Former Alberta health agency CEO asks for speedy ruling in lawsuit against government
A former health-care agency leader is asking a judge to deliver a quick decision on her wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the Alberta government, but the province says it will push back.
Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former CEO of Alberta Health Services has applied for a summary judgment on the legality of her January firing, which would avoid sending the case to trial.
Mentzelopoulos first filed the lawsuit in February, alleging that Adriana LaGrange, the province's health minister at the time, tried to shut down an investigation into various contracts with links to government officials, and then engineered the CEO's dismissal.
The claims have sparked multiple investigations, including by the RCMP, the province's auditor general, and a former Manitoba judge hired by the government.
Mentzelopolous's latest application, filed in Court of King's Bench in Edmonton this week, alleges LaGrange called a meeting to try to have the AHS board fire Mentzelopolous, but some directors refused.
Mentzelopoulos says in a sworn affidavit she believes her claims will be confirmed by former board members if the court compels them to testify under oath as part of the application.
"I was told that when Minister LaGrange was asked why she wanted me terminated, she could give no substantive reason and gave none," she said.
Mentzelopolous alleges that Andre Tremblay, who was on the board and the deputy minister of health at the time, was then directed by LaGrange to fire her.
"I had only positive performance reviews. To my knowledge there was nothing negative at all on my personnel file up to and including the day my employment was improperly terminated by Mr. Tremblay acting without AHS authority," Mentzelopolous said.
Mentzelopolous said by directing Tremblay, LaGrange overstepped the authority of AHS directors.
Maddison McKee, LaGrange's press secretary in the new ministry of primary and preventative health services, said in a statement the reasons for the former AHS CEO's dismissal are clearly outlined in the government's statement of defence.
"The government will be vigorously opposing the former CEO's most recent application as it is legally baseless and contains a litany of misinformation and false claims."
The entire board was dismissed soon after Mentzelopoulos was fired.
In a statement of defence filed in March, the government said Mentzelopolous was fired not for investigating contracts, but for being an "alarming" failure at her job.
It also alleged Mentzelopolous was stifling mandated health-care reform in order to retain the power and "personal prestige" of her position.
LaGrange's statement said proper procedures were followed and that weeks prior to Mentzelopolous being dismissed, the AHS board chair signed off on the decision.
Premier Danielle Smith's United Conservative government has been aggressively restructuring the public health-care system, establishing four separate health-care ministries along with four new sector-specific agencies.
Once the provincial health authority, AHS is being reduced to a hospital services provider.
LaGrange's defence called Mentzelopolous' account a "dramatic tale and false narrative" meant to squeeze more money out of the government on top of an annual salary approaching $600,000. Mentzelopoulos was fired one year into a four-year contract.
She is seeking $1.7 million in lost pay and damages, while LaGrange is asking that the suit be dismissed.
None of the allegations from either side have been proven in court.
In a March statement, Mentzelopolous said "an army of lawyers" had been hired to defend the government.
"I am worried there's a strategy to try to bring me to my knees financially, so I hope we can skip oral questions and proceed directly to trial," she said at the time.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
an hour ago
- CTV News
‘We made it': Windsor NICU graduates reunited
The Trella triplets are graduates of the NICU at Windsor Regional Hospital. (Michelle Maluske/CTV Windsor) A reunion for NICU graduates was held Saturday in LaSalle, organized by the parent members of the Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) Family Advisory Care Team. It's a group of volunteer parents who all had children who needed the neonatal intensive care unit at WRH. Parent chairwoman Michelle Ladouceur's twin daughters were in the NICU for 79 days, eight years ago. Today? 'They are active. They're going into Grade 3 this year, (and) meeting all the great milestones,' Ladouceur said. 'We're so grateful for Windsor Regional (Hospital) NICU to be able to celebrate that success.' 70 graduates of the specialized unit participated in a picnic at the Vollmer Complex. They were treated to snacks, prizes, face-painting, and a chance to ride in a first responder vehicle. Essex-Windsor EMS paramedics joined LaSalle police officers and firefighters for the event. Ladouceur said the event is meant to reunite parents with staff they learned to lean on while in hospital. 'It's completely just about getting together and sharing that learned experience,' Ladouceur said. 'And then, also, just reframing that lens of the experience to say, 'Hey, we made it! We're on the other side.'' WRH's NICU, located at the Metropolitan campus, can care for newborns as young as 26 weeks gestation.
CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
‘$135M worth of wasted products': Alberta premier defends decision to charge for COVID vaccines
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith seen in Calgary on Friday, May 16, 2025. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh) Danielle Smith defended her government's decision to charge many Albertans for COVID-19 vaccinations, which the province announced late Friday afternoon in a media release. On her Saturday radio show Your Province, Your Premier, Smith said there's too many wasted and unused vaccines due to low demand. 'The sad part was that we threw away over one million doses (in 2023-24) because people just don't want to get the vaccine in the same rates as others (vaccines),' she said. Smith said the delivery system that was used for COVID vaccines at pharmacies created too many wasted doses. 'They were putting it in packs of 10, so if you opened it up and gave one shot, you had to throw the rest out after 12 hours because it would expire so that's why we ended up with so much wastage,' Smith said. 'And it's not (an) insignificant (amount of money),' she added. 'It was over $100 million – I think $135 million (worth) of wasted products." When one caller chided her for spending money on other things rather than on the health of Albertans, she pushed back. 'I can tell you we could probably end up eliminating the knee and hip-replacement surgical waitlist with (the) $135 million that got flushed down the drain last year (with used or spoiled COVID vaccines). 'We're watching what Albertans are doing and what we're seeing is that Albertans increasingly are choosing not to take this vaccine,' she added. Four phases The new vaccine program will roll out in four phases. During the first, only residents in seniors supportive living and home care will be able to get a vaccine for free. The second phase will open provincially-funded COVID-19 vaccines to people with underlying medical conditions or compromised immune systems, people living in congregate living accommodations, people on social programs like AISH or income support or people experiencing homelessness. In the third and fourth phases, all other Albertans starting with those 65 years old or older will be able to purchase a vaccine. 'Cruel' Sarah Hoffman, Alberta NDP shadow minister for health, released a statement calling the decision 'callous' and 'anti-science.' 'It's cruel for the UCP government to put further financial burdens on Albertans who want to protect their health and their loved ones and not get COVID,' Hoffman said in the release. 'If the UCP government was really interested in eliminating waste and protecting the health of Albertans it would be promoting vaccines. That way the supply would get used and we would keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.' Wrong message Lorian Hardcastle, an associate professor at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Law and Cummings School of Medicine, said charging for COVID vaccines sends the wrong message to the public. 'It's problematic that we're switching to a model whereby most Albertans are going to have to pay for the vaccine rather than having it publicly-funded,' Hardcastle said. A container of syringes used to administer Novavax Covid-19 vaccines A container of syringes used to administer Novavax Covid-19 vaccines (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg) 'When we're talking about something that not only has ramifications for an individual, but for the community at large, COVID can affect the immunocompromised, the vulnerable,' she said. 'Of course, people who get COVID end up putting pressure on hospitals and so where individuals are getting vaccinated, not only for their own benefit, but for this public benefit, I think it's particularly imperative that the government pays for that.' She said the government's focus on the cost of wasted vaccines only tells half the story of what COVID can cost a provincial health care system. 'The Alberta government, in talking about the cost of the vaccine, needs to consider not only what they're spending on vaccinating people, but what they then save on the other end, in terms of avoidable hospitalizations, lost productivity -- all of these things, because the vaccine does also have financial benefits because it is preventative.' Cost: TBD Smith said the cost of a COVID vaccine hasn't been determined yet, but won't be as much as the RSV vaccine, which costs $300. One way to reduce costs, she said, will be to administer COVID vaccines at health clinics and not pharmacies. 'We want to make sure that those who want it can get it,' she said, 'but the best way to do it – and limit the cost (to taxpayers) – is to administer it through our public health centres, because we already have the staff there, so we don't have to pay a dispensing fee -- and we can negotiate as low a price as possible, which is what we're going to aim to do." She said the new COVID policy will reflect the province's approach to offering the RSV vaccine but at a lower cost. 'We only make the RSV vaccine available free to those most at risk – so we're taking the same kind of policy approach that we are for RSV and we'll gauge how many people sign up for it and then we'll make a decision if we have to change course in future years. 'But what we can't continue doing,' she added, 'is ordering an excessive number of doses that people don't want and then having them damaged, destroyed, spoiled and then going down the drain – and flushing that money. 'There's too many things we have to pay for in the health-care system and we've got to minimize the amount of wastage that we've got.' With files from CTV's Brittany Ekelund
