Stop the Cheaters!
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Thursday, October 15 — WE WON: Elections Alberta confirms the investigation, and the outcome. Four days before the vote, in the middle of advance polling, the Election Commissioner sent our lawyer Chad Williamson the formal Notice of Outcome on complaint file 2026-0280. It is two pages, signed by Election Commissioner Paula Hale, and it is the notice the law requires under section 44.97(5) of the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act. In her words: "this is your notice of the conclusion of the investigation." Here is what it confirms.
An investigation into Forever Canadian was opened on August 20, 2026 — 27 days after we filed our 241-page complaint. The Commissioner "reviewed multiple events" and found that at some of Forever Canadian's recent ones, a speaker "made reference to the referendum question on Alberta separation." A Notice of Investigation was served. Forever Canadian "agreed to proceed by way of a Compliance Agreement," dated September 29. Under it, Forever Canadian must separate referendum advertising contributions from its other donations on its website; must report the costs of its August 23 West Edmonton Mall town hall, "any other similar productions," and every Unity Bus tour event from August 20 onward as referendum advertising expenses; and stays bound until it has met every reporting requirement for the 2026 referendum.
→ Read the Election Commissioner's Notice of Outcome (PDF, 113 KB)
Now read that letter against what Elections Alberta told a judge. On September 22, its lawyers said our case was "not urgent" and "hopeless," said the Commissioner had a full year to act and could not tell us whether an investigation even existed, and proposed a timetable with no hearing date on the merits at all. The investigation had been open for 33 days when they said it. To be fair to the regulator: the Act does bar the Commissioner from disclosing an open investigation, and it sets no deadline for opening one. Their lawyers were describing the law accurately. But the same Act directs the Commissioner to finish investigations before election day where possible — which is exactly what our lawyers Rebecca Elliott and Ken Johnston argued in court. A finding delivered in 2027 is worthless to a voter in October 2026.
We can't prove the lawsuit is why the file moved. Investigations are confidential, and the letter doesn't say. What we can do is lay out the sequence: complaint filed July 24. Investigation opened August 20. Lawsuit filed September 10. Mr. Lukaszuk's "as of this moment" press conference, September 21. Compliance agreement, September 29. Notice of Outcome, October 15 — a date Elections Alberta's own court filing conceded was possible. That is the record. Albertans can draw their own conclusions.
The central thing we sued for has now happened: a complaint tied to a vote, investigated and concluded before the vote, with the complainant told the outcome. It is not everything. The Commissioner says "the bulk of events and materials" she reviewed were not referendum advertising, and the agreement reaches back only to August 20 — not to June 8, when Forever Canadian registered. Why August 20? Which events crossed the line? What was spent before that date, and who paid for it? The agreement announces no fine and no offence. Those questions are still open, and so is our court file.
Friday, October 2 — The compliance agreement goes public. Elections Alberta posted a September 29 compliance agreement with Forever Canadian on its website, under the heading "Contravention Summary." It says Forever Canadian's unity events were initially considered "general in nature," but that "more recently" the Election Commissioner identified occasions where a speaker "made specific reference to the referendum question on Alberta separation and took a position." The order reaches back a full month before Mr. Lukaszuk's September 21 announcement. In the week after that announcement, Forever Canadian reported $48,345 in contributions — after fifteen weeks of $0.00.
→ Read our full analysis of the compliance agreement
Tuesday, September 22 — Case conference. Both sides appeared before the Court of King's Bench on urgency and scheduling. Elections Alberta's lawyers repeated the position in their brief: not urgent, "hopeless," "partisan," and no hearing on the merits before the vote. The court did not set a timetable that could deliver the remedy we asked for before October 19 — which is why the Notice of Outcome three weeks later matters so much. The regulator did before the vote what its lawyers told the court it could not be made to do.
Monday, September 21 — The real win: Lukaszuk blinked. On September 10, Rebel News sued Elections Alberta. Elections Alberta's own register, in its latest disclosure to September 17, still showed Forever Canadian at $0.00 — the fifteenth straight week. Then, eleven days after we filed, Thomas Lukaszuk called a press conference at Forever Canadian's Calgary office and announced that "as of this moment" his campaign would be "entering the arena of a third-party advertiser." The Western Standard reported that the group's finances "will have to be made publicly available under Elections Alberta rules."
Look at the timeline. Between September 10 and September 21, nothing else changed. No new law. No decision from Elections Alberta — its own lawyers concede that. No ruling from a judge. The only intervening fact was a court file with our name on it. That's not a coincidence; that's a lawsuit working. We'll take the credit — and the bill.
