Deena Hinshaw's a Victim of UCP Vindictiveness

The enemy of mine enemy is my friend and all that, but it’s not clear that supporters of sound public health policy are on the right track if they decide to portray Alberta’s former chief medical officer of health as a public health hero.

Let’s be clear, the vindictive campaign to scapegoat Dr. Deena Hinshaw and kick her out of a new public health role with Alberta Health Services as soon as she was hired because she was the public face of COVID-mitigation measures during the pandemic shows the true face of Premier Danielle Smith’s government. It is not a pretty one.

But it’s also true that as chief medical officer of health Hinshaw frequently failed to exercise her legal authority to uphold sound public health measures as then-premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government swung wildly back and forth between inadequate COVID mitigation and irresponsible pandering to the party’s anti-vaccine base.

Hinshaw could have rightly been described as a hero had she used her authority to keep us from being led into Kenney’s “Best Summer Ever” in 2021. She did not.

The Best Summer Ever turned out to be disaster for Alberta, fatal for many Albertans, and a personal political catastrophe for Kenney.

Hinshaw’s role during the COVID outbreak at the Cargill meat packing plant near High River in the spring of 2020 was worse, working with then-agriculture minister Devin Dreeshen to advance a misleading narrative minimizing the risk of infection within the plant, where the disease was spreading.

At too many times during the pandemic, she bowed to the wishes of the government to minimize the danger of the disease and to rely solely on vaccinations to eliminate it.

Nevertheless, when Smith was a right-wing radio talk jock advocating quack COVID cures and engaging in borderline COVID denial, and after her return to politics, she relentlessly assailed Hinshaw for the sensible measures the chief medical officer imposed to control the spread of COVID-19.

In office as premier less than six months, one of Smith’s first actions was to fire Hinshaw as chief medical officer to appease the Q-adjacent anti-vaxers of the cult-like Take Back Alberta faction of the UCP’s base, whose efforts had helped her to win the party leadership after they did the heavy lifting to skid Kenney.

This certainly represented a dramatic change from 2021, when Hinshaw was rewarded by the Kenney government with a $227,911 cash bonus on top of her $363,634 annual salary. It was the highest bonus ever paid to an Alberta public employee.

Smith’s government fired Hinshaw on Nov. 14, 2022, which it could do without complications because the chief medical officer is an independent officer of the government, not part of Alberta Health Services.

Three days later, the premier fired the entire AHS board and replaced it with Dr. John Cowell, a former CEO of the Health Quality Council of Alberta and private-sector executive. As “administrator,” the government said, Cowell would report to Smith and her health minister. Last Friday, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange announced the government was extending Cowell’s term as sole administrator until the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, after losing her chief medical officer job, Hinshaw found a temp job in British Columbia for a spell.

Early this month, though, we learned she’d been hired for a part-time gig with AHS’s Indigenous Wellness Core program. “The Indigenous Wellness Core is pleased to announce that Dr. Deena Hinshaw has been selected as the new IWC public health and preventative medicine lead,” an internal AHS memorandum announced on June 1. She was supposed to start on June 5.

But no sooner was Hinshaw hired than she was unhired. “AHS Statement: AHS doesn’t speak to personnel matters,” the provincewide health authority tweeted on June 3, burying the lead within 15 words. “Dr. Hinshaw is not employed by AHS.”

Since then, the CBC has reported that someone at AHS pulled the plug on the decision over the wishes of the program’s medical lead, Dr. Esther Tailfeathers, who quickly herself resigned in response. The CBC said it had learned Hinshaw’s hiring had the approval of Cowell.

For her part, Smith insists it wasn’t her.

Obviously, though, the decision to re-dump Hinshaw came from someone above Cowell — notwithstanding the fiction that AHS operates at arm’s length from the government.

And the only people above Cowell are LaGrange, who is not known for her independence of mind, and Premier Smith.

So there should be no question the buck stops in the Premier’s Office.

Clear as well is that the demands of the UCP’s Take Back Alberta faction for vindictive public retribution outweigh the wishes of Indigenous health leaders in Alberta.

We need to support Indigenous health leaders in their decisions. This should have been their call. But we also need to keep Hinshaw’s less-than-stellar public health record during her difficult term as chief medical officer in mind.

Deena Hinshaw cannot be called a public health hero, but she is a victim of UCP retribution for the things she did do right.