EDMONTON — UCP President Rob Smith and the caucus's Director of Stakeholder Relations, Arundeep Singh Sandhu, allegedly attended a virtual meeting for The Centurion Project and witnessed a demonstration of the database, but reportedly failed to notify Elections Alberta or the RCMP of anything suspicious. Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi revealed on Tuesday that screenshots and recordings from the April 16 meeting showed individuals named "Rob Smith" and "Arundeep Sandhu" observing as founder David Parker explained the project and demonstrated how individuals use the database. The video and screenshots do not indicate whether the information shared at the meeting suggested the data came from a breached copy of Alberta's List of Electors. .The UCP party claims that Rob Smith never attended a meeting of The Centurion Project. "Naheed Nenshi is using a common name to drag our president through the mud," reads a statement from Dave Prisco, Director of Communications for the United Conservative Party. "Rob Smith was never at that meeting, nor has he been at any Centurion meeting. It is a flat-out lie."The UCP Caucus's office released a statement confirming that a staffer was in attendance at the meeting, as is often the case at events of political interest, but found no concern at the time about whether the data came from the electoral list."The organizers of this meeting were adamant that the data being used was obtained legally," reads a statement issued by Shanna Schulhauser, Director of Communications for the UCP Caucus. "At the time, the staff observing the meeting had no reason to believe the website in question was unlawful."“We remain concerned about the allegations of a potential data breach and are awaiting the results of the ongoing investigations by Elections Alberta and the RCMP."If party officials were aware of a potential breach of the electoral data, they would have been required to contact Elections Alberta and the RCMP and notify them of their concerns.Nenshi said that is what the NDP did after learning of the potential breach on April 17..Premier Danielle Smith claims she learned about the data from the media on Thursday, while she was on a government trip in the U.K."We are not going to make any statements that might interfere with the outcome of this investigation," said Danielle Smith in Question Period when Nenshi asked if she would remove Rob Smith and Sanduh from their positions."The member opposite should know that when politicians interfere in independent investigations, it could throw out the outcomes of those investigations."We want the people responsible to be discovered, to be found out and to be held accountable, and that requires these processes to play themselves out independently."Nenshi was not satisfied with her response, though, claiming that she should have been well aware of what was happening, and there should be repercussions if she was not informed."We deserve a premier who is not just an innocent bystander to the government, Nenshi said to reporters. "A premier who actually runs the place.""I'll be very frank with you, there is no way on earth one of my staff members or a senior party official would attend a meeting without me knowing about it, discover something illegal was going on and not tell me if that were true.".Screenshots released by the NDP showed Parker demonstrating the database, displaying information about former premier Jason Kenney, though there is no indication of where the data came from."Jason Kenney already deals with threats all the time, and he exposed Jason Kenney's personal information and his home address in this meeting, and he was proud that this is what he did," Nenshi said about Parker.“The Premier's staff member, Premier's party president, if indeed it was them, sat through a meeting where Jason Kenney's personal information was exposed, and the Premier expects us to believe that they didn't tell anybody, that they just thought it was fine, that it was okay."Danielle Smith said it is not ok that Kenney's information was leaked in the data breach, nor that of any other public official or vulnerable person..Elections Alberta and the RCMP are both investigating a suspected data breach of Alberta's List of Electors after information from a copy of the list issued to the Republican Party of Alberta was found on the website of an Alberta independence advocacy group, The Centurion Project."The Centurion Project relied on a third party to provide us with datasets for this tool," reads a statement from The Centurion Project issued on Thursday."The Centurion Project is aware of recent allegations regarding the app’s data. We have taken action to shutdown the app until we can ensure that the dataset is compliant with Alberta and Federal privacy laws."Cameron Davies, the leader of the Republican Party of Alberta, told the Western Standard that his party gave a "third-party" access to the list to conduct party business on their behalf, and rescinded it once they learned about the potential misuse.The Centurion Project and the Republican Party of Alberta have said they will comply with both investigations.
