The illegal use of voter information by rightwing separatists in the province of Alberta has raised fresh fears over Canada's electoral integrity by making valuable and incredibly confidential personal data easily accessible to malicious actors, security experts have warned. The data breach, one of the largest in Canadian history, has prompted warnings of a truly terrifying new battleground over information, persuasion and foreign interference in already weakened democratic systems.
In January, Alberta premier Danielle Smith issued an extraordinary threat. Unless Prime Minister Mark Carney gave Alberta more influence over judicial appointments, her government would withhold funding from the courts. In an open letter, Smith argued she wanted judges who reflected Alberta's "distinct legal traditions"-though what those traditions are is unclear.
W hen does a separatist movement become a threat to Canada's national security? This is a question hanging in the air in Alberta. People are asking how it can possibly be that the very same individuals who are leading the separatist movement can also be three meetings deep into a relationship with senior officials of the Donald Trump administration in Washington, with a fourth scheduled for this month.
An ally former Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik won a snap presidential election in Bosnia and Herzegovina's Serb-majority Republika Srpska, preliminary results from the election commission showed on Sunday. "According to preliminary, unofficial and incomplete results, Sinisa Karan won 50.89% of the votes," Jovan Kalaba, the commission's president, said at a news conference. Karan from the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) previously served as minister of internal affairs and was considered Dodik's right-hand man.
