The Alberta Health Services CEO who took over after a controversial firing in January is now himself off the job.
Former provincial health bureaucrat Andre Tremblay is on leave of absence, the provincial hospital agency confirmed Wednesday.
Hospitals Minister Matt Jones appointed Erin O’Neill, a current executive at AHS, to serve as interim CEO, a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Eleven months ago, Tremblay was appointed top executive and sole director of AHS after the ouster of both the entire board and then-CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos.
She went on to sue AHS and the provincial government for wrongful dismissal, claiming they fired her for launching an investigation into contracts with private surgical companies she said had links to government officials.
Her claims ignited a political firestorm over AHS procurement and allegations of conflict of interest, prompting investigations by the auditor-general, the RCMP and a retired judge.
Tremblay, who was previously deputy minister for Alberta Health, has figured into Mentzelopoulos’s allegations, too. According to her lawsuit, Tremblay surprised her by appearing on a Zoom call on Jan. 8, and saying she was terminated immediately.
None of Mentzelopoulos’s allegations have been tested in court.
AHS would not disclose the nature and reasons for Tremblay’s leave, saying in an email that it is a human resources matter.
Premier Danielle Smith’s government permitted Tremblay to serve simultaneously as Alberta Health deputy, AHS CEO and AHS’s administrator — its one-man board — for several weeks, until Smith shuffled him out of the ministry job in mid-February.
That move came as Smith faced internal political pressure to remove Tremblay from one or more of his jobs amid the Mentzelopoulos allegations. That included a memo from then-minister Peter Guthrie, who later resigned from cabinet over his protests about AHS controversies, and was then removed from the UCP caucus.
O’Neill, the new interim CEO for AHS, had earlier this year served as an assistant deputy minister for Alberta Health alongside Tremblay.
This latest move at the top of AHS comes as the province continues to shift its responsibilities to several other new Crown agencies, including Acute Care Alberta and Primary Care Alberta. The Smith government has characterized this as “refocusing” the health system and limiting AHS’s role to an overseer of public hospitals, rather than an all-encompassing provincial health authority.
