EDMONTON – Former CEO of Capital Health, Sheila Weatherill, has repaid the cost of the 2007 trip to the Mayo Clinic which was expensed by her former colleague, Michelle Lahey, who was COO of the Alberta health authority.
In a letter addressed to Health Minister Fred Horne, Weatherill says:
“I am writing to you as a result of a six-year-old expense-approval error at Capital Health that was raised this week in the Alberta Legislature.”
Weatherill goes on to say:
“Having the cost of Ms. Lahey’s Mayo Clinic assessment paid for by Capital Helath was an error. As CEO at the time, I take responsibility for this extraordinary event and I apologize to the people of Alberta.”
She adds:
“As a demonstration of my respect for the public trust placed in senior health care officials, included in this letter is repayment by me of Ms. Lahey’s expenses to the Alberta treasury for $7,800.”
Weatherill explains the amount represents the cost of the trip and assessment plus inflation in Alberta since 2007.
Weatherill resigned from her position on the Alberta Health Services Board in the summer of 2012.
The letter, in its entirety, is posted below.
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“She’s taken responsibility for it, for which I thank her and she’s repaid the money to the government,” said Horne Thursday afternoon, “and I think it’s the right think to do and what Albertans expect.”
Horne is now seeking legal advice from former Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta, Honourable Allan H. Wachowich.
The health minister is retaining Wachowich’s services to determine “the options available to the Government of Alberta and/or Alberta Health Services, if appropriate, to recover any funds that may have been improperly paid to current or former employees of Alberta Health Services or the former health authorities.”
“We think that before you can get to the bottom of an issue and get money paid back, you need to know where all the illegal or inappropriate expense claims are in the first place,” said Wildrose leader Danielle Smith. “If he wants to pull a judge in, the judge has the power to compell the release of that information.”
“We think there is a mechanism to get the money paid back,” Smith added.
“Albertans can’t move on until they know the people who were overseeing the system can be trusted to make sure these problems don’t happen again in the future. And I don’t think there’s that trust right now. Because every single time we raise an issue, first of all they call it imaginary, then they deny it, then they call us names, and they when they realize that we were right, they become the minister of back-pedalling.”
The health minister’s letter is also posted below.
Sheila Weatherill’s letter to Health Minister Fred Horne:
Fred Horne’s letter to Honourable Allan H. Wachowich:
With files from Vassy Kapelos
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