This just in from Alberta’s two conservative parties. Below: former Alberta Health Services CFO Allaudin Merali, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice, MLA Joe Anglin (CBC Photo), Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith, former health minister Fred Horne.
Alberta’s governing Progressive Conservative Party and its Opposition Wildrose Party, in addition to sharing an identical right-wing ideology, face a similar problem this morning, a situation and a person each party would very much like to see go away as quickly as possible.
In each case the circumstances have the potential to embarrass each party seriously enough with voters to impact its chances in the next general election.
For the Progressive Conservative government led by Premier Jim Prentice, the potential embarrassment is caused by the substantial settlement received by Allaudin Merali, the chief financial officer of Alberta Health Services fired in 2012 when expense claims he had filed in a previous job were reported by the CBC and became a major crisis for then-premier Alison Redford and her health-minister, Fred Horne.
Mr. Merali was back in the news yesterday after rightly declaring the $900,000 settlement he received last week was a victory in his two-year fight with the government and a vindication of his conduct in both his former jobs.
For the Wildrose Party led by Opposition Leader Danielle Smith, the potential embarrassment is caused by Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA Joe Anglin, handed his hat by party members in his own riding last July when they nominated his constituency association president to replace him in the next provincial general election.
The mercurial Mr. Anglin, always ready for a fight, was back in the news yesterday in a frenzy of recriminations after quitting the party’s caucus on the weekend and declaring publicly its ranks are riven by “a civil war between ideologues and pragmatists.”
In the short statement sent to media and political bloggers by Mr. Merali yesterday, the former CFO for both the Capital Health Region and Alberta Health Services declared that the settlement of his claim against AHS and former Minister of Health Fred Horne “covers not just amounts that were due to me under a contractual commitment but also damages.”
Mr. Merali’s statement continued: “The settlement is a clear indication of two points: the decision to refuse to honor a legal contract was wrong, and the defamatory statements by Alberta Health Services and the former Minister Horne and other politicians (particularly the former premier) were irresponsible and totally inappropriate. AHS, the former minister and the former premier were not entitled to shred my contract and damage my reputation, by insinuating that my expenses under a former employer, Capital Health were in any way improper, let alone that they were a cause to terminate me.
“As AHS indicated in their press release on October 31, 2014, they are ‘….satisfied that the termination of … employment is properly characterized as having been without cause.’ Therefore, this settlement has clearly vindicated me in that I had done nothing wrong and that my dismissal was unjust.” (Emphasis added.)
In this assessment, Mr. Merali is most certainly correct.
It was clear from the get-go the expenses he filed at Capital Health in 2008 and 2009 were approved by his supervisor, CEO Sheila Weatherall, and that he was being punished years later for the political embarrassment the health region’s vague expense-claims policies caused to the PC Government after the CBC story appeared.
What was bizarre was the determined insistence by Mr. Horne, Ms. Redford and the government’s army of public relations specialists that no matter what his contract said they could tear it up because … well, because they felt like it.
It turns out, however, that even after more than 40 years of PC rule, the rule of law persists in Alberta and a legal contract is a legal contract – even when the premier and her health minister don’t like it.
So it can be argued, even though this is bound to be unpopular in certain journalistic quarters because of the inevitable cost to taxpayers of a settlement, that Mr. Merali’s victory is a victory for everyone who believes in the rule of law.
It is worth noting in this context that Stephen Lockwood and the rest of the board of AHS, fired by Mr. Horne last year for not agreeing to tear up legal contracts with other AHS executives, were right while the minister and premier were out to lunch.
As for the well-known Alberta journalists screeching last week that the government should continue to fight Mr. Merali’s claim, Premier Prentice obviously can recognize a lost cause when he sees it. So taxpayers will be spared the further burden of such foolishness.
Mr. Anglin, meanwhile, issued a statement of his own on Sunday, noting that he had written the Speaker of the Legislature asking to be seated as an Independent MLA immediately.
“It is no secret that I have been a round peg in a square hole in the Wildrose Party,” Mr. Anglin wrote. “I speak my mind. I bring different experiences and a different point of view to the caucus than my colleagues. This has never been an issue for me: a strong party is made stronger by a variety of opinions.”
However, he went on, “behind closed doors, the party has increasingly lost focus on its original mission of creating a true grassroots party. It has been caught up in a civil war between ideologues and pragmatists. …
“As a result of poor management and infighting, there will be a motion today by my leader, Danielle Smith, to have me removed from caucus. To be honest, this is upsetting but not surprising. It was clear by the way the party executive mishandled my nomination process last June, and by the way they mismanaged the past four by-elections, something needs to be corrected.
