Former Alberta NDP MLA Thomas Dang has pleaded guilty to a charge under the Health Information Act.
Dang was charged in June for illegally attempting to access private information contained in the Alberta Health vaccine portal in September 2021.
He entered a guilty plea in provincial court on Friday.
The Crown is seeking a $10,000 fine, while Dang’s defence is asking for under $4,000.
Chief Government Whip Brad Rutherford says NDP leader Rachel Notley must come clean about her role in the ordeal.
“Dang’s disgraceful conduct will be remembered for a very long time, and I am glad he has finally accepted responsibility for his unethical and illegal behaviour,” Rutherford said in a statement.
“But the evidence continues to show that Notley and her senior staff were involved in this scandal, and we still have no answers on that front. In September, the United Conservative caucus released a list of five critical questions that must be answered by Notley. We need those answers now.”
As previously reported by True North, Dang has been sitting as an Independent MLA since the RCMP began investigating his activities.
The MLA said he accessed the vaccine portal to test vulnerabilities on the newly launched Alberta Health vaccine portal. He used former premier Jason Kenney’s birth date and vaccination dates, which are publicly available, to crack the site’s privacy safeguards.
Between Sept. 19 and 23, Dang’s computer program made 1.78 million queries using Kenney’s personal information. Dang admitted to RCMP the queries were randomly generated guesses aimed at revealing the premier’s health care number.
Court documents also refer to Dang’s attempts as a “brute force attack.”
After uncovering a woman’s healthcare number, Dang informed NDP chief of staff Jeremy Nolais and NDP director of communications Benjamin Alldritt of his findings, court documents show.
One month after informing Alldritt of his actions, the NDP promoted Dang to the party’s Democracy and Ethics critic role. He left the party to sit as an Independent MLA when the RCMP began investigating his actions in December.
Dang will be sentenced on Nov. 29.
The Alberta NDP has a policy to not accept media requests from True North.
