In Paragraph 60 of her statement of claim for her $1.7-million wrongful dismissal lawsuit, former Alberta Health Services (AHS) Chief Executive Officer Athana Mentzelopoulos said the agency’s board advised her in mid-December that her internal investigation and external forensic audit of possible conflicts of interest in contract negotiations with private surgery companies should be expanded and that she “should consider bringing the matter to the attention of the RCMP.”
Mentzelopoulos was fired on January 8 during a meeting with then Deputy Health Minister Andre Tremblay. On January 31, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange dismissed the entire board.
As a result, Mentzelopoulos’s attempt to get to the bottom of what was going on with the contracts she says she was being pressured to sign with the operators of the so-called Chartered Surgical Facilities was sidelined.
But what happened to the board’s recommendation? Did Mentzelopoulos pick up the phone and call the cops? If she did, is the RCMP investigating?
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and LaGrange have tried to frame this still-developing story as being entirely about officials of AHS refusing to co-operate with United Conservative Party (UC) policy efforts to reform health care. But this is not the case. The issue is whether government officials including some in the Premier’s Office pressured AHS in contract negotiations on behalf of private companies, as Mentzelopoulos alleges.
In the past two days, three major news stories about government contracts have been published one after the other, two by The Globe and Mail, one by The Tyee.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Globe’s Alanna Smith and Carrie Tait published a report looking back the UCP’s $70-million purchase of children’s pain medication in December 2022 – a decision that appears now to have been based entirely on Smith’s desire to make Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal federal government look bad.
According to the Globe, by December 2024, AHS was still having to press the Alberta-based supplier, MHCare Medical Corp., “to prove it was working to fulfill a contract to import millions of doses of pain medication from Turkey, accusing the company of doing very little work after being paid tens of millions of dollars.”
In Paragraph 43 of her statement of claim, Mentzelopoulos said she had “learned that AHS had purchased approximately $614 million in supplies and services from MHCare and other companies affiliated with Sam Mraiche …”
Friday, independent investigative reporter Charles Rusnell writing in The Tyee reported that: “Alberta land title documents show a numbered company owned by businessman Sam Mraiche purchased a commercial industrial property at 14425 124th Ave. NW in Edmonton for $1.7 million cash on May 27, 2024. That same numbered company sold the property to Alberta Infrastructure on Aug. 26, 2024, for $2 million cash.”
Rusnell’s story noted that Alberta Infrastructure Minister Peter Guthrie accepted luxury NHL playoff tickets from Mraiche in the spring of 2024, and reminded readers that Guthrie last week called for LaGrange to leave cabinet until an investigation of the political interference allegations at AHS is concluded.
In a follow to Rusnell’s report, Postmedia’s Edmonton Journal quoted a statement provided by the numbered company saying “this was a very traditional real estate transaction that did not involve any communication with senior levels of government to request or facilitate.”
Tait and Smith published another story in the Globe under the headline, “Alberta surgical companies with contracts under scrutiny linked to firm that imported children’s pain meds.”
“Two private surgical facilities that were negotiating contracts with Alberta’s health authority are part-owned by an Edmonton businessman whose company imported children’s pain medication for the province and who hosted politicians at NHL playoff games, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail,” the latest Globe report begins.
The reporters also published an AHS internal price comparison for surgical facilities “that shows the proposed projects in Red Deer and Lethbridge were negotiating rates far higher than what a competitor in Calgary is paid. Further, the fees on the table surpassed what it costs AHS to perform the same surgeries, according to the internal document.”
In response, the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA) called for an immediate end to the so-called Alberta Surgical Initiative and “a return to full public ownership of private surgical facilities to prevent further profiteering off essential health care services following explosive revelations that private surgical facilities contracted by the province were charging more than double the cost of equivalent procedures performed in the public system.”
“AHS pays $4,833 for a shoulder replacement, while private facilities under ASI were negotiating rates as high as $11,243,” the union representing paramedics and other health care professionals said, citing the Globe report. “Similar overcharges exist for hip and knee replacements, with private providers consistently charging over twice what it costs AHS to perform the same procedures.”
“This is an outright betrayal of Albertans,” HSAA President Mike Parker said in a forceful news release. “The UCP tells Albertans for-profit health care would save money and cut wait times through innovation, but instead, we have an out-of-control system where taxpayer dollars are being funneled into private pockets at double the cost. This is not innovation – this is profiteering at its worst.”
Meanwhile, the NDP sems to have stuck to its call for a full public inquiry following Guthrie’s acknowledgement in Rusnell’s report that the real estate sale has now been referred to the auditor-general for review.
“This admission from Minister Guthrie blows the Premier’s talking points out of the water,” said Christina Gray, who is the Leader of the Official Opposition in the Alberta Legislature until party leader Naheed Nenshi is elected to a seat. “We are not dealing with just an AHS issue; the concerns raised are government-wide.”
That’s fair. But Gray’s view that “at this point it is clear that the only way Albertans will get the truth is from a judge-led public inquiry,” may only be as clear as mud.
A public inquiry would take months to set up and provide the government with an opportunity to refuse to comment on the burgeoning scandal while frenetically working to create distractions.
Perhaps the real question the NDP should be asking is if it’s time for Premier Smith to resign? Her office is at the heart of this mess, and the crisis is not going to go away as long as she remains.
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