‘I’m tired of being a punching bag for that crowd’: Jason Kenney on Alberta voter data leak

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney speaks during an interview in Calgary, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney says he believes he should pursue legal options to hit back at the members of a separatist group who shared his personal information online.

“Personally, I’m tired of being a punching bag for that crowd, and I think there needs to be consequences,” Kenney told CTV Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an interview airing Sunday.

“I’m glad to hear that there’s an … investigation,” Kenney also said, adding he hopes the investigations by Elections Alberta, the RCMP and the provincial privacy commissioner wrap quickly so they can issue sanctions before a potential October referendum on Alberta separation.

Last month, Elections Alberta said it had been made aware of an inappropriate use and distribution of a list of voters.

The notice came after reporting that the names, addresses and phone numbers of nearly three million Albertans — Kenney among them — were published online by a separatist group called the Centurion Project.

Elections Alberta says the list was legally obtained by the Republican Party of Alberta, though it’s unclear how it wound up with the Centurion Project.

Kenney said when news of the data leak became public, he “immediately knew what that meant” for him, because the group involved has been “making pretty creative threats” against him for years.

“That group started basically as an anti-vax, kind of convoy-adjacent movement back in 2021, and there’s some pretty highly caffeinated people there,” Kenney said. “And so, I’m taking prudent security measures.”

“But I’m also concerned for the three million people whose privacy has been breached here,” Kenney added. “Think about the vulnerable women, victims of domestic violence, whose perpetrators can now more easily find out where they’re living and so forth.”

The Alberta NDP, meanwhile, revealed this week it had obtained a video recording proving United Conservative Party (UCP) staff members attended an online meeting hosted by the Centurion Project two weeks ago. During that meeting, according to Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, members of the Centurion Project displayed Kenney’s personal information specifically to a UCP staffer to demonstrate they could access the data for any Albertan.

“It was essentially incitement,” Kenney told Kapelos. “For that individual to show that information to that particular group was not coincidental.”

“It wasn’t arbitrary,” he added. “It was a very deliberate message being said.”

Asked why he believes he’s being targeted, Kenney said he receives threats from people “in that ecosystem” regularly. He added the group may be targeting him because he’s an “outspoken federalist.”

“These are folks who are just angry with modernity, with elites writ large,” he said. “And for them, I’m like one of the local representatives of all that they despise about Canada and modernity and globalism.”

David Parker, a key organizer behind the Centurion Project, claimed on social media after news broke of the Elections Alberta investigation that there had been no data breach.

Parker posted a statement on behalf of the separatist group, claiming the group relied on “a third party to provide us with datasets for this tool” and that the group plans to “fully comply” with the Elections Alberta investigation.

In a post a day later, Parker wrote, in part, to his followers: “Chill out, this is what lawfare looks like.”

Separation not being taken seriously enough: Kenney

Amid reports of the data leak and official investigations underway, Alberta separatists say they’ve gathered more than 300,000 signatures on a petition to trigger a referendum on independence.

Asked whether he believes the issue of separation is being taken seriously enough across the country, Kenney said: “No.”

The former premier said he doesn’t think many central Canadians understand Alberta’s history and grievances, citing the “historical roots of Western alienation,” in the National Energy Program, and the impact of former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s environmental policies.

“I would encourage my fellow Canadians across the country to take a moment and try to understand that and demonstrate some empathy, or some understanding of Albertans’ frustration,” Kenney said, adding while the number of “hardcore separatists” may be small, the group of “frustrated federalists” is much larger.

“(They) know separatism doesn’t work,” he said. “They’re proud Canadians at one level, but they want to send a message, and they think that maybe this is the way to do so.”

Kenney said it’s “time to start making arguments” against separation, rather than hoping the issue will go away on its own.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, Kenney added, would be “very well placed to do so,” in part because he grew up in Alberta and now represents a rural Alberta constituency.

“To his credit, he ran in a byelection, in an area of rural Alberta where there’s a fair bit of separatist sentiment, on a very clear federalist platform, and he won over 80 per cent of the vote,” Kenney said, adding it would be an opportunity for Poilievre to “demonstrate that he is a qualified and patriotic Canadian political leader.”

You can watch former Alberta premier Jason Kenney’s full interview on CTV Question Period Sunday at 11 a.m. ET

With files from CTV News’ Brennan MacDonald