The leader of Alberta’s Opposition NDP says it’s time to fire Health Minister Adriana LaGrange given new allegations surrounding high-level corruption in medical contracts.
Naheed Nenshi said Thursday if the claims made this week in a lawsuit are true, it would be the worst scandal and coverup in Alberta’s history.
“We cannot negotiate with other countries while being led by a banana republic. Albertans deserve ethical government,” he said.
He has also called for a full public inquiry, an RCMP investigation and for Premier Danielle Smith to step aside while independent investigators get to the bottom of the affair.
The allegations, which have not been tested in court, are contained in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed Wednesday by Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was in charge of all Alberta front-line health services for a year before she was fired last month.
The lawsuit alleges she was dismissed from Alberta Health Services for probing questionable deal-making involving government officials as high up as the premier’s office, and says LaGrange tried to stop her investigation before working to get her dismissed.
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Smith said Wednesday that LaGrange still had her full confidence, and on Thursday her spokesman Sam Blackett said the premier stands by that statement.
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LaGrange said in a Wednesday statement that many of the allegations in the lawsuit are “clearly false, while others will need to be investigated further as part of the auditor general’s work and the government’s internal review of this matter.”
In an emailed statement Thursday, Smith pointed to LaGrange’s Wednesday remarks and said “I understand she will soon be filing a statement of defence.” The premier has previously said she was not involved in any wrongdoing.
The government has said it will now oversee an internal AHS review, helped by an unnamed third party. Alberta’s auditor general Doug Wylie is also investigating contracting procedures at AHS and the health ministry.
AHS has said it won’t be issuing any new contracts to companies involved in its review, but it hasn’t provided a list of those companies.
At an unrelated news conference Thursday, Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz was asked whether she thought it was appropriate for LaGrange to stay in her role, including overseeing the internal review.
Schulz initially pointed to the auditor general’s review, but when pressed, said LaGrange “is doing an excellent job at tackling health-care reform, something that Albertans have wanted to see for a number of years.”
She added she believes LaGrange is taking a responsible approach.
“I think she’s doing a fantastic job when it came to these concerns. She also said that she wants that investigation done swiftly. She wants to ensure that we have the facts about what happened, so that that can be dealt with,” said Schulz.
Two days earlier, Children and Family Services Minister Searle Turton and Culture and Status of Women Minister Tanya Fir deferred questions about calls for LaGrange to step aside, emphasizing the importance of getting the facts straight first.
In Mentzelopoulos’s statement of claim, she alleges she was wooed to the job, strong-armed, ignored and finally summarily sacked in a yearlong odyssey that at one point had her fearing for her personal safety.
She alleges government officials urged her to approve new chartered surgical facilities and sign off on new deals for existing ones despite concerns about who was getting the money at prices that seemed far costlier than they needed to be.
The lawsuit further alleges conflict of interest surrounding an AHS staffer, who the claim says also had an email account with a private supplier while involved in negotiating a contract with that supplier for children’s pain medication.
The lawsuit claims when Mentzelopoulos updated the AHS board of directors on her investigation, the board suggested calling in the RCMP.
That board was also later fired.
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