In other medical news, Alberta seems to be suffering an epidemic of mild memory loss. Not just Alberta, either. The problem has cropped up Down Under as well!

The Health Services Preferential Access Inquiry, known to most Albertans as the Queue-Jumping Inquiry or words to that effect, completed its second day in Edmonton yesterday with a couple of star witnesses on the stand -- or whatever the stand called when it isn't technically speaking at a judicial inquiry and the judge running it doesn't actually work as a judge any more.

The Alberta Tories fired Alberta Health Services Chief Financial Officer Alauddin Merali in haste last summer when the CBC revealed he'd made extravagant expense claims in a previous job at the Capital Health Authority.

Now they can repent at leisure, since their hasty action has unexpectedly created a new and serious political crisis for them.

The firing of Merali came back to haunt the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Alison Redford because the latest senior health care executive to come under the CBC's scrutiny for iffy expense accounts filed with a previous employer happens to be the premier's sister.

So are the Redford Tories going to fire Lynn Redford too?

Alberta's mainstream media finally got around yesterday to acknowledging the obvious, that Alberta Health Services may have left itself (and the rest of us who pay its bills) wide open to a costly lawsuit by tossing former CFO Allaudin Merali under the bus and then denying him severance without so much as a tip of the hat to due process.

In other words, to summarize the message from a law professor consulted by the Calgary Herald and an employment lawyer interviewed by the CBC, just saying the Expensesgate Scandal is over doesn't mean it's over.

Let's cut right to the chase: If Alberta Health Services can afford to buy out Allaudin Merali, again, it can afford to keep the doors open at the Little Bow Continuing Care Centre in Carmangay.