Former Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro has resurfaced (re-resurfaced, actually) as a “senior advisor” to a company called Santis Health.
And what is Santis Health, you ask? Well, according to the Toronto-based company, it’s “a public affairs, strategic advisory, public policy, marketing and communication consultancy that is dedicated to providing first-class counsel and support for clients exclusively in the health care and life sciences sectors across the country.”
That sounds like someone from the firm’s communications department was asked to come up with a nicer way of describing a lobbying firm or the kind of management consulting firm that right-wing governments love to hire now that they’ve hollowed out the civil service.
Be that as it may, according to Santis Health’s September 3 press release, the former United Conservative Party (UCP) health minister’s “track record of enacting change within the health care system is a testament to his effective leadership, engagement, and bias for action which will help Santis clients tremendously.”
Well, there’s nothing like starting a war with the province’s physicians to show a bias for action, I suppose. In 2020, 98 per cent of the doctors who voted in an Alberta Medical Association survey indicated they had no confidence in Shandro’s performance as health minister.
Shandro’s tenure in the health portfolio also included promoting 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.
His 2020 tantrum at a neighbour over a critical social media post made headlines literally for years. Shandro was found not guilty of unprofessional behaviour by a Law Society of Alberta panel on July 19 this year.
He also held the Justice and Labour portfolios in the UCP governments of premiers Jason Kenney and Danielle Smith. He returned to the practice of law in Calgary after losing his Calgary-Acadia seat in the 2023 provincial election to the NDP’s Diana Batten.
Last spring it was revealed that Shandro had been a member of the board of Covenant Health since the previous September. That was the first time he resurfaced.
Apparently for all that time almost no one had been aware of his appointment outside the upper levels of the Roman Catholic Church owned, publicly financed health care organization, Alberta’s second largest provider of health services. His biography simply appeared on the Covenant website on June 1.
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 Smith’s intense interest in health care, it seems likely the UCP gave its nod to the appointment. On August 26, Albertans learned of Smith’s plans to hand over the operation of some rural Alberta Health Services hospitals to Covenant Health.
Santis Health, which was founded in 2012 and is privately owned, seems to keep a low profile. In addition to Toronto, it has offices in Ottawa and Vancouver.
Very few news stories about the company have appeared in media beyond one saying a consultant in its employ had been nominated as a North Vancouver candidate for the now apparently defunct B.C. United Party. In the aftermath of the unfortunately initialed BCUP’s withdrawal from the upcoming B.C. election in favour of the UCP-adjacent B.C. Conservatives, James Mitchell sensibly ended his campaign.
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