Danielle Smith's Bridges to Terabithia

Enter Danielle Smith. A middling Alberta premier who has continued the glorious multi-generational march of draining provincial coffers to keep the province from building itself into something decent. American companies and investors have deeply integrated themselves into the Alberta Oil and Gas sector - many of whom are in/directly responsible for dumping unwanted oil wells while taking the profits.

What makes Smith exceptional, would be her near titanic capacity for corruption. From the Corrupt Care scandals, the disarming of the Office of the Ethics Commissioner and Elections Alberta, to an open ended effort to gerrymander electoral boundaries to a province already skewed in favour for arguably 20-25% minority rural voters, Smith continues to push forward shamelessly.

What amazing destination does Smith have left to sell for her best customers? A referendum about referendum, and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Government. She is literally selling Bridges for griefers in Alberta who still somehow imagine that the National Energy Program was some kind of foul play, and are haunted by the images of Trudeau and Carney chasing them through Terabithia.

In order to understand how we got to this con, we have to appreciate the challenges confronting Canada and the world. PM Carney’s Davos speech, the end of the old order speech, was an explicit expression of the understanding that the strategy for doing business in the world had changed. Countries once relied on a global set of rules for trade. There’s less need to diversify an economy broadly for self-reliance when the global system via the US and US currency can open up products and services.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

We the world were happy to fall into this symbiotic arrangement because the US market was expected to remain open, and individual countries could pursue competitive advantages by focusing on certain sectors.

What no one expected in Trump, was the US destroying the very symbiotic arrangement that pulled in the world’s best products, services, and minds. The US imposed tariffs against countries around the world, became antagonistic towards international institutions like the UN and the ICC, and basically destroyed energy and chemical production out of the Strait of Hormuz.

The US has successfully broken the very system that supports its own superpower capabilities and capacity. In the face of such a suicidal, and probably now fascist neighbour, Canada must literally rebuild itself with a war like posture for reliable supply chains. We are talking about re-establishing ties around the US, and repositioning Canada to fill a production void left by the US-Israel-Iran conflict.

We are now in a race. Every deke, and every tactic is to climb at each other to fill this void. Our primary competitors are Russia and the Middle East, and our ball and chain - as it always has been - is the US.

Danielle Smith’s been selling Canadians Bridges to Terabithia, and we’re seeing all of its madness into no where. Depending on who has done the polling, there may be up to 27% of Albertans who claim support for separation. But there’s also a portion of this group that wishes to move towards some kind of fascist monolithic state, tacitly and expressly stated by one of its leaders, Mitch Sylvestre. Even if we give some of the separatist movement the benefit of the doubt, and we remove the racist and fascist portion, we’re still left with a dangerous group that is responsible for the Electoral List Data Leak - one of the worst data leaks in the history of Canada. So whether Alberta remains or leaves Canada, the separatists have done real harm to Albertans. We cannot tell the extent of this harm for probably years to come.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-separatism-janet-brown-mitch-sylvestre-9.7178496

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/anti-racism-watchdog-field-complaint-arising-from-immigration-comments-made-at-separatist-town-hall

At what point will the rural Albertan voter realize that their power is probably at its maximum in Canada - that this minority group of 20-25% of Albertans are literally holding the other 75% and the Alberta and Canadian economy hostage. This vocal, overpowered Albertan minority is carrying out a violence to the majority of Albertans who don’t want anything to do with separation. When will these rural voters realize that everyone’s been watching them speak to a fence post for the last 6 months.

Alberta Separatist Group’s Controversial Voter ID App Has Links to US Ambassador, MAGA Influencers and Wealthy Michigan Republicans

PressProgress’ Luke LeBrun brings us the deep dive into the Centurion Project’s app, modelled closely after an American app known as 10xVotes. As it turns out, 10xVotes is the creation of an American company, known as Voteatron, with ties to the US Republican Party. While the funding of Voteatron and the 10xVotes app is uncertain, these products and entities appear to be tied to the Dark Money and Dark Pattern systems that the Americans have built up over the years.

Names such as Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, Drew Born, and Drew Wierda, have affiliations that lead back to the American Heritage Foundation, and the notorious Project 2025, a planning document for modern American fascism. The article itself deserves a read, and I’ll include notable highlights below.

Remarkably, Parker makes claims to have essentially served as a foreign agent in the US elections as he noted in a Podcast that he was personally responsible for Trump’s election win in Michigan.

Neither Parker nor his lawyer, Chad Williamson, answered questions from PressProgress about the nature of the Centurion Project’s collaboration with 10xVotes. Parker, however, discussed the subject at length on a recent podcast.

“In my travels in the United States, I’ve met a lot of political organizers and I’ve talked to a lot of people, and I stumbled across this group out of Michigan called 10xVotes,” Parker told a podcast last month.

“I was massively impressed with what they’d done, and I wanted to bring that idea and that methodology to Alberta,” Parker explained. “For almost two years — it’ll be two years this fall — I’ve been working with them, talking with them, trying to build this out.”

“And the result is the Centurion Project.”

…

Drew Born, a Grand Rapids commercial real estate broker and the director of Voteatron, is a well-connected Republican activist who runs a group called Michigan Family Action and previously ran for chair of the Michigan GOP.

