Alberta cabinet member urges Danielle Smith to remove health minister
CBC
A UCP cabinet minister is urging the premier to remove Health Minister Adriana LaGrange from her post while investigations continue into serious allegations a fired Alberta Health Services CEO has made about major health contracts, CBC News has learned.
Infrastructure Minister Peter Guthrie sent a memo Thursday to his cabinet colleagues urging quick action, and a readiness to hand any potential criminal matters to the RCMP.
CBC News has obtained a copy of the memo and confirmed the authenticity with a source familiar with its contents.
Former AHS executive Athana Mentzelopoulos has alleged that the government pushed her out of her top job after she launched investigations into what she describes as conflicts of interest and questionable costs of AHS deals with private surgical facilities, as well as with the medical supplier behind the $70-million purchase of children's medicine from Turkey.
Those claims reached the court this week, when she filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the government and AHS. The claims in the lawsuit have not been tested in court.
"Considering the mounting allegations, I would like to reiterate my recommendations from cabinet on Tuesday," Guthrie's memo states, referring to the cabinet meeting held earlier this week.
He lays out five urgent actions. "Remove Andre Tremblay as CEO/administrator at AHS and as DM [deputy minister of the Health Ministry] until such time as an investigation is complete," he writes.
Tremblay was appointed as interim CEO and the one-man board of directors of the massive hospitals agency last month, after Mentzelopoulos and the previous seven-member board were both ejected.
"Min. Adriana LaGrange should be moved to another unrelated ministry until an investigation is complete," Guthrie's memo states.
Two other ministries have key roles in parts of the health system: Mental Health and Addictions, as well as Seniors and Community Supports.
Asked about the memo, the premier signalled in a statement emailed Friday to CBC News that she won't heed Guthrie's call to shuffle LaGrange out.
"I have full confidence in the health minister to continue her important work in refocusing and reforming our health system," Smith said.
Guthrie also calls on "our government" to fully support Auditor General Doug Wylie in his investigation, and to "require the completion of and access to" the third-party forensic audit that Mentzelopoulos stated in the lawsuit she launched in November.
In December, according to her statement of claim, Mentzelopoulos was instructed by an Alberta Health official to "wind up" an internal investigation.
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