Back in the days of Capital Health… Very little may be exactly as illustrated. Below: Dr. Chris Eagle, Alllaudin Merali, Fred Horne, Sheila Weatherill.
Alberta Health Services CEO Dr. Chris Eagle announced categorically in a news release today there will be no buyout for Allaudin Merali, the health care agency’s former chief financial officer whose controversial expense account practices in a previous job were at the centre of a storm of controversy last week.
But are we seriously expected to believe a man who would claim a single loonie plugged into a parking meter is going to say goodbye to a buyout of $500,000 without a fight?
And Mr. Merali would seem to have a case. After all, Health Minister Fred Horne got up on his hind legs in front of a room full of reporters on Thursday and stated Mr. Merali broke no rules when he filed his $346,208 in expenses to the now-defunct Capital Health Region between 2005 and 2008, the time period in which CBC investigative journalist Charles Rusnell was writing about in his shocking report.
Moreover, a glance at the expenses revealed by Mr. Rusnell on the CBC’s website suggest that while Mr. Merali’s dining habits were at once extravagant and cheap, many other expenses were legitimate by any measure.
Saying there will be no severance package for Mr. Merali may be a great way to throw a bucket of cold water on a controversy that is otherwise sure to keep smouldering for a while yet, but how is it going to save taxpayers a dime if we have to finance a long legal battle with the man that, ultimately, AHS and the taxpayers are unlikely to win?
The only way this is going to work is if Mr. Merali agrees to it. How likely is that?
If Mr. Horne had it right when he stated Mr. Merali’s 2005-2008 expenses were properly submitted in accordance with the CHR’s rules, and were duly signed off by the CHR’s chief executive, Sheila Weatherill, that would seem to make Mr. Merali’s case. Ms. Weatherill als
o stated in her letter when she resigned from the AHS board last week that Capital Health had in place “appropriate expenditure policies that were consistent with other public sector organizations.”
My speculation may prove to be wrong. Perhaps there is some reason Mr. Merali can be persuaded to give up half a million dollars for three months’ work that he is – on the face of it – legally entitled to demand. But it is said here this is a stalling tactic to suppress further reporting of what can only be called a scandal, and perhaps to negotiate a slightly less expensive deal with Mr. Merali if he’s prepared to take a partial payment now rather than the whole thing later.
For the time being, expect everyone involved in this fiasco to insist they can say nothing more because the matter is being investigated, or, later, before the courts.
Meanwhile, the AHS news release also said Mr. Merali’s expenses during his latest three months of employment in Alberta’s health system will be subject to an independent forensic audit.
That’s very well, but where will we be if that audit reveals Mr. Merali obeyed the new and tighter AHS rules now in place, a positive legacy of the much-maligned Stephen Duckett’s tenure as CEO, just as he is said by the health minister to have abided by the apparently more loosy-goosey rules that prevailed under Ms. Weatherill’s leadership at Capital Health?
We’ll be out the cost of the forensic audit, naturally, but Mr. Merali’s case for his buyout will have been strengthened.
Moreover, given some of the things that have been said about Mr. Merali in the past few days by some of the most powerful politicians in this province, the former CFO may well have a credible defamation case as well. He could certainly argue that his future earning capacity has been significantly reduced by things that have been said about him by politicians who cannot prove them in a court of law!
Are we taxpayers going to end up paying the potential plaintiffs’ legal expenses in a future defamation case as well?
Meanwhile, the independent forensic audit of Mr. Merali’s expenses in the past three months, since he joined AHS, will not tell us anything about what other Capital Health officials were claiming as expenses back between 2005 and 2008.
Taxpayers can rest absolutely assured, however, that Freedom of Information requests for the expense claims submitted by Ms. Weatherill and other Capital Health executives have now been filed by various news organizations. AHS may be able to stall for months, as they did with Mr. Rusnell’s original filing for Mr. Merali’s expenses, but they are unlikely to be able to stall forever.
Alberta taxpayers are not very happy with Mr. Merali’s expense accounts, that is for sure. Indeed, it has been said here before that if this had come out before the April 23 election, Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith would be premier of Alberta today.
But Albertans are less concerned with the state of a particular executive’s expense account, or what Mr. Merali and Mr. Horne had for dinner when they dined together at Jack’s Grill in 2005, than they are about the moral and ethical state of the province’s health care system.
If the rules allowed Mr. Merali’s expenses as Mr. Horne insisted last week, then it would seem that Alberta Liberal Leader Raj Sherman has had it right all along, and that what is needed is an independent judicial inquiry into the Alberta health care system.
This post also appears on Rabble.ca.
…another scenario?
The PC’s could have something unusually bad on Merali, that isn’t expense related, but that would come out, inadvertantly of course, in a legal battle and potentially hurt Merali so much if it went against him, he is willing to walk away to keep it buried.
Like maybe something that could potentially mean he’d never get work in his field again, in Canada.