To be fair to Mr. Lukaszuk: complying going forward is the right thing to do, and we said so on July 24. (In 241 pages, mind you.) But one correction to the headlines. Forever Canadian isn't "registering" now. It has been on the register since June 8, and registration came with rules: Alberta donors only, $5,000 per donor, a $607,000 spending cap, and a contribution report every single week. What's new is that Mr. Lukaszuk is admitting it's a campaign — and that its money has to be disclosed.
A confession going forward is not a pardon for the past. Who paid for fifteen weeks of Unity Bus, two offices, thousands of lawn signs and a Jann Arden concert? In May, Mr. Lukaszuk told supporters on X, "Yes, anyone in Canada can donate." His website once said there were "no limits on donation amounts." Let Alberta Decide, which filed its own complaint three days before ours, put it this way on September 21: campaigning openly from now on "does not answer what happened between May and today." Exactly. That's why the lawsuit continues.
Monday, September 21 — Elections Alberta tells the court our case is "hopeless." Both sides filed briefs for the scheduling conference. Elections Alberta is entitled to defend itself, and it has — to a judge, not to us. Paragraph 9: our application is "not urgent." Paragraph 21: "The Originating Application is hopeless." Paragraph 12: our insistence on a written decision "evidences that the urgency of their request is based on partisan political purposes." Its proposed order says the case "shall not be heard on an expedited basis" — two preliminary half-day hearings, at least 60 days apart, dates to be booked by November 2, and no date at all for the merits.
Then there's paragraph 23, in their words: the only information Rebel News is entitled to is that Elections Alberta has not sent us a notice, "which means the outcome of the complaint has not been resolved." Translation: sixty days after a 241-page complaint, no answer — and no answer is all we're owed. (Twenty-four days later, the notice arrived.)
→ Read Elections Alberta's brief to the court (PDF, 2.1 MB)
Our brief asked for three things: a half-day hearing on October 14 or 15, before the vote; an order that Elections Alberta send the court its file within seven days, including any written advice it gave Forever Canadian or a written statement that none exists; and Justice Simard as case management judge. No stay. Don't take our word for it — both briefs are right here.
→ Read Rebel News' written submission to the court (PDF, 270 KB)
Monday, September 14 — First appearance. Justice D.J. Reed heard both sides in emergency chambers, adjourned the application and directed each side to write to the Associate Chief Justice on urgency and case management. That led to the case management conference on September 22.
This was supposed to be a short, sharp case: get a judge to make Elections Alberta decide. Elections Alberta made it a long one, and Rebel News paid the lawyers. The decision came anyway — before the vote.
The background: why we sued Elections Alberta
Alberta votes on October 19. Albertans deserved to know, before that happened, whether the same campaign-finance rules were being applied to everyone. Here is why we had to sue to find out.
Thomas Lukaszuk's "Forever Canadian" group has run the biggest campaign on the "remain" side of Alberta's referendum: a "Unity Bus" touring the province, offices in Edmonton and Calgary, thousands of "CHOOSE UNITY" lawn signs and a free Jann Arden concert in Calgary on September 20. (Concerts aren't free to put on — and donated goods and services get reported too, at fair market value.) Yet on Elections Alberta's own public register, Forever Canadian reported $0.00 in contributions, every week for fifteen weeks after it registered on June 8.
Compare. As of September 3: Let Alberta Decide, $484,988.95. Vote to Stay — another federalist group, so this isn't a unity-versus-independence thing — $97,791.29. Our own little Alberta's Choice, $35,937.95, to the penny. Forever Canadian, with the bus and the concert: $0.00.
How? On July 10, Mr. Lukaszuk told the Globe and Mail that Elections Alberta had written him a letter saying Forever Canadian doesn't have to report because it "isn't promoting a position in the referendum." He won't show it; Elections Alberta won't comment. His lawn signs say "CHOOSE UNITY," and Elections Alberta's own Interpretation Bulletin No. 9 lists "choose" as a word that may suggest voting in a referendum. Their word. His sign. We still don't know what Elections Alberta told him, which is exactly why our application asks the court to make it produce its file, including any such letter.
On July 24, our lawyer Chad Williamson filed a formal complaint: a five-page demand letter, a ten-page legal complaint and 226 pages of evidence. On July 28, Elections Alberta acknowledged it, assigned file number 2026-0280, and wrote that "a representative may contact you in the future." Nobody did. Our September 1 deadline passed without a word. So on September 10, Chad filed Rebel News Network Ltd. v. Election Commissioner of Alberta and Chief Electoral Officer of Alberta, court file 2601-16399, in the Court of King's Bench, and asked the court to treat it as urgent.
