How do Stephen Duckett, Alberta Health Services and the government of Alberta get to have it both ways at once?
The former CEO of Alberta Health Services, the province-wide health agency Duckett led, and Alberta’s Conservative government all agree that the Australian PhD economist was not fired when he left AHS in November 2011.
At the same time, these three mismatched amigos all happily agree that Duckett has been paid out his entire year’s salary, benefits, variable pay and an amount to cover contingent liabilities — which together add up to the not insignificant sum of $735,630.
Most of us who spend a lifetime toiling in wage slavery figure you can have it one way, or you can have it the other.
In other words, if you’re fired, even if there was some justice to the firing, you can usually expect to be paid out part or all of your contract. And if you up and quit, for whatever reason, you can’t reasonably expect to be paid out.
However, in the cloud-cuckoo land of Alberta health-care senior management, it appears that the law of labour relations gravity has been suspended — at least for the blokes at the very top when Alberta taxpayers are footing the bill.
But as AHS Chairman Ken Hughes said, and as Duckett agrees: the blunt-spoken health economist recruited back in 2009 to run the new health-care mega-bureaucracy was not fired, no matter what he did with that raisin-oatmeal cookie on Nov. 19, 2010.
Here’s Hughes, speaking to the Calgary Sun back on Nov. 24, 2010: “Dr. Duckett has been released from his contractual obligations. … We have jointly agreed it is time to move forward.” The Sun’s reporter noted that Hughes “wouldn’t call the departure a firing.”
And here’s Duckett, in an email he sent the Calgary Herald on Saturday from vacation overseas after Friday’s sleazy announcement by AHS, which said in a four-sentence news release moments before the start of the long weekend that the good doctor (of economics) had been paid out in full:
“As is clear from the severance agreement, and Mr. Hughes’ comments at the time, my departure from Alberta Health Services was by mutual agreement, not a dismissal as some media reported.” (Emphasis added.)
“Essentially,” Duckett went on in his note to the Herald, “I lost the confidence of the government following my ‘cookie comments’ and so I couldn’t really continue to function effectively in my role as President and Chief Executive Officer.”
Well, I’ll say! But this begs the obvious question in this matter: If Duckett quit, for whatever reason he chose to quit, it was his decision. So, why the hell was he paid out almost three quarters of a million dollars?
Perhaps more important, who made the decision that he be paid out? Who signed off on it? And why?
Was this decision made at the political level by Premier Ed Stelmach? By Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky? Did former health minister Ron Liepert play a role in this? And if so, what were they trying to accomplish, since — as everyone agrees — Duckett was not fired?
Or was the decision to pay off a guy who up and quit made by Hughes, government-appointed chair of the board that employed Duckett and that is purported to be independent of the government? If Hughes didn’t think Duckett should be fired, why didn’t he keep him on?
Duckett’s note goes on, by the way, to remind us what a tough job he had, how much better his life is now that he isn’t doing it and to confirm that he’s writing a book on the future of Canadian health care. “Many of the proposals in the book are based on the policies we started to implement here in Alberta.”
That’s all very well, one supposes. But most of us would rather find out why a guy who quit his job was paid off with our money by a bunch of clowns who couldn’t manage a peanut stand.
Well, you can’t blame Duckett for negotiating the best possible deal under the circumstances.
The same can’t be said of the other principal figures in this story. Heads should roll!
This post also appears on David Climenhaga’s blog, Alberta Diary.
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