The Tory crew that we all know are willing to play hardball with most anyone except the biggest industry groups… once upon a time I raised doubts as to the veracity of stories about the PC’s being this vindictive while in conversation with a civil servant of almost 3 decades in this province… and was promptly cured of my naivete with one small example of particularly nasty payback: After he lost his seat in an election, an opposition MLA in the 1990′s found out that he had to to apologize to Klein for grilling him particularly hard in the leg. before this ex-MLA could get consulting work again in Alberta.
So… in retrospect I don’t think Kowalski was entirely kidding around when he once said there’s only one godfather in this province… ostensibly at the time, the godfather joke was only in reference to battling private operators around terms of VLT licenses and profits.
OK everyone, let’s set the right tone with this discussion. I’m not going to allow idle speculation that defames Mr. Merali or anyone else.
As Sam points out, it’s quite possible to incur the wrath of our Tory Godfathers without doing anything wrong at all – indeed, doing your job right may be a particular problem if it involves criticizing this bunch. That said, with a settlement of $1.5 million in hand already, you’d think Mr. Merali would be in a position to just kick back, relax and retire – I could on that, but then, perhaps my taste in wine is not as expensive as his.
Another possibility open to the government that I didn’t mention in the main piece on the grounds it seemed patently absurd would be for the government to have the Legislature pass a bill to deprive the man of his legal rights. It would obviously be unconstitutional, so they’d have to use the Charter’s opting-out clause to make it stick, and then claim (a la Vic Toews) that anyone who didn’t support the bill was helping Mr. Merali.
This is such a spectacularly bad idea – virtually the only thing you could do to create public sympathy for Mr. Merali – that I almost wonder if it isn’t what they have in mind. Naw… Not possible … surely…
It is entirely possible that Mr. Merali’s employment contract contains a probationary period, perhaps six months in length, during which time he can be involuntarily separated without incurring any severance and without necessity to prove just cause.
He will get the money – I will bet right now. The minister said publicly that he did nothing wrong. The lawyers will get this one and a nice cut.
Carlos
I’m afraid I’m with Carlos Beca on this one. There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Merali has agreed to anything. I believe it is highly unlikely that an executive contract at that level would contain a probationary period. That kind of thing is found in collective agreements, typically, not executive contracts. Moreover, discussions I have had with folks inside AHS suggest strongly that no one knows of any such agreement, or has any evidence that Mr. Merali has surrendered his claim. Until I see evidence to the contrary, my conviction will remain that this vow by AHS and the government not to pay Mr. Merali is political posturing to get the scandal to go away in the short term. I expect Mr. Merali’s lawyer, whoever that turns out to be, to eat AHS management’s lunch and drink their milk! Then we Albertans will be told that we can’t know the size of the agreement because the settlement contains a confidentiality clause. It will be announced at 4 p.m. on the Friday before a long weekend.
Yes, probationary periods are not usually found in executive contracts. And Mr. Merali had a great gig with the Province, so it is doubtful he would have accepted a contract that permitted him to be fired without a large payout.
Jerrymcgp had it right on a previous post – AHS will not be able to show just cause. So as Carlos and David said, this matter will involve many lawyers and many years and will eventually be settled with a confidentiality clause. It will likely cost taxpayersan additional few hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.
This latest kink is right out of the old BBC sitcom “Yes, Minister.”
- The public is up in arms, we must do something.
- Saying we won’t pay severance is something. Meaningless, but at least something.
- so it’s agreed, we must say we won’t pay severance
Dave, good article. Although we can all debate the ethics of Merali’s expense claims, it is undeniable that the political heat on the Torees and AB Health, it is more important for them to scapegoat this man as much as possible to divert and confuse people from any sort of PUBLIC INQUIRY. The army of crypt skeletons are not far below the surface. I bet they number very high, a legion of skeletons if you will. Rest assured, he will sue, there will be an out of court settlement with a non-disclosure agreement, nobody can talk and subsequently, this man WILL get his severance ONE way or ANOTHER. In a mutual agreement to take this fall, I bet he will be handsomely rewarded and the smokescreen and fog will return, the Tories hope, to keep most of the public forget and be lulled into a sense of some justice, albeit, fake, manufactured and concocted. When one says fall guy, they have to remember, almost anyone in this situation, might have done the same, so how much is Merali really to blame, should the blame and court case not lie on his superiors? Ex Health CEO’s? And its funny how SHeila justified these expense claims, as though it was normal to have your personal car repaired by Joe Taxpayer. With that type of thinking, you have to wonder, dozens of ministeries, thosands of fatcat CEO’s and bureaucrats, how many similar CEO’s and Ex Bureaucrats are there wasting public tax dollars? This is only ONE story, because the CBC sought it out. Using the math, the waste and theft and fraudulent use of Public Dollars, it will number in the Billions. Yes, there is a very good case for a PUBLIC INQUIRY.