Alberta Health Services says it fired ex-CEO for profound incompetence [Video]

Alberta’s front line health agency says it fired its leader earlier this year not because she was investigating corruption but because she was an “alarming” failure at her job.

Provider Alberta Health Services and Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange are being sued for wrongful dismissal by Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former president of AHS.

In a statement of claim filed last month, Mentzelopoulos said 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 filed Friday, makes many of the same points LaGrange gave in her own statement of defence filed the day before.

Both say Mentzelopoulos was failing badly in her mandate to downgrade the health authority from its role as the provincewide leader of frontline health delivery to one of many agencies that would oversee …