A photo of former Alberta Health Services CEO Verna Yiu, now about to take over as University of Alberta provost and academic VP.
Former Alberta Health Services CEO Verna Yiu.

Message to Alberta Health Services (AHS)’ new interim chief executive officer and to whomever follows him as CEO: “Don’t let the revolving door hit you on the way out!”

How many chief executive officers has AHS had since premier Ed Stelmach’s Progressive Conservative Government promised in 2008 to create “a 21st century health care system” and started setting up the province-wide “superboard” as it was known at the time?

A full dozen! I kid you not! But only 11 if you don’t want to count former medical lab boss Charlotte Robb, the province-wide public health care agency’s first CEO, appointed by Stelmach’s health minister, Ron Liepert, in May 2008 to run the place until its official start-up date on April Fool’s Day 2009. No joke. 

Leastways, here’s the list I was able to cobble together as I contemplated what has to be the slowest-motion train wreck in history as a parade of Conservative premiers and heath ministers couldn’t keep their paws off the management of AHS. 

For starters, just so we know who we’re talking about, let’s look at the list of CEOs. No need to dwell too much on their qualifications, because with the revolving door to the AHS C-suite spinning as fast as it does, the problem obviously isn’t primarily the executives, it’s their mostly-Conservative political masters.

Here they are, the many CEOs of AHS: 

Charlotte Robb, diagnostic lab executive, Interim CEO, May-March 2008
Stephen Duckett, Australian health economist, CEO, January 2009-November 2010
Chris Eagle, physician, CEO, April 2011-October 2013
Duncan Campbell, accountant, CEO, October-November 2013
Brenda Huband, health care manager, Co-CEO, November 2013-March 2014
Rick Trimp, ditto
Vickie Kaminski, Registered Nurse, CEO, May 2014-November 2015
Verna Yiu, physician, CEO, January 2016-April 2022
Mauro Chies, health executive, CEO, April 2022-March 2023
Sean Chilton, Registered Nurse, Interim CEO, October 2022-December 2023
Athana Mentzelopoulos, senior civil servant, CEO, December 2023-January 2025
Andre Tremblay, senior civil servant, Interim CEO, last Wednesday to the present

In addition, during the time AHS has been a legal entity, two “official administrators” were appointed by Conservative governments, professional consultant Janet Davidson, who served as a one-woman board of directors for four months in 2013, and physician and Health Quality Council of Alberta CEO John Cowell, who did the same job in 2013 and again from November 2022 to March 2023.

While it is true Davidson and Dr. Cowell were not technically chief executive officers, their roles were more CEO-like than that of a normal board. So if you wanted to be really bold, you could argue that in 17 years AHS has had 14 CEOs, 15 if you count Dr. Cowell twice, as you probably should!

Notable moments include the 2010 firing of Dr. Duckett, the bright but undiplomatic Australian academic, after he embarrassed the Stelmach Government with his notorious “cookie walk” away from a pack of journalists who were annoying him. That was the government’s excuse, anyway. 

There was Dr. Eagle’s surprise departure after two and a half years of his four-year contract in 2013, followed by Campbell being ordered back to the chief financial officer’s office after a couple of months on the job, and the weird two-person CEO condominium that followed him. 

There was the resignation in November 2015 of Vickie Kaminski, the nurse-manager from Newfoundland brought in by the PC government shortly before it dumped Premier Alison Redford. She accused the new NDP government of political interference in a conveniently leaked letter. 

Sarah Hoffman, who served as Rachel Notley’s health minister from 2015 to 2019, told me yesterday: “Yeah, I wouldn’t let them privatize laundry service.” Hoffman was also, to her credit, aggressive about keeping medical lab services in the public sector, where subsequent events have proved they belong. 

Plus, of course, there was this week’s unexpected departure of Mentzelopoulos, for reasons that will probably never be explained.

Indeed, the only extended period of relative stability in the AHS C Suite seems to have been between 2016 and 2022 when Verna Yiu capably ran the organization through the difficult years of the pandemic. She was fired by Jason Kenney’s UCP government, basically for being too competent and too committed to public health care.

It’s hard to know how much all this cost. Dr. Duckett is known to have been paid out at least $735,630. Dr. Yiu received a settlement payment of $660,000. And Mentzelopoulos can be expected to receive he base annual salary of $583,443 for the week she worked in 2025.

Well, we’ve all heard the old story about how Conservatives make more competent managers. 

As the ongoing chaos at AHS shows, that’s about as funny as the old joke about the sultan who blamed his 300 wives because he had no children. That is, it’s not very funny, but it has basically the same point. 

And from now on, we can expect things to get even worse as Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party hires multiple layers of high-paid managers, including four or five more CEOs, to run the bureaucratic and fragmented health care system it’s bent on creating. 

Struggling education workers set to strike as UCP MLAs vote themselves a raise

It’s not that United Conservative Party (UCP) MLAs can’t read the room – I’m pretty sure they just don’t think they need to. 

Yesterday, as struggling education workers represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) gave 72-hour strike notice to the Edmonton and Sturgeon public school boards, UCP committee members in the Legislature voted to give themselves an increase to their six-figure MLA salaries, a generous golden parachute for those who face the wrath of the voters at some future date, and a big boost in funding for caucus propaganda.

MLAs deserve a decent salary for their important work, of course, just as education workers do for theirs. Base pay for MLAs is almost $121,000, with lots of cash add-ons for committee members, cabinet members, and those who don’t live in Edmonton. The average Alberta educational support worker, meanwhile, earns $34,500 a year, which CUPE justly calls starvation wages. 

Finance Minister Nate Horner accused CUPE of “misleading their members and the public on their members’ wages” – although you’d think the workers would know what they’re paid. “The work of Educational Assistants is important, but only takes place part-time and only during the school year,” he said. “No one would expect to earn a full-time salary for 10 months of part-time work.”

Well, no one except a UCP MLA, presumably, although 10 months of work would be a bit of a reach for your average government backbencher. Tacky. 

If there’s no deal tomorrow or over the weekend, the CUPE members will hit the bricks on Monday morning. 

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...