Alberta health minister denies former AHS CEO's claims in statement of defence
CBC
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange is alleging the former CEO of Alberta Health Services was unwilling and unable to implement the government's plan to break up the health authority, became "infatuated" with her internal investigation into private surgical contracts and made "incendiary and inaccurate allegations about political intrigue and impropriety" before she was fired in January.
The claims are contained in the minister's statement of defence filed Thursday in Edmonton Court of King's Bench.
Smith has said she had no involvement in the contracting decisions.
Mentzelopoulos's allegations, the state of defence claims, were made to deflect attention from concerns about her own performance and professionalism.
The document also says Mentzelopoulos made her claims in an attempt to get a larger payout for being fired.
Mentzelopoulos said she was fired in January, days before she was set to meet with Alberta's auditor general about surgical contracts she said had links to government officials.
She alleges she was terminated, in part, because she had launched an investigation and forensic audit and was taking a second look at the prices in contracts involving the Alberta Surgical Group before extending the agreement.
Mentzelopoulos also widened the AHS investigations to include AHS procurement with medical supply company MHCare. The company won a $70 million contract in 2022 to import children's pain medication from Turkey. Most of the product has not been used.
LaGrange, in the statement of defence, said the suggestion Mentzelopoulos was fired to prevent her from speaking with the auditor general is false. The document states the province supports the auditor general investigation that's now underway.
"The plaintiff was not fired by AHS because she commenced an investigation. She was not fired as part of a conspiracy to stop an investigation," the document states.
"She was fired because she failed to perform her role as president and CEO effectively and failed to carry out the mandate she was given to implement the transformation of AHS, which the premier of Alberta mandated the minister to implement.
"The plaintiff lost the confidence of AHS and the minister."
In an emailed response to CBC News, Dan Scott, lawyer for Mentzelopoulos, said the allegations in the statement of defence are false. He said his client was terminated without cause.
Scott said Mentzelopoulos is looking forward to filing her reply to the statement of defence, and in a statement issued earlier Thursday, Mentzelopoulos said she is comfortable moving quickly to trial.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.
A congregation in Carman, Man., is coming to grips with the loss of their Anglican Lutheran church, a fixture in the community that was ravaged by a fire on Thursday.
Kayla DeMong fought tears as she described the dire conditions on the front lines, pleading for more help from the province as staff at the harm reduction site she leads try to keep up with the recent spike in overdoses.
A B.C. woman who has been detained by U.S. immigration officials for 11 days, after trying to enter the country, will be released on Friday, according to her father.
Toronto is doubling the number of automated speed cameras on city streets.
Health Minister Adriana LaGrange is alleging the former CEO of Alberta Health Services was unwilling and unable to implement the government's plan to break up the health authority, became "infatuated" with her internal investigation into private surgical contracts and made "incendiary and inaccurate allegations about political intrigue and impropriety" before she was fired in January.