EDMONTON — Alberta’s frontline health agency says it fired its leader earlier this year not because she was investigating corruption but because she was a profound failure at her job.
Alberta Health Services and Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange are being sued for wrongful dismissal by former AHS president Athana Mentzelopoulos.
Mentzelopoulos says she was fired for investigating sweetheart deals for private surgical contracts and had concerns about conflict of interest and high-level political intimidation that reached right into Premier Danielle Smith’s office.
Alberta Health Services, in a statement of defence now filed with the court, makes many of the same points LaGrange gave in her own statement of defence.
Both say Mentzelopoulos was failing badly in her mandate to downgrade AHS from its role as the provincewide leader of frontline health delivery to one of many agencies that would oversee care under a new governance model.
Both also reject Mentzelopoulos’s claim that she was illegally fired because she was let go by LaGrange’s chief bureaucrat rather than the AHS board.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 14, 2025.
Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press
