On eve of Groundhog Day, UCP removes Alberta Health Services board … again! 

Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Government dismissed the entire Alberta Health Services Board yesterday – the second time in two years the UCP brain trust has dumped the health care agency’s board of directors en masse!

The last time the UCP eliminated the entire AHS board was on Nov. 17, 2022, so, to be precise, it’s been two years, two months and two weeks since the last sacking.

According to the government’s unexpected news release yesterday, the seven-member board, just like last time, will be replaced by a sole “official administrator” who will have all the powers of the corporate board in his hands and answer directly to the premier and health minister. Naturally, it being late Friday, there was no news conference at which journalists could ask questions about this bizarre development.

The new single administrator will be career bureaucrat Andre Tremblay, who also happens already to be the interim president and CEO of AHS and the top civil servant in the provincial health department. It’s not clear at this time which of Mr. Tremblay’s three jobs will be run off the sides of his desk.

Regardless, since Mr. Tremblay and two other senior civil servants were members of the seven-member board the government dismissed yesterday, this probably can’t be described as an axing, as some media put it in their headlines. It sounds more as if it were part of a hitherto covert plan. 

After the 2022 liquidation of the then-11-member AHS board, Dr. John Cowell, a former senior executive of the Workers Compensation Board and the Health Quality Council of Alberta, was installed as official administrator until a new and presumably more reliable board could be appointed.

That happened on Nov. 8, 2023, when the government named six of the seven members of its new board and announced its plan to break up AHS into multiple new agencies, each with their own in-house bureaucracies. This was widely seen at the time as a step toward privatization of the health care system. The remaining board member was to be identified later. 

The government claimed quite illogically in its news release that this sprawling bureaucratic mess would deliver “high-quality acute care services within a reorganized single provincial health care system.”

This means the latest AHS board lasted only lasted 14 months and 23 days! Former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Lyle Oberg, a medical doctor with an interest in private health care services, was named as chair. 

Former AIMCo executive Angela Fong, the seventh board member, was appointed and named as chair on Sept. 19, 2024, so she spent only four months and 12 days on the job. Dr. Oberg remained on the board as a member. 

By the way, this was the second time Dr. Oberg was skidded by a Conservative government – in 2006 he was fired as a member of premier Ralph Klein’s cabinet and suspended from the Progressive Conservative caucus for six months in a disagreement over his leadership aspirations. He later defected to the Wildrose Party, which eventually became the dominant partner in the United Conservative Frankenparty. 

Before we go on, let’s just pause for a moment to catch our breath and ponder this Byzantine tangle. 

Late-Friday government announcements like yesterday’s are usually made in hopes any controversy will have blown over or the media has become distracted after the weekend.

That outcome is quite likely this time since U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to announce huge sanctions (pardon me, tariffs) on Canada sometime today. 

Still, it might have been more appropriate for Health Minister Adriana LaGrange to have waited until tomorrow, Groundhog Day, to make this particular announcement.

Be that as it may, Mr. Tremblay is apparently now the only person in Alberta that Ms. Smith, Ms. LaGrange, and the UCP strategic brain trust can think of who is capable of running health care without questioning their orders. 

He is said to be a capable administrator, albeit without much background in health care. It remains to be seen, though, whether he can have much success sorting out the gong show he has been handed by the UCP. 

Dr. Cowell, the official administrator who replaced the AHS board that was fired by Ms. Smith in 2022, was supposed to fix everything wrong with health care in 90 days. He did not.

Dr. Cowell, by the way, was also appointed official administrator by Conservative premier Alison Redford’s government back in 2013. He failed to fix everything wrong with health care that time too. 

So it’s hard to say if yesterday’s press-release-only announcement by Ms. LaGrange indicates sheer incompetence of a level never before seen in the history of Canadian public administration or a devilishly clever scheme to foment a reign of administrative terror within AHS in revenge for its public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there’s no way this is a good look for the UCP government.

As for the government’s news release yesterday, it was essentially bereft of meaningful information. 

In addition to the usual anodyne platitudes attributed as quotes to Ms. LaGrange and Mr. Tremblay and a hard-to-believe assertion that the UCP’s massive and expensive “refocusing” of the health care system is going swimmingly, there was no hint of why the government thought it was appropriate to dissolve another board. 

“As official administrator, Tremblay will oversee the successful completion of the system refocusing initiative at AHS while also ensuring the agency’s seamless transition to an acute care service provider and hospital operator,” the release said. It is no slur on Mr. Tremblay’s capabilities as an administrator to say this outcome is extremely unlikely if only because the UCP plan’s sole goal appears to be to create chaos, additional bureaucracy and competing sub-agencies to prepare the ground for privatization of health care.

“The official administrator will also assume the regular roles and responsibilities of the board of directors, ensuring Albertans continue to receive high-quality health care across the province,” the release also said. This structure, for the reasons noted above, will ensure no such thing. 

The last line of the release contained actual news: “The Ministry of Health will be taking over responsibility for the search of a new permanent president and CEO of Alberta Health Services.”

In other words, henceforth, all operations of Alberta’s health care system will now be run directly out of the minister’s office, which for all practical purposes under the UCP means the office of the premier. 

When the ministry gets around to hiring a new CEO to replace Athana Mentzelopoulos – who quit, or was fired, or something, as AHS CEO on Jan. 8 after working only one year and 32 days of her four-year contract – he or she will be the 13^th AHS chief executive since the agency was set up by the Conservative government of premier Ed Stelmach in 2009. 

The only period of stability in health care in Alberta since the early 1990s occurred between 2015 and 2019, not coincidentally the years of the NDP Government led by Rachel Notley. Speaking of which, NDP Opposition Health Critic Sarah Hoffman, who was health minister during the four years of stability, called the latest announcement evidence of the UCP’s incompetence. 

“Firing the AHS board – a board that Danielle Smith herself appointed after firing and replacing the previous board herself – shows just how chaotic and incompetent this government is,” she said. 

“No one is asking for dismantling, mass firings, chaos, and new logos,” Ms. Hoffman added. “The six new organizations Danielle Smith created have yet to deliver real benefits for us. Nearly a million people still don’t have a family doctor, cancer patients are dying waiting for treatment, seniors aren’t getting the support they need and deserve, and too many are left immobile while enduring devastatingly long waits for critical surgeries.”