It’s safe bet the United Conservative Party (UCP) Government wasn’t very happy to learn yesterday that Verna Yiu, controversially fired in April as president and chief executive officer of Alberta Health Services, has been named as the next provost and academic vice-president of the University of Alberta.
In fact, you can take it as a certainty that Jason Kenney, who is still premier of Alberta despite the party effort now under way to find his replacement, will be furious. That anger will be reflected by a number of members of his cabinet, too, at least as long as their patron sticks around.
After all, when governments fire high-profile officials, they like them to stay fired.
This is particularly true of those like the UCP under Kenney that have an obvious vindictive streak.
Even without the UCP’s tendency toward mean-spiritedness, no government would want to remind voters that they had just fired a respected leader with a year left to run on her contract – and had to pay her out to the tune of at least her full $568,321 annual salary because everyone except the anti-vaccine nuts in the UCP base understood she had been doing an exemplary job.
Nevertheless, arguing that they needed change now, that is exactly what the UCP did on April 4, claiming that they wanted to “move forward with an ambitious agenda to improve and modernize the health system.” That agenda means, of course, that they want to privatize significant parts of it – and as quickly as possible, in case they don’t win the next election.
Yiu was a staunch defender of public health care, and therefore had the potential to be a well-placed opponent to UCP privatizers.
While AHS Board Chair Gregory Turnbull praised Yiu for her “tireless leadership through the worst days of the pandemic” and thanked for “her years of dedicated service and commitment to AHS and to Albertans,” you’ll note that neither he nor Health Minister Jason Copping denied she’d been fired when media reported it was so.
So, naturally, there was speculation on social media that U of A President Bill Flanagan’s announcement of Yiu’s two-year appointment starting July 1 as his academic second-in-command was intended as a slap in the face of the government.
Given Flanagan’s approach to dealing with the Kenney Government’s attacks on U of A funding, not to mention the fact that the U of A Board is now as packed with UCP retainers as the one at AHS, it also seems highly unlikely Yiu’s appointment was intended as a doigt d’honneur to the government.
Flanagan must have sincerely assumed she was the best person for the job, and considering her six years of exemplary service as CEO of AHS and 20 years of experience in various senior public health care jobs, that might just be true. As I wrote in this space on April 4, Yiu “led Alberta Health Services through the darkest hours of the pandemic with grace and a steady hand.”
That won’t count for much with Kenney, of course, since he seems to have had a chip on his shoulder against the U of A since then-president David Turpin refused in 2018 to bow to his pressure to withdraw an honorary degree that was about to be bestowed upon environmentalist and scientist David Suzuki.
Ever since, the UCP has been hammering the U of A.
In the 2021 provincial budget, nearly half of the massive $126-million cut to post-secondary education in Alberta was borne by the U of A alone.
“Twenty-five per cent of Alberta’s post-secondary students attend the University of Alberta, yet the province has required us to bear nearly 50 per cent of the reduction in provincial funding,” Flanagan lamented at the time.
Of course, it also doesn’t help that the U of A is based in Edmonton, which has voted solidly for the NDP in the past two provincial elections.
Listing Yiu’s contributions to U of A programs over the years, Flanagan said in his statement to faculty members and other U of A employees yesterday that she “is a well-established leader in the national community, having served on many boards and committees including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, among others.”
He noted that Yiu is an alumna of the U of A, having “completed her undergraduate degree, medical school, and residency” at the university.
His message also noted that Steven Dew, the current provost and academic VP, “will be resigning from his administrative role at the end of June.”
In a statement included with Flanagan’s message, Dew said “the past couple of years have been particularly taxing on us all and have affected my health and stamina. I need to step away from the role.”
Dew, a member of the university’s electrical and computer engineering department, said that after a leave of absence he intends to return to teaching.
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