Premier says former Alberta Health Services CEO’s firing was a matter of job performance

The premier is weighing in on claims the former head of AHS was fired for opposing a move to decentralize the Alberta health authority.

The premier weighed in Friday on claims the former head of Alberta Health Services (AHS) was fired for opposing a move to decentralize the provincial health authority.

Danielle Smith alleges it truly was job performance that cost Athana Mentzelopoulos her job.

In a lawsuit filed last month, the former AHS CEO alleges she was let go for sounding the alarm over various inflated provincial contracts and procurement processes.

But Smith claims the reasoning was far less complicated.

“Anyone who resists the very clear direction that we’re going to give them (is) going to face problems,” she said.

“We have a refocusing plan. Having worked with the individual as long as we did, she was in a position where she knew what our refocusing was, and you can read her own statement of claim about her resistance to having several functions moved to Alberta Health. That was very transparent.”

Smith’s response echoes an AHS statement of defence to Mentzelopoulos’s $1.7-million lawsuit filed Friday.

Much like the statement filed on behalf of the health minister Thursday, it claims Mentzelopoulos displayed “an alarming lack of strategic vision and leadership.”

But not everyone is buying the rebuttal.

“This is a career, lifelong bureaucrat who rose through many years of public service without a blemish on her career,” said Dr. Paul Parks, former president of the Alberta Medical Association.

“I was beside Athana when she was handpicked by the premier’s office and the minister.”

CTV News asked Smith Friday what her personal experience with Mentzelopoulos had been like but refused to answer.

The former CEO’s lawyer tells CTV News that AHS and the government “are now attempting to smear (her) in an effort to deflect attention from what happened.”

Dan Scott adds “there was never any suggestion of supposed performance issues during her tenure as CEO and president of AHS.”

“It isn’t exactly clear to me what the government is looking for in a CEO. Is it looking for someone who doesn’t ask questions? Who doesn’t push back? Who just sort of does what the government wants them to do?” said Lorian Hardcastle with the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine and Faculty of Law.

“All of this that’s gone on is quite bad for trust in the government and trust in the government at a time when they are reorganizing the health-care system.”

Mentzelopoulos’s lawsuit aims to recoup the $1.7 million in base salary and benefits she alleges she would have been owed for the remaining years of her AHS contract.

Thursday’s statement of defence suggests she’s looking “to extract a large payday.”

It says Mentzelopoulos’s contractual termination pay was $583,443, and that amount is what she bargained for at the time.

But Mentzelopoulos is sticking to her claims of kickbacks and political pressure, and tells CTV News she’s comfortable going to trial.

Mounties are looking into the matter, and an investigation by the provincial government, headed by a retired judge from outside Alberta, has also been announced.

With files by Damien Wood