‘I'm letting the process play out': Alberta premier defends extending deadline for third-party report into AHS procurement process
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith defended the extension of delivery of a judge's third-party investigation into a controversy surrounding Alberta Health Services procurement processes.
Manitoba provincial court judge Raymond Wyant was originally expected to submit an interim report to the province on Friday, followed by a full report next month.
Deputy Minister of jobs Chris McPherson said Wyant needed more time due to the volume of documents.
He is now expected to deliver his interim report in September, with the final report coming in mid-October.
The allegations stem from a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former head of Alberta Health Services, who claims individuals in high government places interfered in overpriced health deals for private companies while she was on the job.
The allegations have not been tested in court.
Saturday morning, on her radio show Your Province, Your Premier, Smith defended the extension.
'There's lots of ways to do a public enquiry,' Smith said.
'We hired a judge to get all the information and to give us a report so that is what we're doing,' she added. 'The judge has said he got thousands of pages of documents and he needs to interview several people in relation to what he's learned.
'And he just asked for more time of the deputy minister who's responsible for this,' she said, 'so we've always said if he needed more time or more funding, that we'd accommodate that.
'So I think that's a demonstration that we're going to make sure the judge gets whatever they need to be able to give us a good report.
'I think they're planning now to have the report published online on Oct. 15, so we'll know in the fall.'
Calls for Inquiry
Smith has been criticized for not calling for an independent inquiry into the procurement controversy, but she said the government's approach is part of letting the process play out.
'If the judge comes back and says there's some criminal behaviour that took place, that someone in AHS acted in a criminal way to direct contracts to somebody inappropriately, that would probably be an indication (of the need to call an independent inquiry),' she said.
'But that is not what's happened,' she added.
'What we're actually hearing so far is that the processes were followed internally,' she said, continuing. 'In fact, two of the reports that the former CEO (Mentzelopoulos) commissioned said that there was no reason for them not to extend the contract with ASG and that's why it was extended.
'I would say that I'm going to keep an open mind,' she said. 'Part of the reason why we're going through (the judge's investigation) is there's been a lot of slander, been a lot of defamation, a lot of rumours and gossip and false allegations and that the point is, you have to be able to make sure somebody is able to look at the full evidence and say this is true, this is not – and this is what you should do.
'So I'm letting the process play out.'
On Friday, Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi called out the government for not producing the report when it said it would.
'For months, we've been calling for an independent, public inquiry into the CorruptCare scandal,' said Nenshi, in a media release. 'Every step of the way, the minister dismissed those calls and claimed we didn't need one because he'd release Justice Wyant's findings to the public.
'Well, he's out of excuses,' Nenshi added. 'Where's the report?'
With files from The Canadian Press
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