This week in AB: March 16, 2025

Bigly week, again.

Alberta

Health Minister responds to AHS CEO’s wrongful dismissal claim

As someone reminded me after my last post, wrongful dismissal claims aren’t about whether an employee should have been fired — you can be fired for any reason your employer deems justification for it — but whether they were offered appropriate compensation after the fact.

Athana Mentzelopolous’ statement of claim went into great detail about an investigation she was undertaking at the time of her dismissal, as well as political influence and interference she felt she was receiving to make decisions she disagreed with as it pertained to potential misuse of public funds; which she claims was the basis for her termination by the Deputy Minister of Health. In effect, she claims she was fired for doing her job, therefore “without cause”.

The Health Minister responded that there is no claim against the province because Ms. Mentzelopolous did not work for the province, and that Ms. Mentzelopolous was not doing the job she was hired to do, and therefore, she was fired “with cause”.

As such, they are arguing she is not eligible for the full year’s wages that a termination without cause would grant her, and also not eligible for the further damages she is claiming for having to deal with what she did, including the inevitable assassination on her reputation that could make her unemployable.

Ms. Mentzelopolous responded in advance of the Minister’s statement.

“As CEO of AHS, I came to realize that my career would end either because I went along with this government, or because I did not.”

The case will be decided upon whether Ms. Mentzelopolous was fired with or without cause; everything else is window dressing.

Ooooh! A riddle!

Premier Smith

Scrutiny over $70 million contract misplaced

Subscribers got that play-by-play last week — all the government had to do to make that contract mess go away was help the third-party procure more product.

As luck would have it, the Premier announced Friday that Alberta Health had it all along and would make the “paperwork” available soon.

“There’s two sides to every story,” she told reporters at an unrelated presser. And anyone who read an article about it over the past month knows who was offering “their side”.

Anyhoo, as it turns out, this wasn’t a scam at all, but a year-long process in the works since November of 2023 that no one in AHS, or Health Canada knew about, and no one in Health knew about until last week.

Fancy that.

On the right

In Texas for the oil and gas conference this week, the Premier talked about tariffs and how she hopes Canada and the U.S. can get back to a free trade relationship. She said she was “playing the long game” using diplomacy.

It sounds strategic, maybe even planned, but it requires her to ignore the fact that the “long game” Donald Trump has talked about is Canada becoming the 51st state.

While Ms. Smith may see her promotion of Alberta’s oil reserves as “advocacy”, I cringe every time she talks about our vast resources down there because I get the sense that, to Mr. Trump and his advisors, it looks more like marketing for why we should become the 51st state.

We have something they want, and they don’t have to respect us as a sovereign nation — they can just keep the pressure on until it “belongs” to them anyway.

Demanding an election

Yes, Alberta’s Premier was elected by party members rather than all Albertans, and no, she also did not have a seat at the time, and no, she didn’t feel the need to call a general election early.

While that is all true, her situation was entirely different in that she was not in the same place the federal government is; facing threats from a hostile foreign leader.

For that reason, I still want an election called as soon as possible.

My last call for a general election was on January 2nd, when I had given up any hope that a change in leader would benefit the party and just wanted a Prime Minister with a mandate to deal with Donald Trump.

Against all odds, between Justin Trudeau stepping down and Mark Carney being sworn in as the next Prime Minister, Canadians seem to have taken another look at the Liberal Party of Canada and voter intention shows that what was expected to be a resounding defeat is now shaping up to be a challenge.

I wanted an election sooner rather than later, but not because of partisanship; it was because I understood the threat Donald Trump posed to our country and hoped that Pierre Poilievre, if rewarded with a four-year mandate from Canadians, could handle it.

Sadly, he’s shown he can’t even handle pivoting to a new message.

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