“The Wildrose Party is now at a crossroads. The Party’s interference in local constituency matters and its lack of respect for the democratic process must be corrected if this party is to continue. … The party and its leadership are in crisis.
“This party … is now infested with an unelected backroom weed that is choking off the grassroots movement. I still have the highest regard for Danielle Smith as a person. She is intelligent and thoughtful, but in saying this I have little respect for the people advising her. Ultimately the leader bears the responsibility for addressing these problems.”
The intramural fight soon degenerated into the public accusation by Ms. Smith that Mr. Anglin had been taping caucus meetings, a claim the MLA denied. The party also withdrew its previous announcement it would hold a leadership review.
Notwithstanding the similarity of their situations, it’s clearly going to be easier for the Prentice PCs to clear up their problem than it will be for the Smith Wildrose Party.
That’s simply because Mr. Merali has absolutely nothing to gain from sticking around. He fought and he won – as it was always obvious he would because he had the law and the facts on his side.
As he concluded his statement yesterday, “I am glad that this is behind me and want to get on with my life now that I have been vindicated.”
Mr. Anglin, on the other hand, now has little to lose from sticking around. He fought and he lost – and he has a nice platform for the next year or two from which to make the Wildrose Party pay for its victory.
Given his pugnacious nature – this isn’t the first time the former leader of the Alberta Greens has been in the thick of such an internal party fight – it seems probable he’ll take advantage of the opportunity.
The Merali affair is an unmitigated disaster. The expense claims at the heart of the matter were made under the admittedly lax policies of the old Capital Health Authority, and were signed off by the then CEO, Sheila Weatherill. While politically uncomfortable when they came to light several years later, he did nothing “wrong” by the standards in place at the time he did it.
The real issue is the shocking lack of due diligence by whoever at AHS was responsible for hiring this fellow, given not only his track record at Capital Health, but later on when he worked with eHealth Ontario and submitted expenses that were also controversial. Why did they not do a more thorough background check before hiring him? Why did his employment contract not include some sort of “full disclosure” clause, making failure to disclose any material facts on his application grounds for termination of cause? Why did his contract not include a probationary period, allowing immediate termination without notice or severance and without need to show cause? Any of these fairly simple safeguards would have prevented all this from happening and saved Alberta taxpayers almost a million dollars.
Its not about Merali…lots more where that came from. Its the AHS signing contracts that enshrine this type of trough feeding as Standard Operating Procedure. Contractually, this man was entitled to his entitlements… point of order of Meral car phone install: who the heck installs car phones anymore? I don’t even know of a place that sells them… must have picked one up on EBAY – Hello 1985!
I am gonna miss our beloved Keyboard Commando Joe (bullets parting the hairs on my a**) Anglin. His epic and caustic rants, hissy fits and cujo-esque snarling were a form of performance art that rival the legendary purple faced rages of Alison of Redford fame.
Admittedly, I have only been following this story off and on; I’m perplexed….
– is it a matter that financial claims were valid ? or
– is it a matter that financial claims were ethically invalid, but the claimee, gets off, simply because their boss signed off ?
If it’s the latter, why wouldn’t both of them be terminated with cause ?
The expense claims were outrageous, but the policies of the employer at the time, the now-defunct Capital Health, were so lax they were still allowable, and the then-CEO signed off on them. When they came to light years later, the government tried to put out a brushfire of outrage by having Mr Merali fired, only to find out that there was no just cause to fire him. He then took AHS to court for unlawful dismissal, and the government for defamation over some of the remarks the Minister of the day made about him. This $900,000 settlement is the result.
Oh where oh where will Joe go next? His career in Alberta Politics is a strange one to say the least: Campaign Manager for Jim Graves (NDP) in the old Ponoka/Rimbey Riding….Graves lost terribly, but then, who did he have as a campaign manager? Then he trotted off to the Green Party and for some strange reason, that many are still not sure of, the Green Party folded…Then as a short stint as a Town Councillor in the little town of Rimbey, where upon running he divided the town, fought with the former Mayor, his wife and elderly parents and made it impossible for the town to grow with many businesses leaving town…Then off to the Wildrose believing that the voters loved him when in fact the majority of voters voted for the Wildrose, not Anglin…Had there been a chimp running for the WR, the chimp would have won…Will he attempt joining ranks with the PC’s who he really does not like, the Alberta Party whose members find him too toxic, the Liberals…Who knows where Joe will go? In Rimbey, we just want him to go away, far far away and never return…He has done enough damage to our beautiful little town…so Goodbye Joe….we’ll shut off our own lights, Thank-you !!!