As Premier, I was not involved in any wrongdoing. Any insinuation to the contrary is false, baseless and defamatory. ~ Danielle Smith, February 8, 2025
Like that photo, this story just keeps on giving.
Turns out that Danielle Smith not only didn’t know what her Chief of Staff was doing, or what her Health Minister was doing, or what her Health Minister was directing her staff to do, but it’s alleged there was political pressure coming from multiple departments in her government, which I’m sure she is dizzyingly happy to plead complete and total ignorance of as well.
Who do you think she is? A leader? Pfft.
Former Alberta Health Services CEO Athana Mentzelopolous filed her statement of claim with the Court of King’s Bench on Wednesday and, hoo boy — The Globe and Mail’s Carrie Tait only barely scratched the surface of the allegations lobbed at political staff serving at the pleasure of the United Conservative Party, but also public servants with ties to one private citizen with multiple business names getting hundreds of millions in government contracts.
Allow me to digress for a moment because this is poetic AF.
Danielle Smith and the UCP thought ethics rules were too restrictive on important people like themselves.
Ms. Smith told the Ryan Jespersen podcast on Nov. 1 (2023) she didn't attend (a football game) based on advice from Marguerite Trussler, Alberta's ethics commissioner. "I don't want to go to a game and then only be able to stay in a [private] suite for 20 minutes, so I declined," Ms. Smith said on the podcast.
Globe and Mail, July 19, 2024
Once Albertans learned that the Sport Minister, and Public Safety Minister had received free tickets (they never admitted who provided them), and that the Finance Minister, Affordability and Utilities Minister, and the Transportation Minister had all accepted free Oilers playoff tickets from Sam Mraiche, of MHCare (among others), and he was identified at the Vancouver game (Ms. Smith claimed the tickets were a “gift” to her from an Invest Alberta board member so, we’re not even sure how he ended up in the same box, in Vancouver, with the Premier, but anyway), it seemed odd that this one person was spending a lot of money to socialize with all these members of Alberta’s elected government.
Last year.
Before anyone started poking around.
The moral of the story is that the old ethics rules were in place to protect dumbasses like them from becoming embroiled in an alleged contract and procurement scandal worth over $600 million.
Smirk.
And, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that cozying up to powerful people who lack ethics and the ability to consider consequences of their actions is in any way illegal. It’s not. I just find it deliciously farcical.
It’s also not the issue in the former AHS CEO’s statement of claim.
Ms. Mentzelopolous alleges that pressure was coming from so many places on behalf of the contracts with Alberta Surgical Group.
Not — as the Premier is currently trying to spin her way around — all contracts for Charted Surgical Facilities, just the contracts with Alberta Surgical Group. Just the one that Health Minister Adriana LaGrange extended, allegedly with higher rates than other contracts for comparable services, with a Ministerial Order on October 18, 2024.
Ms. Mentzelopolous alleges that she was pressured to stop asking questions about Alberta Surgical Group by the Deputy Minister of Health (who was also a board member at the time, and is now just CEO of AHS as well as the Deputy Minister of Health), the Deputy Minister of Addictions and Mental Health, the Deputy Minister of Finance, and the Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, as well as the Premier’s former Chief of Staff, who “retired” on October 8, 2024, and is now the Vice President, Western Canada for conservative lobbying firm Rubicon Strategy Inc.
This allegation makes me think that if the Auditor General, or the RCMP, or any third-party investigator the government hires feels that the documentation they’re provided by any member of the governing party, or their political staff, or their appointed Deputy Ministers, or Assistant Deputy Ministers seems inadequate, there may be copies that exist where those people cannot accidentally drop them into a shredder.
That is simply an opinion on something I have no inside knowledge of, but makes sense to me, if the allegations involve so many people, in so many departments of the Alberta Government, headed by the United Conservative Party.
Let me also be clear, this isn’t a sky palace, or a sky palace dinner during covid. It’s not even a privacy breach of personal and confidential information, but that is closer because the allegations that Ms. Mentzelopolous is making are, at its heart, criminal.
They say that it’s never the crime that will take you down, but the cover up.
Me? I’m just going to sit back, watch the show, and point out every lie they tell on their way.
Happy Thursday :)
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I would be interested to see how much money the principals of this charter surgical group have historically donated to the UCP. Again, not illegal, but interesting. They tend to go well out of their way to benefit their own.
If Smith is relying on "plausible deniability" it seems the word "plausible" is going to have work very hard...
I'd be interested in a straight-forward timeline of events, showing when which players resigned / retired, which executive functions were removed, and warnings were given. I don't have all the pertinent info (and may have missed such timeline already published?).