‘Nobody wants that job. Nobody’: Experts decry Alberta gov’t treatment of health-care leadership

Experts say the province's history of turning its back on health leaders may make the chief medical officer of health a hard role to fill permanently.

The man temporarily responsible for the office giving the Alberta government expertise on issues of public health importance says he doesn’t want the job permanently.

And Dr. Sunil Sookram’s quick response of ‘no’ to a reporter’s question on Monday of whether the interim chief medical officer of health (CMOH) would want the actual job is telling, say two former prominent medical officials in the province – including one ex-Alberta CMOH.

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Both Dr. Paul Parks, the past president of the doctors’ advocate Alberta Medical Association, and Dr. James Talbot, Alberta’s CMOH from 2012-15 and an adjunct public health professor at the University of Alberta, said Tuesday that continual government interference in health leadership is preventing the province from finding high-quality candidates for leadership jobs.

“This province has a climate where expertise isn’t valued, and in addition, it’s muzzled to the point where they can’t be active leaders,” Parks told CTV News Edmonton.

“It’s critical Albertans understand how we are really going down a slippery slope (where) we’re not going to be able to recruit and retain our good medical leaders in this province.”

Sookram took the role last month – after Dr. Mark Joffe’s contract as CMOH was not renewed – as Alberta grapples with a rising number of measles cases. His ‘no’ response to interest in assuming his temporary job full-time came during a media conference in which he said the risk of getting the highly contagious disease in Alberta is at its greatest point in almost 30 years.

Alberta reported 55 new measles cases Monday, bringing the provincial total to 265 since the beginning of March.

The majority of confirmed cases are in children, with 77 of those under five.

Talbot, who is now based in Toronto, said the “most flagrant” example he says he and colleagues from across Canada refer to when discussing provincial health leadership mismanagement is the “disgraceful way” Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s CMOH during the COVID-19 pandemic – and, by extension, health executive personnel such as board members, board chairs and chief executive officers – have been treated by the United Conservative Party government.

“It is part of a long and continuing pattern in Alberta of ignorant political interference with the health-care system,” Talbot told CTV News Edmonton.

“That makes public health physicians particularly very awkward and uncertain about taking that kind of job, because the public health position is often in areas where there’s a conflict ... between people’s health and, say, economic pressures.”

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The office for Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said in a statement to CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday the government is “fully committed to finding the right person” to hire as the next CMOH.

“The recruitment process to find a permanent CMOH is ongoing, and we are dedicated to ensuring that we select a candidate with the experience, leadership and qualifications to guide the province’s public health efforts,” a representative from the office said in a statement.

Alberta is without both a permanent CMOH and a CEO for AHS.

The UCP government fired Athana Mentzelopoulos, its most-recent permanent AHS CEO, in early January. She filed a $1.7-million lawsuit against the government a month later, claiming she was wrongfully fired to stop internal investigations she launched into sweetheart deals, high-level political interference and corruption in multimillion-dollar health contracts.

Both Premier Danielle Smith and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange have denied allegations of wrongdoing, claiming instead that Mentzelopoulos was fired for poor job performance and for stalling mandated health-care reform.

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Claims from all sides have yet to be tested in court but multiple investigations have been launched, including by the RCMP and Alberta’s auditor general.

Mentzelopoulos had been in the job for just over a year.

Since the April 2022 dismissal of Verna Yiu, who had been chief executive for more than six years, AHS has had two permanent and two interim CEOs, including current interim leader Andre Tremblay, a senior civil servant who is the president, CEO and sole member of its board. The government dismissed its AHS board members in February.

Smith, in her first media conference as premier in October 2022, announced she would replace Hinshaw as CMOH with a team of public health advisers. Hinshaw was dismissed a month later, replaced by Joffe.

Joffe was serving in the role on an interim basis after Smith’s government followed through on its commitment to fire Hinshaw, who held the position throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Less than two weeks after he left the job, Joffe said during a presentation at the University of Alberta that the measles outbreak in the province “was not a surprise.”

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His talk to the department was titled ‘Who let the measles in?’

“We did,” Joffe said on April 28.

“I think there has been a complete failure of leadership at all levels and there’s public complacency,” he said.

“I am aware of instances of individuals being hospitalized with measles where the family was completely unaware that this was preventable.

“We are failing these people.”

Smith blamed both Hinshaw and the leadership of AHS for failing to deliver the best advice and care for Albertans as the hospital system came close to buckling during the pandemic, which the premier said forced the province to impose freedom-busting vaccine mandates and restrictions.

Shortly after Hinshaw’s departure, Alberta’s two deputy medical officers of health resigned.

“It’s a sad, well-known concern among healthcare leaders right now in the province that nobody wants that job. Nobody,” Parks said.

“They’re actively recruiting some very strong candidates across Canada (who are) all saying politely, ‘no, thank you. We do not want to come into that CMOH role with the way that the climate is now.’ Government has to stand up and say, we’re going to change how we do this.”

Hinshaw, an Alberta-trained public health specialist, became a celebrity of sorts during the pandemic’s first wave in the spring of 2020, as she delivered regular, sometimes daily, updates on the virus, its spread and methods to contain it.

Her face was on T-shirts, a dinosaur skeleton was named after her, and there was a run on a periodic-table-themed dress she wore at a news conference.

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But as hospitals were pushed to capacity and mandates were imposed, Hinshaw faced criticism along with the rest of then-premier Jason Kenney’s government.

“The job comes with these tensions, these pressures for competing interests,” Talbot said. “That political interference means, if you’re a public health physician, that the government is not going to have your back.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg, CTV News Vancouver Island’s Todd Coyne and The Canadian Press