Defending vulnerable Albertans, restoring confidence in the electoral system and holding alleged wrongdoers accountable are the main reasons behind the filing of a class-action lawsuit over Alberta’s alleged voter privacy breach.
That’s according to the counsel for the proposed representative plaintiff, whose statement of claim filed Thursday accuses the Alberta government, Elections Alberta, and the Republican Party of Alberta of failing to protect the sensitive data.
BACKGROUND: RCMP investigating Alberta voter info published by separatists
The private information of nearly three million Albertans was allegedly obtained and published by separatist group the Centurion Project in April. The leak is the focus of three investigations: by the RCMP, Elections Alberta and the provincial privacy watchdog.
“We know that an RCMP investigation is incredibly important, but it’s operated on different standards, and we won’t necessarily see the results of that investigation,” lawyer Steven Cooper told CityNews. “So with the commencement of a class action… we’re able to say to the government, ‘What are you doing? What have you done? How did this happen? How are you going to present this or prevent this from happening in the future?’
“An RCMP investigation is not going to do any of that, and internal political investigations are not generally designed to do any of that as well.”
The statement of claim also alleges David Parker, the founder of the Centurion Project, should have known his access to and use of the province’s official voter list would put Albertans in harm’s way. Parker has denied any wrongdoing in the case, initially claiming he obtained the personal information from a phonebook.
The allegations have not been tested or proven in court, and a judge must certify the proposed class-action lawsuit before it can proceed.
“It’s the vulnerable class in Alberta that has the most to worry about,” Cooper said. “And even before we filed, we started to hear about, for example, counsellors that are assisting victims of domestic abuse having to move those individuals from where they were because they were giving the safe houses in some instances as their address, that was their current address.
“And so the bottom line was we realised that we needed to get this dealt with immediately.”
Cooper says other members of society considered “vulnerable” are people in the justice system – like judges, defence lawyers and prosecutors – or social workers.
“People responsible for taking children away and bringing them into custody and preventing a parent, a mother or a father, from seeing those children, or both of them. I’m quite certain that they are, and understandably, concerned,” Cooper said.
“It has already had a direct impact, a measurable, seeable, visible impact on individuals, and the fact that… we’re getting contacted by individuals, having just made the public aware, I expect that there’s going to be an overwhelming number of instances where people are coming forward to say, ‘I am afraid that X or Y will get this information.’”
The lawsuit stems from actions taken earlier this year when Alberta elections officials said names and addresses for 2.9 million registered Alberta voters were accessible on the separatist website.
Elections officials got the website taken down and the list was traced to the Republican Party, which was legally allowed to have it but not share it with unauthorized groups, including the separatist group.
–With files from The Canadian Press