Braid: AHS is left for dead in blowback of surgery contract allegations​on February 11, 2025 at 11:28 pm

President Donald Trump sends his agents to rip through U.S. government agencies, firing, gutting and commanding as they go.

This must look somewhat familiar to remaining staff at Alberta Health Services.

In our quieter Canadian way, Premier Danielle Smith and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange have neutered and silenced AHS with brutal efficiency.

AHS is ordered to surrender all reports or data relating to Chartered Surgical Facilities.

Officials must allow any “authorized person” to access all information and make copies if necessary.

They call what they’re after “raw or processed data.” A lawyer might call it “evidence.”

The information is now in the hands of political operators who were alleged, by the former CEO of AHS, to be involved in granting lush contracts.

The whole contracting function is now under LaGrange’s authority, not that of AHS, which had been doing that job for 15 years.

CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos was fired after she presented her suspicions about contracts to her board, which suggested she consult the RCMP. Then the board got kicked out, too.

An AHS board was once fired for refusing to cancel executive bonuses. A board that wanted to send a government problem to the Mounties had a life span of minutes.

Replacing both the CEO and the board is LaGrange’s deputy minister, Andre Tremblay.

Mentzelopoulos’ lawyer said in a letter that the increased costs of the contracts could potentially mean “hundreds of millions of profits” for owners of surgical facilities, according to Globe and Mail reports.

The allegations, though unproven, are very damaging. The retaliation is what you’d expect from Smith, whose dislike of AHS has been evident for years.

The health authority “doesn’t know what it’s doing,” she once said. She also threatened to turn hospitals over to some other agency if AHS didn’t shape up.

Smith insists she had nothing to do with the contracts and will consider defamatory any claim that she did.

AHS was always fated to vanish into the new Acute Care organization. The full bureaucratic kneecapping may be a bit early, and certainly unscheduled, but it’s now complete.

AHS does not exist any longer as an agency with executive authority at arm’s-length from government.