publishing his initial findings<\/a>, retired Manitoba justice Raymond Wyant said AHS inked an updated five-year, $56-million contract with medical supplier MHCare in July 2023. The supplementary report says AHS signed the deal after the province was unable to get Health Canada approval to import all of the five million bottles of children\u2019s pain medication it had initially agreed to buy from Turkish supplier Atabay Pharmaceuticals in 2022.<\/p>\nThe renegotiated 2023 contract was supposed to pay for alternative Atabay products that Health Canada has already approved for import.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wyant called upon forensic accountants at a firm called RSM to investigate the contracts. Children\u2019s painkillers were in short supply in Canada when Premier Danielle Smith announced in December 2022 the province was planning to buy the Turkish medication in bulk.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the documentation reviewed, RSM was unable to find support for the contract value of $56 million between AHS and MHCare,\u201d Wyant wrote.<\/p>\n
The RSM report also said AHS has paid $42 million of public money to MHCare for products that have not been delivered, as of Oct. 31, 2025.<\/p>\n
Wyant\u2019s initial investigation found that in 2022, then-Alberta health minister Jason Copping ordered AHS to buy children\u2019s medication and to place the order before receiving Health Canada approval. Wyant said he found the province ordered about 10 times more medication than officials thought it needed.<\/p>\n
Wyant\u2019s first report said when the province couldn\u2019t get approval to import more than 1.5 million bottles of the children\u2019s medication, AHS employee Jitendra Prasad recommended the agency instead buy intravenous acetaminophen solution to get products for the money AHS committed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wyant also found Prasad was in a conflict of interest, having both worked for AHS and having a relationship and an email address with MHCare while working to source the medication.<\/p>\n
The addendum RSM report says Alberta initially received about $20-million worth of children\u2019s medication, or 1,473,619 bottles of children\u2019s acetaminophen and ibuprofen. The medication had expiry dates between January and April 2026.<\/p>\n
Wyant writes in a note attached to the report that AHS disposed of nearly 807,000 bottles, or 55 per cent of the medication, at the Swan Hills hazardous waste plant, and 44 per cent of the bottles were donated to Health Partners International Canada for use overseas.<\/p>\n
Wyant\u2019s note says about one per cent of the bottles AHS received were distributed to hospitals and pharmacies.<\/p>\n
Some of the information in Friday\u2019s addendum report has been previously reported.<\/p>\n
CBC News asked the Alberta government for comment on Wyant\u2019s new findings. In an email sent Friday evening, Yonathan Sumamo, assistant deputy minister of communications and public engagement, said the addendum report reaffirms the conclusions reached in Wyant’s earlier report, “and confirms serious procurement and contract\u2011management failures within AHS, while also finding no evidence of wrongdoing by elected officials, political staff or the Alberta Public Service.”<\/p>\n
Rakhi Pancholi, deputy leader of the Opposition NDP, issued a statement following the release of the addendum report and suggested it simply raises more questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlbertans will only get to know the truth of the UCP government\u2019s connections and involvement in this debacle through a public inquiry,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s time to call one, now.\u201d <\/p>\n
“The government has accepted all of Judge Wyant\u2019s recommendations and is actively implementing them to strengthen oversight, accountability and transparency in procurement going forward,” Sumamo said. <\/p>\n
“The government expects all provincial health agencies and corporations to use the contractual and legal tools available to them to ensure products and services are delivered as ordered and, where necessary, to seek remedies or reimbursement.”<\/p>\n
Contracts a focus of several probes<\/p>\n
AHS\u2019 contracting practices are the subject of a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed by former AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos.<\/p>\n
Mentzelopoulos\u2019 2025 lawsuit claims she was terminated for scrutinizing multimillion-dollar public contracts to purchase children\u2019s pain medication and provide surgeries at privately run clinics.<\/p>\n
The allegations have not been tested in court. The government and AHS have said in statements of defence that Mentzelopoulos was not achieving what she was hired to do and denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
AHS also paid companies under MHCare CEO Sam Mraiche\u2019s control hundreds of millions of dollars for personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Alberta\u2019s auditor general, the RCMP and Wyant \u2014 who was hired by the Alberta government \u2014 all began investigations last year.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, RCMP vehicles and officers were at the northwest Edmonton offices of MHCare. On Thursday, a lawyer for MHCare and Mraiche, said in a statement that they have not engaged in any improper conduct.<\/p>\n
The government engaged Wyant to review procurement practices and also look into Mentzelopoulos\u2019 allegations of political interference with contracting.<\/p>\n
Wyant\u2019s initial report, released in October, said he found cases of \u201creal or perceived\u201d conflicts of interest in purchasing the children\u2019s medication and awarding contracts to private surgical facilities. Wyant made 18 recommendations for improvement, including creating whistleblower protection for AHS employees and mandatory employee training about conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n
Wyant\u2019s report said he found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Smith, her ministers or other political staff. But he wrote that the limited powers afforded to him meant he couldn’t make any definitive statements.<\/p>\n
Critics have raised questions about the relationships between members of Smith\u2019s cabinet and Mraiche and his business partners after lawmakers accepted NHL playoff tickets as gifts in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A retired judge tasked with investigating allegations about Alberta health contracting says Alberta Health Services (AHS) renegotiated a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,490],"class_list":["post-554088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-medication"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}