AHS tells court it wants to revise filing to fire former CEO for something it didn’t know about when it fired her

The latest twist in the Alberta Government’s legal campaign against former Alberta Health Services CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos’s wrongful dismissal lawsuit is a new court filing that claims the fired executive forwarded confidential emails to herself thereby breaching her employment contract. 

AHS, The Canadian Press reported yesterday, “is looking to amend its statement of defence in light of the emails, which the agency says it only became aware of last week.” (Emphasis added.)

Now, with the important caveat that your blogger is not a lawyer, whether or not Ms. Mentzelopoulos forwarded confidential information to herself, which it must be remembered is an allegation that has not been proved in a court of law, arguing that this was so seems like a gambit that is unlikely to succeed. 

Unlikely enough, indeed, that one wonders why the government bothered to ensure the news media knew about its latest tactic. 

First of all, if Ms. Mentzelopoulos sent these supposedly confidential emails to herself when she was still the CEO and didn’t know, as she said in her original statement of claim, that she was about to be fired, where is the breach of confidentiality?

Now, it can be argued that forwarding work-related emails to yourself at home is not best practice from a security point of view. To do that, of course, one should use the Signal texting app, which, if it’s secure enough for the U.S. Secretary of Defence, should surely be safe enough for a provincial health authority in Canada! (Just remember, though, if you’re planning on doing that, don’t add Carrie Tait or Alanna Smith to your group chat! Never mind, I jest.)

Second, can the employer, whether it was AHS or the Government of Alberta, fire someone for improper reasons and then say, after the fact, we’ve just discovered that a different firing offence did take place, so our improper act was proper after all, even though we didn’t know why it was proper at the time we were acting improperly?

This too, seems to my non-legally trained mind to be, as I’m sure they sometimes say in the Court of Appeal just as they do in suburban kitchens, grasping at straws. 

Now, we need to remember that who did the firing is also a relevant question. Ms. Mentzelopoulos argues convincingly, if un-provenly, that she was not fired by AHS. 

Indeed, she says, she was encouraged by members of the AHS board, who do the executive firing around there, not only to continue with her investigations into those dodgy sweetheart contracts at the centre of this story, but to call the cops. 

No, she says she was called to a meeting and fired by a Deputy Minister of the Alberta Government – illegally and improperly, she argues. 

Be that as it may, in employment law, you can’t normally set out after the fact to change the reasons for a firing – although apparently it’s been known to happen. But it would seem that admitting you knew nothing of the firing offence at the time of the firing that you now want to use would be looked upon skeptically by a court. 

Didn’t the government first say they were dismissing Ms. Mentzelopoulos without any cause at all? She just wasn’t the right person for the new job. 

“Acute care is the most complex part of the health care system, and it’s critical that we have the right leadership in place to see this work through and make positive changes to the health care system for Albertans now and into the future,” I distinctly recall Health Minister Adriana LaGrange telling us members of the public on Jan. 8, the day the CEO was fired. 

“I want to extend my sincerest gratitude to Athana Mentzelopoulos for the work she has done during her time leading Alberta Health Services,” Ms. LaGrange went on. Surely this is not what you say about someone you’ve just fired for cause, whatever the cause may be. 

Then the government claimed in its statement of defence that Ms. Mentzelopoulos was fired because she was incompetent.

Now they claim she should be fired because she was so sneaky that they didn’t even notice until last week that she needed to be fired, but since they’ve already fired her, they’d like to keep it that way. Or something. 

The real goal of this gambit, one suspects, is that the government is desperate to find a way to prevent the plaintiff from presenting evidence about dodgy private surgical clinic contracts in open court.

Smith-Shapiro Summit separates ‘schmucks’ from ‘allies’ – guess who’s who

Meanwhile, in Florida, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and creepy far-right bloviator Ben Shapiro, an “influencer,” apparently agreed that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s gotta go and Conservative Pierre Poilievre would make “a solid ally” for President Donald Trump as he dismantles environmental protections. 

Well, of course they did. 

A few snippets of their controversial chitchat at a fundraiser for a right-wing propaganda house that passes itself off as a university were published last night by the National Observer and DeSmog from a presumably unauthorized recording of the event. One hopes juicier quotes will be dropped in the days ahead. 

“It is better for the United States to have actual solid allies running in Canada than to have some of the schmucks that have been running Canada over the past few years,” they quoted Mr. Shapiro saying. 

“There is an ideology, as you know, of those who believe we have to hit net zero as quickly as possible,” Ms. Smith was quoted saying, apparently a reference to the crazy ideology of planetary survival. “Mark Carney has been behind the net-zero banking move.”

Ms. Smith proudly posted a photo of herself with Mr. Shapiro, Old Glory in the background, on her Facebook account last night.