Danielle Smith’s Troubling Response to AHS Corruption Allegations

In a truculent and defensive statement in response to last week’s bombshell allegations that provincial officials improperly pressured Alberta Health Services to sign bad deals with private contractors, a stormy Danielle Smith took to social media Saturday to channel Richard Nixon and declare herself not to be a crook.

“As Premier, I was not involved in any wrongdoing,” Smith stated, echoing the 37th American president’s notorious 1973 assertion during the Watergate scandal that “I am not a crook.”

“Any insinuation to the contrary is false, baseless and defamatory,” she continued in the statement, which was also published on the official government website.

Was this a threat to sue ordinary Albertans, journalists and commentators who question the motives and intentions of the politician at the top? It sure sounds like it.

Needless to say, whatever Smith or the person who drafted this statement for her intended, this is not best public relations practice. It likely reflects the government’s panic at the harsh public reaction to the allegations, which amount to the most serious crisis faced by Smith and her United Conservative Party government.

The premier and her political advisors are struggling to control the damage caused by former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos’s allegation she was fired for launching an investigation of sketchy procurement deals and private surgical contracts pushed by influential staffers working for Smith’s UCP government.

The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday that a Jan. 20 letter from Mentzelopoulos’s lawyer to the AHS general legal counsel alleges she was fired as CEO “because she launched ‘an internal investigation and forensic audit’ into AHS’s contracts and procurement processes.” Mentzelopoulos is seeking $1.7 million in compensation for wrongful dismissal, the Globe reported.

The Globe’s story also tied together alleged pressure on AHS executives to ink bad deals, gifts of NHL playoff tickets for politicians and senior UCP political staffers and controversial expenses such as the purchase millions of bottles of Turkish-made children’s pain medication during the pandemic that ended up not being used.

The metaphorical fire set by Mentzelopoulos’s dismissal, the dismissal of the entire AHS Board, and the former CEO’s subsequent allegations has been, as fire departments put it, fully engaged ever since.

In her statement, Smith said “I will be writing Auditor General Doug Wylie to ask for an expedited review and his findings on this issue.”

“I have also directed my officials to ensure that any request for information from Mr. Wylie or his office is dealt with on a fully transparent and expedited basis,” she said. “We need to get to the bottom of this issue quickly to identify any potential wrongdoing, correct it, and address it appropriately.”

This is all very well, but the result of rushing Wylie’s report into her hands — which will take a while, expedited or not, during which the government will refuse to make any comments — will be that she and her aides will have an opportunity to spin the results before the rest of us get to see them.

False, baseless and defamatory or not, Smith’s own office is implicated in this situation. The report should obviously not be delivered first to the people whose conduct is being investigated.

Moreover, while he is technically an officer of the legislature independent of the government, the auditor general keeps his job of the pleasure of an assembly with an obedient UCP majority.

So while there is nothing wrong with asking the auditor general to investigate, and while there are aspects of the allegations that could be investigated by the police and by the legislature’s ethics commissioner, as NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi argued Thursday, a judge-led independent inquiry is required to clear the air.

Indeed, if there is no independent investigation, the public is entitled to seriously doubt the premier’s assertions of innocence.

Getting back to the statement by Smith, who has not appeared in public to answer questions about the allegations, she also said she has instructed “that AHS’s internal review be completed as quickly as possible and delivered directly to me so we can study the results and make improvements or adjustments to these processes.”

Note first that she is not promising to make public that investigation, which will be conducted under the leadership of AHS official administrator/interim CEO/deputy health minister Andre Tremblay.

Having the report delivered to someone named in it, no matter how unjustly, is on its face a coverup. And as then-president Nixon learned in 1974, the coverup is often more dangerous to a politician’s survival than the act that was covered up.

“This is simply not good enough,” Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said in a feisty weekend statement. “The investigation can’t be handed over to the people being investigated. How dumb does she think Albertans are?”

“An AHS inquiry that only reports to the acting CEO, who only reports to himself as official administrator and who only reports to himself as deputy minister, is at this point worse than worthless. He himself is named in the allegations.”

Accusing Smith of wanting to sweep the scandal under the rug, Nenshi renewed his call for the premier, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, Mental Health and Addiction Minister Dan Williams and Tremblay “to do the right thing and step aside now to ensure that these investigations will be conducted without political interference.” Smith wrapped up her statement on a sour note.

“It’s no secret I have been unhappy with the level and quality of service delivered by AHS and in the inability of AHS to deliver quality and timely health care to Albertans,” she complained. “There is a widespread and deep-seated resistance to change that we must overcome.”

Every frontline employee of AHS — every nurse, every physician, every medical technician, care aide and support staffer — should be offended by the premier’s effort to blame them for a situation that is being caused by her government.

This statement is not going to make the government’s problem go away.