voter-registration numbers on the list is impossible because it is bound to have been gobbled up by the AI monster. The massive leak is guaranteed to be used for fraud, identity threat, harassment, abuse and legion other evils. The name of virtually every Albertan reading this story is on the list!”

He’s also been keeping tabs on the reaction from the erstwhile “political allies” of Centurion Project lead organizer David Parker, who “don’t want to be associated with him just now,” he notes.

By his count, that included “ubiquitous separatist Jeffrey Rath,” who took to social media to proclaim that “neither Stay Free Alberta or the Alberta Prosperity Society are affiliated with the Centurion Project or David Parker, (or) have had access to any lists in the possession of either the Alberta Republican Party or David Parker or the Centurion Project.’”

Meanwhile, “Parker’s former wedding guest (Alberta Premier Danielle Smith) has apparently never even heard of the guy,” based on the response from her office, which “sure sounds … like the premier is getting ready to throw someone under the bus,” he notes.

“Now, I recognize that this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Parker has done all Albertans a huge favour by exposing the inexcusably sloppy way the Government of Alberta has protected confidential personal data about nearly three million of us. The breach also exposes the amateurish conduct of Elections Alberta, albeit after being defanged by the UCP in the party’s effort to make things easy for Smith’s separatist allies.”

A few days later, he followed up with a bulletin on the 568 formal cease-and-desist letters that Elections Alberta had sent out to “people involved one way or another with the Purloined List of Electors Affair,” as he called it.

“With the data long gone, the Alberta government utterly lacks the knowhow, the manpower, the capability or the inclination to do anything useful about this,” he noted. “Ottawa needs to act, but is unlikely to risk it. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has other fish to fry.”

His updated takeaway: “The days when a List of Electors can reasonably be given to political parties – including the big ones with seats in the Legislature – are over. And not just in Alberta. But that doesn’t mean it won’t continue to happen. The separatists should calm down. They already control the UCP. This is why Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP government cannot be trusted to manage this problem. This story will continue to generate headlines at a feverish pace. The UCP is going to have to do something really outrageous to distract us all from the uproar. They’ll most certainly try.”

Also monitoring the shifting dynamics amongst Alberta conservatives: Press Progress editor Luke Lebrun, who flags the recent move by a high-profile organizer within the independence movement, who “is calling on supporters of Alberta independence to join Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party en masse to exert pressure on the party from the inside,” he reports.

“Mitch Sylvestre, a sporting goods store owner from Bonnyville and the self-described ‘leader of the Alberta independence movement,’ says Alberta separatists need to ‘leverage the UCP’ by signing membership cards to nominate separatist candidates and push the party to adopt separatist-friendly policies,” LeBrun explains.

“Sylvestre, who leads the secessionist group ‘Stay Free Alberta’ that delivered 300,000 signatures from a petition calling for a referendum on independence to Elections Alberta on Monday, appeared in a YouTube livestream over the weekend explaining that the next step for Alberta separatists is to make sure Smith’s government allows a vote on independence to happen.”

Among his suggestions, as per LeBrun: “Make your MLA aware of the fact that you want Alberta independence and that you’re a member and you’re going to recruit other people to take the same stand and do it the same way. If we don’t get it to the vote, nothing else happens. So, we have to be very sure that we leverage the UCP, give them a reason to believe that we’re going to be there and give them a reason to believe that we’re going to participate.”

That, according to Sylvestre, “will motivate them to put this question on a standalone ballot as a constitutional question that will effect change in the province of Alberta,” LeBrun notes.

Meanwhile, The Maple’s Emma Paling highlights a newly launched campaign by “anti-war organizers” to register their opposition to “Toronto’s bid to host a new global bank that will fund the arms industry,” which they have dubbed the ‘war bank.’

“The ‘Defense, Security and Resilience Bank,’ or DSRB, was originally an idea proposed by NATO,” she explains.

“Last week, Canada was officially selected as the host country, and some of its major cities — Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal — are vying for the chance to host the bank’s headquarters.”

In response, “organizers of a neighbourhood Palestine solidarity group are turning their focus from lobbying elected officials to pushing financial institutions to divest from the war bank,” she reports.

“Toronto teachers are pressuring the head of their pension plan to drop it. University students are linking the fight against war profiteering to the fight against Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s cuts to tuition grants, (and) groups that advocate for better health-care and a healthier environment are condemning the bank as an example of how increased militarism will take resources away from those priorities.”

Over at Canadian Dimension, James Adair — who, according to his bio, is an “Ottawa-based socialist organizer” — laments the rise of what he calls ‘statement socialism,’ which “is hollowing out the Canadian left,” he warns.

“Unable to meaningfully shape events, the (New Democratic Party) and organizations like it increasingly fall back on reacting to them. A crisis emerges, and a statement follows. Instagram posts—often built from the same Canva templates—condemn injustice, assert solidarity with whatever the affected group is, and issue demands that remain entirely abstract. Supporters dutifully repost them. Critics argue over wording in the replies. Within days, the cycle moves on.”

The problem, as he sees it: “These statements share a defining feature: they offer no plausible path to changing the conditions they describe. It feels like meaningful political action, but it isn’t. Statements will always have their place. But they cannot be the centre of political life. If the left wants to move beyond managing its own discourse and begin shaping the world around it, it will have to log off, take risks, and organize. The alternative is to remain highly expressive, permanently reactive, and fundamentally powerless.”

Rounding out the progressive-left rotation, The Breach’s Desmond Cole sounds the alarm over what he describes as Carney’s “carbon capture scam” in a video that clocks in at just under five minutes.

“As the climate crisis rages, Mark Carney is dangling a shiny object to distract us,” he warns.

“Rather than aggressively cutting emissions, the Liberals are promising to capture and store them. Sounds good, right?”

Spoiler alert: It’s not, according to Cole.

“The scheme is expensive, has a terrible track record — and in some cases, even leads to more emissions. Worst of all, it’s being used as a cover for even more fossil fuel production, even as the rest of the world starts to transition. So, why does Mark Carney keep pushing this tech on behalf of the oil industry? It’s likely related to his partnership with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. The technology allows Carney and Smith to argue that Canada can somehow increase oil production and keep emissions in check at the same time.”

In reality, he contends, “this solution is like being told that you’re producing too many eggs, and then trading a bunch of your eggs for some chickens.”

Trending on the right-of-centre side of the Canadian activist mediaverse:

• Alberta-based Rebel Sheila Gunn Reid, who is also the primary contact for pro-independence third-party advertiser Act for Alberta, shares more numbers from a poll commissioned by the group, which found that “nearly 60 per cent of United Conservative Party supporters” — and 46 per cent of First Nations respondents “would vote to leave Canada.”
• Rebel News commander Ezra Levant offers his take on Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine Smith’s narrow defeat in a hotly-contested race to run for the provincial party in an upcoming byelection, in which a “snow white Liberal is stunned that migrants in his neighbourhood voted for their own ethnic group instead of him.”
• Juno News correspondent Clayton DeMaine files an “exclusive” report that reveals CBC was “behind” a “media sting attempting to smear political commentators, including academic Frances Widdowson, (an) unnamed RCMP officer, and later (B.C. MLA) Dallas Brodie.”
• Juno contributor Melanie Bennett highlights a complaint by an unnamed local “parent” that a local elementary school “pushed a pro-Hijab book” on elementary school students during a “school-wide read-aloud of The Proudest Blue, a children’s book celebrating a young girl’s first experience wearing a hijab.”