Hi everyone, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.
If you thought Alberta political newsmakers were going to slip quietly into the holiday season, well, think again.
On Monday, The Globe’s Carrie Tait revealed that a former Alberta Health Services executive stepped down last June after he says Premier Danielle Smith stopped the health authority from hiring former Alberta CMOH Deena Hinshaw into a position with its Indigenous Wellness Core.
In his resignation letter dated June 11, and obtained by The Globe last weekend, Braden Manns, interim AHS vice-president, says he believes Smith called John Cowell, the former administrator of AHS, and directed him to halt the hiring of Hinshaw.
“After your call with the Premier, you and I participated in a group meeting. In that meeting, you stated that the Premier is firm that there can be no hiring of Dr. Hinshaw,” he wrote.
Manns says he was told the next afternoon to rescind the contract offered Hinshaw.
Smith denied she interfered in the matter saying she spoke with Cowell regularly, including about staffing.
“I talked with him on a weekly basis. We talked about staffing decisions, a lot,” she told reporters at a news conference Monday. “Ultimately, it is the official administrator, and now the board and the CEO, who will make those decisions. And it was the case in this instance, too. That the decisions of AHS were made by AHS.”
Hinshaw took over as chief medical officer in 2019, and guided the province through its early response to COVID-19. Smith had been an outspoken critic of Hinshaw’s handling of the pandemic even before she became Premier. And when she won the leadership of the United Conservative Party last year, she almost immediately removed Hinshaw from her post.
On Monday, The Globe also revealed that Marguerite Trussler, the Alberta Ethics Commissioner, was also looking into the matter. But on Tuesday, the Premier’s office provided a letter from Trussler that said her investigation has determined that AHS followed the proper process when it revoked its job offer to Hinshaw.
The letter, dated Dec. 18, said she stopped her investigation into the role played by Cowell, and also that she did not pursue an investigation into Smith’s involvement in the Hinshaw episode.
“Although he had input on the decision, I found no evidence that Dr. Cowell directed the termination of Dr. Hinshaw’s employment,” Trussler wrote in her letter. “The evidence shows that Dr. Hinshaw’s employment was terminated through proper process.”
But Trussler’s investigation looked at the dismissal under the Conflicts of Interest Act, which is designed to prevent elected politicians and senior government officials from taking action that financially benefits them or their family. And is partly why the investigation did not look into Smith’s actions.
The commissioner noted she received complaints about Smith related to Hinshaw’s termination but did not launch an investigation because of the evidence that emerged in the Cowell probe.
Ms. Smith replaced Cowell as AHS’s administrator in November, when she unveiled its new board. Trussler, in her letter, said part of the reason she stopped her investigation is because Cowell is no longer a senior official under the Conflicts of Interest Act.
Esther Tailfeathers, the former head of the AHS Indigenous Wellness Core who chaired the search committee that hired Hinshaw in the spring, said she does not believe Trussler’s letter absolves the government of overreach. She resigned in protest over the firing in June as well.
“There definitely was political interference,” she said in an interview.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.