We just sued Elections Alberta.

On September 10, the Court of King's Bench in Calgary stamped our application: Rebel News Network Ltd. v. Election Commissioner of Alberta and Chief Electoral Officer of Alberta, court file number 2601-16399.

A judge will hear it in Emergency Chambers this Monday, September 14, at 2 p.m. at the Calgary Courts Centre. You can read every word of it at StopTheCheaters.com.

Now, let me explain why we're taking Elections Alberta to court.

Thomas Lukaszuk's group, Forever Canadian, is the "remain" campaign on Question 10 in the October 19 referendum. It registered with Elections Alberta on June 8 as a referendum third-party advertiser. The rules that follow registration are straightforward: file a contribution report every single week.

Every donation, every donor. If someone gives you goods or services instead of money — a bus, an office, a stage, a truckload of lawn signs — you report that too, at fair market value.

Forever Canadian has a "Unity Bus" that has toured the province. It has a campaign office in Edmonton, opened on May 23, and a second office in Calgary, which opened on July 1.

Go Ad Free

According to the Calgary Herald, the Calgary office is open six days a week just to hand out lawn signs. It has handed out thousands of those signs. Forever Canadian hosted a "Musicians for Unity" concert in Hawrelak Park in July. And on September 1, Lukaszuk announced a free concert at The Confluence in downtown Calgary on September 20 — headlined by Jann Arden, 29 days before the vote.

According to Elections Alberta's own public register, Forever Canadian has raised $0.00. Zero dollars, zero cents, every week since June.

Compare that to everyone else on the same register as of September 3.

• Let Alberta Decide: $484,988.95
• Alberta's Voice: $152,421.06
• Pathway to Independence: $123,247.30
• Vote to Stay, a "remain" group: $97,791.29
• Public Interest Alberta's "No" campaign: $37,740.00
• Our own group, Alberta's Choice: $35,937.95

Every independence group reports. The other federalist groups report. But one group, running the biggest campaign in the province, has reported nothing.

It gets stranger.

On July 10, the Globe and Mail reported that Lukaszuk says Elections Alberta sent him a letter telling him Forever Canadian doesn't have to report contributions — because, he says, it "isn't promoting a position in the referendum." He wouldn't share the letter and Elections Alberta offered no comment, claiming they don't discuss private correspondence.

But Elections Alberta's own Interpretation Bulletin No. 9, issued July 8, lists the word "choose" as language that may suggest voting in a referendum. His lawn signs say "CHOOSE UNITY." And this is the man who told the BBC that "loss is not an option" and that he would "do everything possible to win this referendum."

I'm not going to tell you that's illegal — I don't know that, maybe there's an explanation. That is exactly what we asked Elections Alberta to find out. But if a public regulator sent a private letter exempting one side of a referendum from the rules everyone else follows, Albertans have a right to see it. So our court application asks the judge to order Elections Alberta to produce it — or to confirm in writing that it doesn't exist.

Now here is why we ended up in court instead of waiting.

On July 24, our lawyer Chad Williamson filed a formal complaint: a five-page demand letter, a 10-page legal complaint, and 226 pages of evidence, 241 pages in all. Four days later, Elections Alberta sent us an acknowledgment, file number 2026-0280, saying "a representative may contact you in the future."

That was 48 days ago. Not a phone call. Not an email. Nothing.

Our demand letter gave Elections Alberta until September 1: open an investigation or refuse and tell us why. The law requires one or the other. September 1 came and went. Silence. And after October 19, none of it can be fixed. You can't un-ring the bell after the vote. That is not a slow regulator. That is a regulator running out the clock.

Let me be precise about what we are asking the court to do, because I want you to understand it.

We are not asking the court to punish Forever Canadian. We are not asking it to decide whether Forever Canadian broke the law. Forever Canadian is not even a respondent in this case. We are asking for what lawyers call mandamus — an order that makes a public official do the job the law gives them. Order Elections Alberta to decide our complaint within seven days, and in any event before October 19. Declare that it had a legal duty to decide within a reasonable time, and hasn't. And produce the file, including any advice it gave Lukaszuk about whether he has to report.

Decide. Just decide.

I swore a 363-page affidavit in support of the application: every photo of the bus, every lawn sign, the Globe story, the concert posters, Elections Alberta's own guide and bulletin and register, the complaint, the demand letter, the acknowledgment. All under oath. I was in Lethbridge on July 18, in the same parking lot as Forever Canadian. I watched them hand out signs.

Alberta's Choice reports every dollar, every Thursday. Ninety seconds a donation, more or less, according to our CFO Lyndon Dunkley, who swore a second affidavit about what compliance actually costs. Some weeks it takes 10 minutes. Some weeks it takes three and a half hours. It is the law, so we do it.

You might be voting to remain on October 19th. That is fine. This is not about which way you vote. It is about whether the referee calls the game the same way for both teams. Elections Alberta has never been shy about scrutinizing us — years ago it investigated Rebel News over my book — and we didn't get a private letter saying don't worry about it. I am not asking for a free pass. I am asking for one law, applied the same way, to everyone.