On social media, Born has promoted the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” plan, posted photos of himself at Turning Point USA galas at Mar-a-Lago and advocated the annexation of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

…

Huizenga and Hoekstra have a personal history, as well: Huizenga is an old donor to Hoekstra’s past congressional campaigns, and the two served as campaign chairs for Mitt Romney’s 2012 West Michigan leadership team. They also served as board members for the Netherland-America Foundation (Hoekstra was later appointed US ambassador to the Netherlands, where he was accused of foreign interference after hosting an event for a Dutch far-right political party).

…

10xVotes’ business model is somewhat murky. The app describes itself as a service provided for free in support of Michigan Republicans and does not charge its users subscription fees, yet it does not publicly solicit donations through its website or indicate who funds it.

“We raise our own money,” Lance Griffin, 10xVotes’ head of public affairs, explained in a presentation to one state GOP group last year. “We don’t ask for any donations, we’ve made this free and available to all of you, all the local county parties and the Michigan Republican party [to] access our website and our data.”

However it funds itself, the group appears to have significant funds at its disposal.

10xVotes was a corporate sponsor at the 2025 Michigan GOP convention (Hoekstra’s final event as party chair) and Parker claims the group spent another $50,000 sponsoring a VIP suite at a 2024 Tucker Carlson Live event in Grand Rapids.

According to Parker’s story, he was also personally responsible for persuading Tucker Carlson to endorse the 10xVotes app that night — and, in turn, perhaps also responsible for Trump’s election victory in Michigan.

“I used all of my political capital with Tucker to get them to endorse it on stage that night,” Parker told a podcast. “We tracked the results of that endorsement, that endorsement resulted in 86,000 people who were historically non-voters voting in that election … that’s almost the victory margin for Trump.”

EVIDENCE SUGGESTS UCP JOINED APRIL 16 CENTURION PROJECT MEETING; FORMER PREMIER’S DATA SHARED

A connection is alleged between the UCP and the Centurion Project’s Elections Alberta Data Leak.

EDMONTON — Alberta’s NDP Caucus has obtained video evidence that appears to show that a senior member of the United Conservative Party (UCP) party executive and a member of the UCP Caucus staff, people that are in the Premier’s inner circle, attended the April 16 online meeting of the Centurion Project. This meeting provided training to volunteers on how to use the separatists’ project database that is at the centre of this data breach of three million Albertans’ electoral data.

The Alberta NDP Caucus obtained a recording of the Centurion Project’s April 16 online meeting, attended by 80 individuals. The attendee list and a video recording of the call identify that a ‘Rob Smith’ and an ‘Arundeep Sandhu’ were in attendance. The President of the UCP is named Rob Smith and the UCP Caucus Director of Stakeholder Relations is named Arundeep Sandhu.

Alberta’s New Democrats have passed this recording on to the RCMP as they continue their investigation.

How Did an Alberta Separatist Group Get Its Hands on the Voter List? | The Walrus

At this point, Canadians are witnessing one of the worst crashes on the public stage in history. A UCP embroiled in allegations of corruption with CorruptCare now sees separatist organizations responsible for one of the greatest data leak in Canadian history. Even more concerning is how the separatist organizations are all led by individuals affiliated with the UCP, and in some ways either travel in the same circles as Danielle Smith or have relationships with the Alberta Premier.

Justice Minister Mickey Amery looks to stand nearly at the eye of the hurricane, with allegations of conflicts of interest arising from the Corrupt Care scandals mixing with his role in these legislative amendments leading up to the Elections Alberta Data Leak.

The Walrus’ Patrick Lennox brings a review of events leading up to the Elections Alberta Data Leak, and an opinion of the seriousness of this breach. I’ll share a highlight below. I would add that these amendments to how Elections Alberta operated came at a time when Justice Minister Mickey Amery may have been seen interfering with the active EA investigations upon Sam Mraiche and others in the Corrupt Care scandals.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-alberta-justice-minister-sam-mraiche-investigation/

https://archive.ph/bXXb9

https://kopitalk.net/c/canada/p/381433/alberta-justice-minister-curtailed-election-regulator-when-sam-mraiche-was-under-investi

But outrage and disbelief at the civil servants who staff Elections Alberta is misplaced. In May of 2025, after the Liberal Party secured a minority Parliament, the UCP switched into full MAGA mode and started passing legislation that seemed geared to bring on a secession referendum. It also started tinkering in anti-democratic ways with the rules around elections. One example of this—amongst many—was Bill 54, which became the Election Statutes Amendment Act, 2025. It did three things of relevance to this discussion. The first was it set Elections Alberta’s investigative bar beyond that which common citizens’ complaints could reasonably expect to reach.

The response to Gerson is exhibit A. But it could very well be exhibit ZZZ. We know about Gerson’s complaint, because, well, she’s Jen Gerson. We don’t know how many other complaints have been concluded in the same way without investigation because Elections Alberta was unauthorized to investigate.

The second was to make it mandatory for Elections Alberta to inform anyone they were investigating that they were, in fact, investigating them. Combined with the first change, the effect was to cripple the agency by stripping investigators of the ability to conduct discreet inquiries, thus giving targets time to coordinate stories, pressure witnesses, or destroy evidence. A third change limited the length of time Elections Alberta had to investigate a complaint to a single year, down from three.

Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure warned at the time that this would make things difficult for the regulator. He argued that none of the significant investigations Elections Alberta had conducted over the previous five years would have concluded under the new authorities. He noted in documents sent to Justice Minister Mickey Amery that “we are not aware of any other jurisdiction in Canada that has imposed a similar standard to initiate investigations.” …