For the first time since Danielle Smith became premier of Alberta in the fall of 2022, a rift in United Conservative Party (UCP) cabinet ranks appeared in public view over whether or not Adriana LaGrange should be removed as health minister to control the damage from the festering Dodgy Contracts Scandal.
In a memorandum to his cabinet colleagues leaked to the CBC, Infrastructure Minister Peter Guthrie called for LaGrange’s immediate ouster from her portfolio in the face of allegations of improper insider influence set out in fired Alberta Health Services (AHS) CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos’s wrongful dismissal lawsuit. Mentzelopoulos was dismissed on January. 8.
“Min. Adriana LaGrange should be moved to another unrelated ministry until an investigation is complete,” states Guthrie’s memo, as quoted by the CBC. But unless he’s suggesting a new portfolio be created for his cabinet colleague, this amounts to a call for her to be kicked out of cabinet.
Plus, said Guthrie, one of Smith’s original caucus supporters who may still be smarting from his demotion from the Energy portfolio in June 2023: “Remove Andre Tremblay as CEO/administrator at AHS and as (Deputy Minister) until such time as an investigation is complete.”
If any of the information found in the investigation into insider interference and overpriced contracts begun by Mentzelopoulos in November “appears to be criminal in nature, all materials must be turned over to the RCMP immediately,” Guthrie’s memo continued.
“It is my strong recommendation that we do not hesitate any longer and implement these recommendations today,” the memo said – a recommendation that has obviously been ignored.
Since we don’t know who leaked the memo to the CBC, we can’t conclude that Guthrie has publicly broken ranks with cabinet – which would be a grave violation of cabinet confidentiality, a core principle of the Westminster Parliamentary system. But, this being politics, someone surely had a calculated reason to leak it.
Nevertheless, this is a significant development, as the premier has been able to maintain remarkable unanimity and message discipline since the United Conservative Party’s Take Back Alberta faction ran former premier Jason Kenney out of town and replaced him with Smith in 2022.
But that doesn’t mean Guthrie isn’t speaking for other members of cabinet in his memo.
At least two other ministers are thought to be “distancing themselves from Smith over this issue,” political commentator Dave Cournoyer said in his Substack on Thursday.
And if LaGrange gave the same explanation to her fellow ministers when she sought their OK to dismiss the CEO that she gave to the public – that it was all part of the government’s health-care reorganization plan and nothing more – they would be justified in concluding they had been deceived.
Regardless, as yesterday’s news coverage made clear, Guthrie’s suggestion has not been embraced with enthusiasm. “I have full confidence in the health minister to continue her important work in refocusing and reforming our health system,” Premier Smith said in a statement sent to The Canadian Press.
Meanwhile, the Opposition NDP continues to call for LaGrange to be fired as well – which some observers dismiss as a Wayne Gretzky strategy of trying to race to where the puck is supposed to be so they can take credit when it gets there – an approach that works well in ice hockey, but not necessarily in politics.
To be fair, at a news conference in Calgary that didn’t appear to get much coverage from media, NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi excoriated the premier. For reasons not obvious to this observer, the party didn’t announce that Mr. Nenshi was going to be there.
“If these allegations are true, this ranks among the largest scandals faced by any government in the history of Canada,” Nenshi said. “And yet we’ve heard next to nothing from the premier on this. She’s skating past these ‘corrupt care’ allegations hoping that it’ll all go away. It’s not going to go away.”
Obviously anxious to be able to say that in the Legislature, Nenshi also demanded that Premier Smith call a by-election in Edmonton-Strathcona, where he has been nominated by the NDP to run to replace former leader Rachel Notley.
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