Smith Still Faces Questions in the Dodgy Contracts Scandal

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has declared herself, her political aides and her government vindicated by a former Manitoba judge’s limited investigation of contract jiggery-pokery at Alberta Health Services.

In a statement on the Alberta government’s website Friday, Smith declared that the report by Raymond Wyant pins the blame entirely on Alberta Health Services, the provincewide health agency that her government is dismantling as quickly as it can.

“There is no evidence the premier, any minister, political staff member or member of the Alberta Public Service acted improperly in this matter,” Smith’s statement said.

This is, as Albertans are coming to understand about many of Smith’s statements, not strictly true.

As Wyant, the former chief justice of the Manitoba provincial court, himself explained in his report: “It is important to underscore that this investigation was limited in that... it had specific Terms of Reference (TOR) and I have kept most of my comments in this report directed to those TOR. While other topics and potential collateral issues arose during the course of my investigation, I did not have the mandate to pursue those within my investigation.”

“Unlike a public inquiry, this investigation did not have the power to subpoena or hear testimony under oath,” Wyant wrote. “As a result, people had the opportunity to decline to be interviewed. Some did. Further, because testimony was not under oath, people could decline to answer questions. Some did. Further, because there was not the kind of vigorous examination and cross-examination that would take place in a formal setting, I could not come to conclusions on the credibility of information provided verbally by interviewees. In most cases, I perceived, based on my experience, that people were striving to tell the truth and to recall events in as much detail as possible. However, there were occasions where I was left with the impression that might not be the case nor that full and complete information was being provided.”

You are free to exercise your own judgment about whether or not this report really amounts to a vindication of Smith, her aides and her government.

The premier acknowledged the report’s negative findings but blamed Alberta Health Services, or AHS.

“Although the judge’s findings clearly indicate that elected officials, senior staff and members of the public service acted appropriately in these matters, I am deeply disappointed with the way these procurements and contracts were dealt with by AHS decision makers and some of its employees,” her statement says.

Remember, the allegations that Wyant was hired to investigate were made by former Alberta Health Services CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was fired by the Smith government when she tried to launch an internal investigation into what happened. Mentzelopoulos’s wrongful dismissal lawsuit continues.

Obviously, this raises certain questions that could not be asked, let alone answered, by Wyant.

Wyant himself certainly seemed to be concerned about how future readers might interpret his conclusions.

“When I find that there was no wrongful interference by any government official in the matters concerning this report, that only means that I found no evidence of such, but I am not in a position to make a final and absolute determination,” he explained. “I can only make conclusions based on the documents I was able to review and the people I interviewed.”

Under the circumstances, it’s hard to fault him for this concern.

The report includes 18 sensible recommendations including creating whistleblower protection for AHS employees, prohibiting one individual from acting for both AHS and a vendor in the same deal, blocking anyone involved in such a transaction from using their personal email address, and ensuring that all contracts over $10 million are reviewed by a procurement lawyer.

Smith said in her statement: “I am immediately directing the deputy minister of Executive Council, Dale McFee, to work with all impacted ministries and the new health procurement secretariat to implement judge Wyant’s recommendations as quickly as possible so that future health procurement is done transparently, using best practices.”

Since some of Wyant’s recommendations apply specifically to AHS — which the government is in the process of dismantling — it will be interesting to see if these instructions are interpreted to include the other so-called “pillars” in the United Conservative Party’s increasingly fractured public health-care system.

Smith’s statement concludes: “This will include the accelerated implementation of the Activity-Based Funding model for surgical services that will see a standard, non-negotiated fee paid to providers for each completed surgery, thereby increasing transparency and more efficient use of taxpayer dollars going forward.”

This sounds like a classic example of never letting a serious crisis go to waste.

The so-called activity-based funding model in effect turns all hospitals into for-profit institutions, an ideological goal of the UCP government.

Activity-based funding is commonly used to game the system to ensure that corporate hospitals make more money.

“The incentive is to list all of the diagnoses you can possibly list for every patient, as some of these will increase the payment even if it does not change your management one bit,” warned professor Jonathon Ross of the University of Toledo in Ohio in a 2013 article.

It is also likely to result in patients being discharged too early because keeping them in hospital impacts the facility’s bottom line.