David Staples: Smith gets black eye in fight with medical establishment

Alberta governments have a history of picking fights with the province’s powerful medical establishment, then losing those fights.

Unsurprisingly, Albertans respect their physicians more than they do their politicians. If any politician forgets this basic equation, they’re cruising for a political bruising, which brings us to Premier Danielle Smith’s ongoing battle with Alberta Health Services, one that has escalated from angry words and high-level purges into the major bomb of scandal detonating — corruption allegations against Smith’s government from recently-fired AHS chief executive officer Athana Mentzelopoulos. 

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What are we to make of it? Here are 10 points to consider:

1. Smith was hostile to AHS during COVID-19, which has led her to clean out upper management and splinter the organization. Whatever the merit of her moves, Smith poked a big bear known for mauling politicians with regular frequency and unmatched success. 
2. The damning allegations come from a credible source. Why credible? Mentzelopoulos was handpicked for her job by Lyle Oberg and his brand new AHS board, which was handpicked by Smith. Oberg is a former Conservative health minister and, like Smith, a former Wildrose party member.
3. Hiring Mentzelopoulos in December 2023 to a four-year deal paying her $583,443 per year was one of Oberg’s first major moves. One would expect Oberg to hire someone friendly to the high-priority government plan to cut out the health care unions and provide more private delivery (though public funding) of health care services. 
4. That said, Mentzelopoulos was just fired by Smith’s government and is now threatening to sue Smith’s government for wrongful dismissal, and was for months engaged in a fierce power struggle with the government over contracting out of surgical procedures to chartered surgical facilities. 
5. Do such workplace struggles often get dark, messy, personal and difficult for outsiders like you and me to assess? Yes, they do. 
6. A top AHS executive getting the boot is hardly unusual. They have about the same shelf life as NHL coaches. Since 2008 there has been more AHS CEOs, 12, than there has been Edmonton Oilers coaches, 11. 
7. Two narratives have quickly developed about the allegations. One side sees them as a signal that United Conservative insiders were doing something illegal, something so foul it merits criminal prosecution. They see the UCP with nefarious motives pushing for their cronies to run private surgical facilities, no matter the cost. The other side believes the powerful AHS executive refused to quickly move on Smith’s plan for private surgical facilities, and now has launched a counter strike. 
8. Mentzelopoulos alleged in a letter to AHS (and leaked to the Globe and Mail) that she was fired on Jan. 8 just as she was about to meet with the auditor general about her findings regarding government interference. Mentzelopoulus was concerned with the true ownership and the high prices being charged by some chartered surgical facilities. The AHS board, which was dismissed by the government on Jan. 31, was going to take her findings to the RCMP, Mentzelopoulos alleged.  
9. Smith responded by saying auditor general Doug Wylie will now conduct a transparent and expedited review of the troubling allegations. “We need to get to the bottom of this issue quickly to identify any potential wrongdoing, correct it, and address it appropriately.” Smith also paused contracting for surgical facilities and asked for an internal AHS review to be done quickly and delivered to her. “As premier, I was not involved in any wrongdoing. Any insinuation to the contrary is false, baseless and defamatory.”
10. She also fired a political shot: “It’s no secret I have been unhappy with the level and quality of service delivered by AHS. I will continue to relentlessly push forward to make improvements. Although that has required difficult decisions and major change, I do not accept the current results. There is a widespread and deep-seated resistance to change that we must overcome.”

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Bottom lines? 

Smith picked this fight. She now has a black eye but she’s still punching. Reform of the health care system is a priority, given the spiraling cost of the system and the worsening of public health. Smith’s government should keep up that fight, but that good work could well be sidelined by this scandal. 

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Smith knows if she’s innocent or not, but she can’t know what everyone in her government did, nor can we know, not until there’s a detailed public report that everyone can read, not just her. 

If there are corrupt government officials or actions, they need to be identified. The auditor general’s report is the first credible step in that process. It may not be the last.

dstaples@postmedia.com

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