Former Alberta health minister Tyler Shandro has been a member of the board of Covenant Health since December 2023.
Who knew?
Almost no one, it would appear, outside the upper levels of the Roman Catholic Church owned, publicly financed health care organization, Alberta’s second largest provider of health services.
There has been no press release from Covenant Health announcing the appointment, which given Shandro’s performance in office is bound to be highly controversial.
Likewise, no kind words from Covenant Health CEO Patrick Dumelie welcoming the former senior cabinet minister to the board have been published anywhere the public can see them.
Similarly, there have been no news stories in media, not that Google can find, anyway.
There hasn’t even been any chatter on social media – until yesterday when someone noticed Shandro’s photograph and the potted biography extolling his virtues on Covenant Health’s website and sent a direct message via the social media platform known as X to The Breakdown, an account that publishes video commentaries on Alberta politics. So to The Breakdown goes the scoop!
It turns out, Shandro’s biography also went live on the Covenant Health site Saturday, the Wayback Machine web archive shows. His mugshot appears to have been loaded to the site in April but not posted to a public page.
Since Covenant Health’s board, chaired by former Progressive Conservative Premier Ed Stelmach, selects and appoints its own members, the UCP Government would have had no official role in the appointment. But given Premier Danielle Smith’s intense interest in health care, it seems likely the UCP gave its imprimatur to the appointment.
Why Covenant Health chose to appoint Shandro to the board and then not announce it for at least five months is unstated, although the obvious inference is the controversy his appointment is bound to arouse and Covenant Health’s desire to put off having to deal with it as long as possible.
Elected as MLA for the Calgary-Acadia Riding in the 2019 general election, Shandro was given the health portfolio by then UCP premier Jason Kenney with a mandate that included cutting human resources costs.
Early in his tenure he attracted international attention for his ham-handed effort to dodge reporters’ questions about the future of a working group on banning conversion therapy.
Things then went downhill. Shandro’s missteps and controversies as health minister became notorious. They included:
- Unilaterally pulling a plug on an agreement with the Alberta Medical Association, starting a “war on doctors” that prompted a lawsuit by the AMA and led many physicians to leave the province.
- A no-confidence vote in his performance by 98 per cent of the province’s physicians.
- Promotion of the Babylon virtual medicine smartphone app as a replacement for seeing a physician, followed by privacy concerns about the app. The company that first promoted the app has since gone broke.
- Use of a blind trust for a family business run by his wife that was criticized for being legally able to open and close like a Venetian blind.
- Being photographed among the guests at Kenney’s boozy mid-pandemic patio party.
- Most famously, throwing an epic tantrum in a neighbour’s driveway over a critical post on social media that mentioned the family business. That meltdown resulted in a hearing into whether Shandro violated the Law Society of Alberta’s code of conduct. The hearing concluded last fall, but no decision has been announced.
In September 2021, the heat was intense enough that Kenney shuffled his cabinet, switchingShandro to labour and labour minister Jason Copping to health. Copping enjoyed some success pouring oil on the troubled waters in health.
In February 2022, Shandro was shuffled again to the Justice portfolio, after the justice minister, Kaycee Madu, got into hot water for talking about a distracted driving ticket with Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee.
Shandro remained in that portfolio until the May 29, 2023, general election, when he was defeated in his riding by the NDP’s Diana Batten, a Registered Nurse who is now the Opposition critic for childcare, child and family services. Ms. Batten won by 25 votes.
Copping, by the way, was defeated in the Calgary-Varsity riding by Calgary physician and university professor Luanne Metz, who is now the Opposition health critic.
Covenant Health operates facilities at 17 sites in 12 communities throughout Alberta, employing about 11,000 people. Major hospitals include the Grey Nuns Community Hospital and Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton. Covenant Health’s board is appointed by and accountable to the Catholic bishops of Alberta.
Since the creation of Alberta Health Services in 2009, Covenant operations have been closely integrated with AHS. It is not clear, however, if that level of coordination will survive the policies of the Smith Government.
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