EDMONTON— NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said Elections Alberta should take extra time to meticulously verify Stay Free Alberta's independence petition after a data breach involving Alberta's List of Electors has raised questions about the validity of the signatures gathered. "Perhaps I've been reading too many spy novels, but I'm just thinking, if I happen to have the names and home addresses of many, many, many people, and it takes names and home addresses to sign a petition to force a referendum, and I have that data, what are we going to do to make sure those signatures are valid, accurate and real?" said Nenshi to reporters on Friday. "How do we know that the petition that we haven't seen yet hasn't been salted or padded with information from this database?"Nenshi has faith in Elections Alberta's ability to conduct a fair referendum in October, despite the leaked data, but, with the exception of Thomas Lukaszuk's Forever Canadian petition, he has zero faith in the process or the way signatures were gathered. "That petition is probably fine, but I think the separatist petition we haven't seen yet, people have a right to question that," Nenshi said. .The verification process for the Forever Canadian petition included selecting a random sample of signatures, verifying the addresses, and contacting another sample of individuals to confirm whether they had signed the petition.Nenshi said that the process was sufficient for Lukaszuk's petition, but says the circumstances involving the voter list leak have created a new environment that should be treated differently."I think in this case, because there is potential evidence that some of these people may not have signed the petition themselves, given the data breach, Elections Alberta is going to have to contact people directly and say, 'Did you sign this?' in that validation process, I think for anyone, including the government, to be comfortable that they're the signatures are valid," Nenshi said..Premier Danielle Smith has said a soft deadline for getting a question placed on the October referendum is in early July.Given that Elections Alberta cannot begin verifying signatures until after Justice Shaina Leonard lifts the injunction in place while she determines whether the petition should proceed, it is likely the verification process will extend past the deadline."The worst possible thing for Albertans would be if we rush through the verification process just so Danielle Smith can keep her promise to the separatists that they will have a referendum in October," Nenshi said."We need to take the time to make sure this all makes sense if, in fact, they have the signatures, and if, in fact, the judges or the courts rule that we can even have this referendum on this question at all."Stay Free Alberta's organizer, Mitch Sylestre, plans to hand their petition signature sheets to Elections Alberta in person on Monday.
