Inappropriate distribution of Alberta’s List of Electors highlights the need for enforceable privacy rights, independent oversight, and stronger protections against misuse of voter data
Victoria April 30, 2026 – The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is calling for stronger voter privacy protections following Elections Alberta’s warning about the alleged inappropriate use and/or distribution of Alberta’s List of Electors and reports that a temporary injunction has now been granted by the Alberta Court of King’s Bench.
The injunction requires the Centurion Project to take down an online database containing voter information. CBC further reports that Elections Alberta told the court its investigation determined the list was provided to the Republican Party of Alberta, and that the database was hosted by the pro-independence group the Centurion Project.
Elections Alberta has separately stated that there was no breach of its databases or systems. The issue, according to Elections Alberta’s public statement, involves alleged inappropriate use of the List of Electors by a legitimate recipient.
“This is exactly why voter privacy cannot depend on trust alone,” said Jason Woywada, Executive Director of FIPA. “When an elector list can allegedly move from an authorized political recipient to an accessible database hosted by a third-party group, the privacy risk is immediate and concrete. The public should not be reassured only because an election agency was not hacked. Privacy protection must follow voter data wherever it goes.”
Elections Alberta has described the List of Electors as “extremely sensitive data.” The list may include voters’ names, addresses, postal codes, telephone numbers, unique identifier numbers, electoral divisions, and voting areas. (Elections Alberta)
“Voter lists are not ordinary mailing lists,” Woywada said. “They contain sensitive personal information about peoples’ homes, identities, and participation in democracy. Privacy protection must follow voter data wherever it goes.”
For some voters, address information is not merely private; it can be safety-critical. Survivors of intimate partner and sexual violence, politically exposed individuals, candidates, volunteers, election workers, and members of targeted communities may face heightened risks if residential information is exposed or made searchable outside lawful controls.
FIPA is encouraging Canadians concerned about political privacy to learn more at www.VoterPrivacy.caand to sign House of Commons petition e-7237, which calls for enforceable privacy obligations, meaningful access rights, and independent oversight for political parties.
FIPA has more questions than answers at this stage.
With the unfolding situation, we’re urging the political party, Elections Alberta, and responsible oversight bodies to provide a public accounting of the incident when legally appropriate, including:
what steps did the party took as part of its privacy management program to protect the list from unauthorized use
what elector information was affected;
whether the information was made publicly searchable or otherwise accessible online;
how long any database, tool, or copy of the list may have been accessible;
whether the information was disclosed to, accessed by, or copied by any third party;
how many electors may have been affected;
what containment, takedown, recovery, deletion, or evidence-preservation steps were taken;
whether affected individuals will be notified;
what the temporary injunction requires;
what enforcement or compliance action follows; and
what reforms are needed to prevent similar incidents.
The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association is a non-partisan, non-profit society established in 1991 to promote and defend freedom of information and privacy rights in Canada. FIPA works to empower people by increasing access to information, strengthening privacy rights, and advancing transparency and accountability in law and policy.
Media contact:
Jason Woywada
Executive Director
BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association
fipa@fipa.bc.ca
www.fipa.bc.ca
Background
Canadians want stronger voter privacy protections
The Alberta warning comes shortly after the release of new Ipsos polling conducted on behalf of FIPA, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Centre for Digital Rights, and OpenMedia as part of work with www.VoterPrivacy.ca. The Ipsos release states that only a small minority (10%) of Canadians prefer a self-regulatory model for federal political parties, while the majority (68%) per cent support legislated privacy requirements with strong independent oversight to oversee federal political party information practices. (Ipsos)
These gaps are why FIPA is calling on Parliament to ensure that federal political parties are subject to meaningful privacy obligations, including:
access and correction rights for individuals;
limits on collection, use, disclosure, and retention;
safeguards that follow voter data wherever it goes;
breach notification requirements;
independent oversight;
penalties or remedies for misuse; and
clear accountability for political parties, agents, vendors, data brokers, and third parties.
FIPA is encouraging Canadians concerned about political privacy to learn more at www.VoterPrivacy.ca and to sign House of Commons petition e-7237, which calls for enforceable privacy obligations, meaningful access rights, and independent oversight for political parties.
Albertan voters have rights and can exercise them
FIPA has also developed public education resources to help people understand how political and election privacy rules operate across Canada, including a dedicated resource on provincial election privacy in Alberta.
FIPA’s Alberta resource explains that Elections Alberta collects and stores personal information in the Register of Electors, and that Alberta’s voters list may include a voter’s unique identifier, name, address, and phone number if provided. It also explains that Alberta’s voters list is not publicly shared during elections, but is shared with MLAs, registered political parties, and political candidates.
Voters also have the right to request information removal from the voters list by contacting Elections Alberta, the information for which can be found at Elections Alberta.
Authorized access must not become unauthorized disclosure
Under Alberta’s Election Act, the List of Electors is provided only to specific authorized recipients and may be used only for purposes expressly permitted by law. Elections Alberta says third parties are not eligible to receive copies of the list at any time, and that each list provided to an eligible recipient contains security features that allow Elections Alberta to identify who received each specific copy.
If information from a list provided legitimately to a political party gets out, the leak suggests that either someone within the party illegally provided the list to an outside person, or an outside person took the information by improperly accessing the party’s systems. According to the Elections Act (RSA 2000, c E-1 s.163), anyone who misuses electors list information may be fined up to $100,000 or jailed for up to a year.
If an electoral list was accessible through a database hosted by a third-party group, the risk is no longer limited to poor internal handling. It raises the possibility that sensitive information about voters’ homes, contact information, electoral districts, and unique identifiers could have been exposed beyond lawful controls.
In Alberta, the only privacy obligation on political parties and candidates is to “take all reasonable steps to protect the list and the information contained in it from loss and unauthorized use,” (Election Act s.19.1(a)). There is no statutory obligation for political parties to have a privacy policy, privacy management program, or meet privacy standards. Political parties and candidates are also explicitly excluded from the Personal Information Protection Act (s 4(3)(m) and (n)).
Voter data can increase foreign-interference risk
The Alberta case should also be understood through the lens of election security and democratic resilience.
There is no public evidence at this time that foreign actors were involved in the Alberta matter. However, if sensitive elector information is made accessible outside lawful controls, the risk profile changes. Information that can identify voters, households, electoral districts, and contact points may be useful to any actor — domestic or foreign — seeking to microtarget, intimidate, impersonate, suppress, or manipulate democratic participation.
FIPA has previously raised this concern through its participation in the Foreign Interference Commission’s public consultation process. In that work, FIPA warned that gaps in Canadian law leave sensitive personal information held by political parties and candidates vulnerable to foreign interference.
The Alberta matter should be understood in the context of the ongoing national debate over political party privacy rules. As FIPA has highlighted 2026 is starting to have a recurring theme: Friday the 13th, 2026 – A transparency horror show.
“Alberta’s warning is not just a provincial story,” Woywada said. “It is a national democratic privacy warning. Canadians should not have weaker privacy rights when their information is held by a political party than when it is held by a business, charity, public body, or election agency.”
FIPA and its partners launched www.VoterPrivacy.ca to help Canadians understand how political parties collect, use, retain, and share personal information, and to support reforms that give voters meaningful privacy rights.
“Privacy policies are not privacy rights,” said Woywada. “Canadians need the right to know what information political parties hold about them, the right to correct inaccurate information, the right to meaningful safeguards, and the right to independent recourse when things go wrong.”
