Former Alberta chief electoral officer Lorne Gibson

In politics, as in farming, you reap what you sow.

So it wouldn’t be fair to describe as “bad luck” two intriguing stories both involving $450,000 Alberta lawsuits that popped up on the news feed yesterday as your blogger basked under the bleak skies and in the warm temperatures of suburban Vancouver.

First, there’s the inconveniently timed lawsuit by Lorne Gibson, Alberta’s former chief electoral officer, who was canned by the government of Premier Ed Stelmach in 2009 for the shambolic way the 2008 Alberta general election was run. Someone’s head had to roll and, as the man in charge of the election process, it was Gibson that got the chop.

The only problem with this scenario being, as Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons pointed out in a column just before the axe fell, that the problems with the election were mostly the fault of Alberta’s deeply flawed elections law and the people in the Conservative cabinet who actually had the power to run things.

You don’t believe “deeply flawed”? Only in Alberta — among Canadian jurisdictions, anyway — were electoral officers appointed by a partisan agent of the governing party.

Gibson’s real problem, of course, was that he spoke truth to power — the truth being that while Alberta’s electoral system might have been convenient to the government, it was a disgrace and an affront to democracy, and the power being those same Tories who wanted him to shut the heck up and let them get on with hiring their friends.

So now, just as the government is struggling to reinvent itself as something the deserves to remain in power, along comes Gibson with a lawsuit claiming $450,000 from the for lost pay and benefits after the termination of his contract on March 3, 2009.

The lawsuit, which reminds Albertans of the shabbiness surrounding the last election, was filed late last month. Gibson’s specific claims, as they say, haven’t been proved in court.

Meanwhile, there’s an expose by CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell reporting that a thoracic surgeon sued the Capital Health Region and two of its senior managers in 2001, also for $450,000, after Dr. Ciaran McNamee claimed he was forced out of his job in Edmonton.

Sound familiar? The CBC headlined their website report “Startling claims in doctor’s lawsuit.” Can it be mere coincidence that these sound quite a lot like the startling claims made in the Legislature, but not backed up with any evidence, by Dr. Raj Sherman, the former Conservative Parliamentary Assistant for Health.

Sherman was roundly criticized for making allegations in the House and not backing them up with any evidence, including some shots in this blog. That knock against the political doc still seems fair, but who knows how Sherman would have acted if the government hadn’t insisted on mismanaging the health care file into the ground under former health minister Ron Liepert?

The revelation by Rusnell — who is an excellent and careful journalist — is, shall we say, interestingly timed. As the CBC reported, “the allegations made in McNamee’s court case appear to at least partially mirror those made by Independent MLA Dr. Raj Sherman, an emergency physician, in the legislature last week.”

All we’re allowed to know about the deal that ended the case is that it happened outside of court. But after leaving Alberta, McNamee was hired by Harvard University where he now teaches and conducts research, so it sounds like he knows what he’s about.

Who knows how this news tip found its way to the CBC. One thing is for sure, though: the timing of this $450,000 suit isn’t great for the government either.

And that sound you hear? It’s just the clucking of $450,000 chickens coming home to roost.

This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...