A GoFundMe in support of deposed Alberta Health Services (AHS) CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos is providing a platform for several prominent doctors and politicians to continue their criticism of the UCP’s “CorruptCare” procurement scandal.
Wednesday’s hybrid event at the west Edmonton Days Inn featured remarks from Dr. Joe Vipond of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk, past Alberta Medical Association president Dr. Paul Parks and former medical lead for the AHS Indigenous Wellness Core Dr. Esther Tailfeathers.
Shelley Ewing, who organized the launch of the GoFundMe, spoke via Zoom from Medicine Hat, where she’s part of a group that organizes weekly Saturday protests outside Premier Danielle Smith’s Brooks-Medicine Hat constituency office.
“We have come together to protest on different occasions and on many different subjects, but inherent in all of them is a lack of transparency, integrity and accountability displayed by this UCP government,” said Ewing.
“That has never been more evident than it is regarding the government's actions to suppress the facts of the procurement and conflict of interest scandal.”
Former deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk was one of several prominent Albertans who appeared in person and via video to support the launch of a GoFundMe supporting deposed AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos's legal costs in her $1.7-million wrongful dismissal suit against the province.
In a bombshell Feb. 5 Globe and Mail report, journalist Carrie Tait revealed that Mentzelopoulos alleges that she and the entire AHS board were terminated after she began concerns about inflated chartered surgical facility contracts, which Mentzelopoulos alleges Marshall Smith, the premier’s former chief of staff, pressured her to approve.
Soon after, the deposed CEO launched a $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit against AHS and Alberta Health. In a statement of defence, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange accused Mentzelopoulos of being “infatuated” with “incendiary and inaccurate allegations about political intrigue and impropriety."
Ewing said that her group wasn’t asked by Mentzelopoulos to help fund her legal costs, but that they sought and were granted the former CEO’s approval for their endeavour.
While the government is fighting Mentzelopoulos in court, it’s announced an investigation into her allegations led by former chief judge of Manitoba Provincial Court Raymond E. Wyant. But critics, including UCP-turned-independent MLA Peter Guthrie, want a full-blown public inquiry.
“The UCP has attempted to convince Albertans that the investigations that they have been forced to initiate are sufficient. We disagree. They are not,” said Ewing. “Investigations that have no teeth, no legal access to the information, no subpoena power, which will land on the desk of Danielle Smith, will not uncover the facts for Albertans.”
In addition to the Wyant’s investigation, the RCMP and auditor general are also investigating the scandal.
The NDP Official Opposition released an email that shows an Alberta Health bureaucrat instructing AHS employees to refer any requests for an interview form the office of the auditor general to the government’s lawyers at Rose LLP, naming lawyer Matt Lindsey specifically.
Lukaszuk, the PC MLA for Edmonton-Castle Downs from 2001 to 2015, spoke in person at Wednesday’s event about the government’s attempt to interfere in an auditor general investigation.
“We're dealing with really an unprecedented situation where the bludgeon of the entire Department of Justice and Department of Health, with the help of retained, very prestigious and capable lawyers, is being used not only against a plaintiff in a civil case, but more importantly, against Albertans and particularly employees directly and indirectly of Government of Alberta,” said Lukaszuk.
The former Cabinet minister has launched Law Society of Alberta complaints against Lindsey and Minister of Justice Mickey Amery, whose role includes serving as legal counsel to Cabinet.
“The mere expectation that witnesses who are planning on testifying before the auditor general first are to consult with a government-retained lawyer against whose client they potentially would be testifying, one does not have to have a degree of law to see that there is just simply something wrong with the situation,” said Lukaszuk.
Speaking over video from the Hat, Dr. Parks emphasized that Mentzelopoulos’s firing is “not just a private employment dispute,” but is “about protecting the ability to speak truth to power and to defend the public's right to know critical concerns involving our health-care system.”
“Transparency is not optional in matters that affect the health and safety and safety of millions,” said Parks. “Albertans have the right to know whether political decisions are compromised in their health care. They deserve answers and not obstruction.”
Dr. Vipond said Mentzelopoulos’s predicament is a “a time-old tale of somebody going forward saying that there's a problem, we need to deal with it, and then having retribution brought upon them.”
“We need to support her through this. She needs to know that she has our emotional and our financial support,” said Vipond, who spoke over video from Calgary.
Dr. Tailfeathers made the trek to Edmonton for the event from the Blood Tribe Reserve, where she was born, raised and works as a primary care physician.
She detailed her previous experience of UCP government interference at AHS, which led to her quitting her role at the Indigenous Wellness Core.
In May 2023, former chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw was “chosen through fair hiring practices” to help develop the AHS Indigenous Wellness Core’s approach to addictions and mental health care, Tailfeathers explained.
But by the time a memo co-written by Tailfeathers announcing Hinshaw’s appointment was leaked to the media, her job offer had been rescinded.
Tailfeathers said that Premier Smith ordered the administrator she had hired to replace the AHS board, Dr. John Cowell, to do so.
“I resigned in protest, and I did not take any severance for a job that I had done for over 14 years. I did not sign a non-disclosure agreement so that I could let the public know that the premier had not been truthful and that her interference would hurt many people, and it did,” said Tailfeathers.
The premier’s decision to dismantle AHS and divide it into four separate agencies will only worsen patient outcomes, Tailfeathers added.
“This system is now gone, and many of the people, physicians who have worked their way up from front line to administration have been let go, have left the system,” she said.
“We're losing brain power. We're losing the experience and wisdom of physicians and administrators who have worked for years to be where they're at, including Dr. Athana.”