Alberta Health Services calls wrongful dismissal suit filed by former CEO 'groundless and vexatious'
CBC
Alberta Health Services alleges the wrongful dismissal suit of the organization's former CEO is "groundless" and an attempt to extract a larger severance payment.
In a statement of defence filed Friday in Edmonton's Court of King's Bench, the provincial health agency says it terminated former CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos because she wasn't fulfilling her duties.
The claim says Mentzelopoulos's lawsuit in response to her January termination is "ill-founded, groundless and vexatious."
Mentzelopoulos, a former Alberta government employee who has served as deputy minister of finance, filed the suit against AHS and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange last month.
She claims she was fired two days before she was scheduled to meet with Alberta's auditor general about surgical contracts she says had links to government officials.
She alleges she was terminated, in part, because she had launched an investigation and forensic audit and was reviewing the prices of surgical contracts. Her examination was underway as a contract for orthopedic surgeries with Edmonton's Alberta Surgical Group (ASG) was set to expire.
Her claim says she had concerns about conflicts of interest in procurement, and was politically pressured to extend contracts she worried weren't in taxpayers' best interests.
Mentzolopoulos widened the AHS investigations to include the health authority's procurement with medical supply company MHCare. The company secured a $70-million contract in 2022 to import children's pain medication from Turkey during a national drug shortage. Much of the medication has never been delivered, and most of the product was never used and is now being stored by AHS.
Her statement claims the AHS board members were concerned enough about her potential conflict of interest findings that they recommended she take her findings to the RCMP.
Within days, Mentzelopoulos alleges a government official ordered her to "wind up" her investigation and transfer all the information about contracting to Alberta Health.
Her allegations have not been tested in court.
In its Friday statement of defence, AHS says the organization lost confidence in Mentzelopoulos's abilities.
"The plaintiff's allegations that her employment was terminated because of the investigation and audit she initiated into various AHS surgical facilities contracts is a diversion from the plaintiff's own inadequacies and the plaintiff is solely responsible for the termination of her employment," the document says.
AHS hired Mentzolopoulos in December 2023 as the government had begun breaking AHS into four new organizations.
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