→ Read the Originating Application for Judicial Review (PDF, 969 KB)
→ Read the Urgent Request to the Court of King's Bench (PDF, 931 KB)
What we asked the court to do — and where it stands
Let's be careful here, because a judge is going to read this page too. We did not ask the court to punish Forever Canadian, or to decide whether it broke the law. We asked for an old remedy lawyers call mandamus — a court order that makes a public official do the job the law gives them. In plain English, three things.
One: order Elections Alberta to decide our complaint — investigate, or refuse and say why — and in any event before October 19. Done. Not by court order, but the Notice of Outcome dated October 15 is exactly the decision we asked for, delivered four days before the vote.
Two: declare that Elections Alberta had a legal duty to decide within a reasonable time, and hadn't. Still before the court. Our complaint sat 27 days before an investigation was opened, and 83 days before we were told anything. Whether that is "reasonable" is a question a judge can still answer.
Three: produce the file on our complaint, including any advice Elections Alberta gave Forever Canadian about whether it has to report. Still before the court. The Notice of Outcome is two pages. It does not produce the file, and it does not say what Elections Alberta told Mr. Lukaszuk in July.
Decide. That was the point. Weekly reporting exists so voters can see who's paying before they vote — not in a penalty notice in July 2027. This time, the decision came before the vote.
The evidence
Two sworn affidavits were filed with the application. Rebel News' Sheila Gunn Reid, the primary contact for Alberta's Choice, swore a 363-page affidavit: the photographs, the media coverage, Elections Alberta's own guide, bulletin and register, and the complaint file. Lyndon Dunkley, Alberta's Choice's Chief Financial Officer, swore a second affidavit on what weekly reporting involves: about 90 seconds per donation, up to three and a half hours a week, every report filed since June 5. Tedious. It's the law, so we do it.
→ Read the Affidavit of Lyndon Dunkley (PDF, 2 MB)
On September 9, Chad served the application on Elections Alberta, Alberta's Minister of Justice and Forever Canadian itself, making clear that Forever Canadian is not a respondent and that no relief is sought against it.
→ Read the letters of service (PDF, 284 KB)
One law. One standard.
You may be voting to remain on October 19. You may be voting for independence. This case isn't about telling you how to vote. It's about whether the referee calls the game the same way for both teams — and says so before the final whistle, not after.
We know how the referee calls it for us. Elections Alberta investigated Rebel News over Sheila Gunn Reid's book, Stop Notley — a book — and we've paid penalties over technicalities. So we're not asking for a free pass. We're asking for one-tier justice: the same rules, applied the same way, to the biggest campaign in the province and the smallest.
Help us pay the legal bill
Taking a government regulator to court isn't cheap — and the bills for this one are already in.
On our side: Chad Williamson, Rebecca Elliott and Ken Johnston, two affidavits, an emergency chambers appearance, a case conference and a written brief. On theirs: a regulator with taxpayer-funded lawyers whose written position was that our case was "hopeless" and should wait until after the vote. Every step they added — the stay, the fight over our affidavits, the preliminary hearings — was lawyer time, and Rebel News paid for it. Nobody else in Alberta was going to do this. Not the regime media. Not the government. Let Alberta Decide filed a complaint, and good for them. But it was Rebel News that went to court — and four days before the vote, Elections Alberta put its answer in writing.
If you think the biggest campaign in this referendum should follow the same rules as the smallest one, and that a regulator should have to say so before the vote, please chip in to help cover the cost of this case. Every dollar goes to the lawyers. We said we'd report what happened in court, win or lose. This one we're reporting as a win — with the receipts above.
We started this legal fight. Please help us pay for it.
Related News
Read the court documents
Notice of Outcome from the Election Commissioner on complaint file 2026-0280 (October 15, 2026 — PDF, 113 KB)
Compliance agreement between the Election Commissioner and Forever Canadian, as published by Elections Alberta (September 29, 2026)
Brief of the Respondents (Elections Alberta) for the September 22 case conference (September 21, 2026 — PDF, 2.1 MB)
Written Submission of the Applicant (Rebel News) for the September 22 case conference (September 21, 2026 — PDF, 270 KB)
Originating Application for Judicial Review (filed September 10, 2026 — PDF, 969 KB)
Urgent Request to the Court of King's Bench (filed September 10, 2026 — PDF, 931 KB)
Affidavit of Lyndon Dunkley, Chief Financial Officer of Alberta's Choice (filed September 10, 2026 — PDF, 2 MB)
Letters of service to Elections Alberta, the Minister of Justice and Forever Canadian (September 9, 2026 — PDF, 284 KB)
The original July 24 complaint: the demand letter (PDF, 99 KB), the formal complaint (PDF, 110 KB) and the 226-page exhibit compendium (PDF, 5.5 MB).
COMMENTS
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Fran g commented 2026-09-13 14:44:13 -0400One law for thee, one law for you. Definately 2 tier b.s.