CTV News
3 hours ago
- CTV News
‘A landmark decision': advocates celebrate reform of health screening task force
Women in their 40s in Ontario can now book a mammogram without needing a doctor's referral. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press via AP) Advocates and doctors are applauding the recently released external expert panel report on the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which calls for modernization and reform of the task force. Some of the recommendations to modernize the task force include ensuring preventive health care remains up to date with evolving scientific data and applying it to guidelines in a timely manner, the inclusion of equity-centred perspectives, patient involvement, and collaboration with pre-existing guidelines to help eliminate disparities across the country. 'This is great news,' said Dr. Anna Wilkinson, a family physician and general practitioner-oncologist at The Ottawa Hospital, in a phone interview with 'They are saying that we need to modernize the task force, and I think that's because we're recognizing that we are kind of behind the times on our cancer screening guidelines and many of our other preventive health care guidelines.' Task force halted amid criticism The task force, which is responsible for developing preventive health guidelines like cancer screening across Canada, is an independent body that develops clinical guidelines for family doctors about screening and prevention measures for cancer and other diseases. The task force's work was halted last year following criticism of its proposed incoming breast cancer screening guidelines, which did not recommend mammography screening begin at age 40. Instead, it upheld its 2018 guidelines recommending screening begin at age 50, despite growing evidence and calls from numerous medical experts and organizations urging earlier screening in response to rising breast cancer rates among younger women. This prompted then-Health Minister Mark Holland to request that the Public Health Agency launch an external expert review panel, which began in October 2024, to recommend changes and improvements to the task force's structure, governance, and methodology for developing the guidelines. Dr. Wilkinson, one of the medical experts who advised the external review panel, says she is pleased the report acknowledges the need to modernize the task force. 'We cannot afford economically as a health system to not be,' she said. 'We know that it's so much cheaper to deal with cancers when they're smaller, we know the outcomes are better, the cost to our health-care system is better.' 'I think one of the ways forward for a health-care system is to do preventive care more effectively. (…) This is a high-level view of how we might do that, so I look forward to seeing how it gets implemented.' With implementation of the recommendations currently underway, Health Minister Marjorie Michel has requested that the Public Health Agency of Canada have the task force operational by April 2026. 'Landmark change' Kimberly Carson, CEO of Breast Cancer Canada, was one of many advocates calling for the incoming breast cancer guidelines to recommend screening begin at age 40 rather than 50. Carson, who met with Holland and the external expert review panel, is content with the report's findings. 'It's going to be fantastic for Canadians,' Carson told in a phone interview. 'We know that if we catch breast cancer early, it's better for the patient, it's better for the health-care system, it costs less, there's less financial toxicity for the patients and a better cure rate. (…) It changes the paradigm for Canadian patients.' The task force began meeting on the upcoming breast cancer guidelines in May 2023. For two years, Breast Cancer Canada advocated for the inclusion of subject matter experts in guideline development, the timely integration of the latest data, and the incorporation of patient perspectives. With the report acknowledging all these points, Carson says she is satisfied that the sustained mobilization efforts have yielded results. 'It's such a landmark change in a landmark decision,' Carson said. The Canadian Cancer Society, which also stated in a media release its approval of the report, also had its recommendations reflected in the findings. Some of these recommendations echo those of Breast Cancer Canada, including the inclusion of cancer experts, patient perspectives, and staying current with evolving perspectives, experiences and scientific evidence. 'Once they reform the task force and it becomes functional in April, we would hope that they would immediately take a look at the screening guidelines for breast cancer,' Carson added. In addition to the 2018 breast cancer guidelines, the current cancer screening guidelines for other cancers — like colon cancer (2016), prostate cancer (2014), and cervical cancer (2013) — are also due for updates, Dr. Wilkinson notes. She says this report is a 'critical step' towards modernizing all of Canada's screening guidelines. 'In today's strained health-care environment, optimizing preventive care is essential to making the most of our limited resources,' she said in an email to 'The integration of diverse and evolving evidence, equitable care and ongoing evaluation pave the way for agile, 'living' guidelines that keep pace with scientific advancements. 'This approach will help ensure Canada no longer relies on cancer screening recommendations that are over a decade old.'
