On March 12, 1906, lieutenant governor George Bulyea received a sheaf of 64 papers signed by premier Alexander Rutherford. These were the first-ever public accounts of the province of Alberta.
The accounts are a trove of trans-parency. Brand-new Alberta had among its revenues a subsidy ($515,187.50) from the Dominion of Canada and a lump sum ($102,775.42) stemming from the liquidation of the North-West Territories. The documents list in remarkable detail the province’s earliest expenses, including the premier’s salary for his first four months ($2,000), the travel expenses of clerk and stenographer Miss M.L. Hugg ($6.30), even the Justice department’s outlay on stamps ($10).
With the release of these papers, opposition MLAs, newspaper reporters and the public could hold Alberta’s first government accountable. Why was Edmonton getting more infrastructure than Calgary? Did Government House really need $6,063.37 worth of new furniture? Was $96.25 in materials from Crow’s Nest Pass Lumber Co. for a bridge in Pincher Creek good value? This money belonged to the people of Alberta. It was to be spent in their interest. But politicians interpret the public interest differently and often have their own priorities besides. So what was the Rutherford government doing with public money? To whose benefit?
A good public account has to be created without fear or favour. No premier or minister can interfere to hide spending that reflects badly on them. The information has to be accurate. It has to be complete. And back in March 1906 the people of Alberta got assurances that this was so from E.W. Burley, a one-time ranch inspector who was Alberta’s first provincial auditor. Burley signed the province’s inaugural public spending accounts as “Certified correct.”
And so Alberta was born in a grand spirit of transparency. Today we continue to expect public information to be accurate, comprehensive and freely available. We expect public officers like the Auditor General to be able to do their jobs without interference and for politicians to take responsibility for their actions. Over time the standard has risen. We expect partisan favouritism to play no part in spending decisions. We expect proactive disclosure from MLAs. We want to know who’s meeting with ministers. And so, alongside the Auditor General, Alberta created independent officers to monitor lobbyists, investigate conflicts of interest, examine campaign spending and much more. These officials, including the Ethics Commissioner and Chief Electoral Officer, were gradually given more powers and independence.
And then, in 2019, along came the UCP. Instead of enhancing transparency, that government began muddying the waters. Instead of taking responsibility, it started ignoring, undermining and even removing the watchdogs appointed to hold them accountable.
In 2019, with an investigation into the UCP ongoing, premier Jason Kenney fired Alberta’s election commissioner.
It began with elections. For almost 50 years Alberta has had an independent Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to instill confidence in the ballot count and, more recently, to educate voters, encourage turnout and make voting easier. But conducting elections and investigating rule breaches are different things, and so in 2017 Alberta created a new watchdog, the Election Commissioner. “Everywhere else in Canada the CEO is in charge of both the administration of elections and the enforcement of election laws,” Harry Neufeld, BC’s former chief electoral officer, told The Globe and Mail. “This can pose conflicting priorities if, for example, the CEO is required to investigate election law offences committed by election officials they’ve hired.…Alberta was truly ahead of the evolutionary curve.” The new commissioner, Lorne Gibson, reported not to Elections Alberta but to the legislature.
Elections Alberta administers elections and by-elections, regulates political parties and third-party advertisers and maintains a searchable database of political donations (a tool of transparency created by the province in 2004). NDP MLA Brian Malkinson, who was on the committee that chose Gibson, said the commissioner’s job was to root out “dark money” in politics. Shady actors are forever concocting schemes to circumvent electoral laws.
Among the roughly 500 complaints Gibson received in his first year was a tip about Jeff Callaway. Callaway ran a “kamikaze” campaign in the 2017 UCP leadership race, attacking rival Brian Jean solely to help front-runner Jason Kenney, who reportedly concocted the plan. To pay the entry fee and maintain the facade of a real candidacy, Callaway’s campaign took $60,000 from one donor and distributed it among many “straw donors,” skirting contribution rules.
The Callaway affair became Alberta’s largest-ever electoral investigation, with fines of over $200,000 ultimately levied against Callaway, his staff and his donors.
But on November 18, 2019, with the investigation ongoing, Kenney—now premier—fired Gibson. Kenney said he was cutting “redundant bureaucracy.” But the egregiousness was self-evident. NDP leader Rachel Notley told reporters that for Kenney to fire the commissioner “in the middle of an open investigation into the conduct of his own party during his own leadership race” was “an absolutely unprecedented abuse of power.” She added “Imagine if [prime minister Justin] Trudeau had fired the ethics commission during the SNC-Lavalin affair.”
The commissioner’s powers were handed to Elections Alberta. In late 2020 that agency asked for more time to continue the investigation begun by Gibson. Kenney’s government said no.
In a statement after his firing, Gibson said Albertans “must have confidence and trust in the integrity of all aspects of the provincial electoral process, not just the casting and counting of ballots on election day. This includes trust and confidence that the election laws established by the legislative assembly are being followed and that there are consequences for those who choose not to follow them.…. Effective enforcement serves as a deterrent to others contemplating illegal activities and prevents the emergence of a culture of corruption.”
These concerns about a corrupt culture are being borne out. In 2025 UCP organizer David Parker was fined $120,000 for electoral violations, including making false statements and taking donations from abroad. He refused to pay. Parker is now under investigation for illegally accessing the list of electors—the private information of three million Albertans. As of spring 2026 he was refusing to co-operate, tweeting “Elections Alberta is an evil institution that is used to suppress democracy.”
UCP justice minister Mickey Amery has since neutered Elections Alberta, narrowing its window for investigations from three years to one. At the time, a relative of Amery, Sam Mraiche, had been under investigation by the agency for over a year. Elections Alberta CEO Gordon McClure told legislators that having far less time to examine convoluted cases “will eliminate most substantive financial investigations… None of the significant investigations undertaken by the Election Commissioner in the last five years would have been completed if this reduced time period had been in place.” He added: “Several current ones will not be completed.”
We don’t know if these involved Parker, Mraiche or others with UCP connections, as the agency is “legislatively prohibited from commenting about investigations we may or may not be conducting.”
A side from safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process, one of the most important roles a government plays is the protection of public health. Alberta appointed its first medical officer of health, A.E. Clendennan, in 1906, in recognition of the need for organized, science-based efforts to protect the health of the entire population.
Dr. Deena Hinshaw had been Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) for less than a year before the province, in 2020, was plunged into its worst public health crisis since the Spanish flu. During COVID’s scary early months, Hinshaw excelled. “She has been widely commended for her calm and measured delivery in press briefings, her solid command of the pandemic response and genuine expressions of empathy for those suffering from the disease,” wrote Geoff McMaster in a May 2020 Folio profile titled “The making of an unlikely folk hero.” Albertans bought the same periodic-table dress Hinshaw wore to a briefing. The attention was “certainly not something I expected to be dealing with,” Hinshaw said. “I’m just doing my job to the best of my ability, making sure I’m giving people the best information so they can make the best decisions.”
But she eventually became a target for people who thought the province went too far with public health restrictions, including mandatory masking and vaccinations. Kenney then cancelled public health measures to launch his “Best Summer Ever,” only to see Alberta’s COVID infection rate skyrocket and hospital ICUs overflow.
As CMOH Hinshaw had the authority to introduce public health measures. The Public Health Act allowed “whatever steps the medical officer of health considers necessary” in combatting a communicable disease or public health emergency. But the CMOH isn’t an independent officer of the Legislature like the Auditor General. Leaked recordings of Emergency Operations Centre meetings reveal Kenney and his ministers “micromanaged the actions of an already overwhelmed” CMOH and her staff and “sometimes overruled their expert advice.”
One of Danielle Smith’s first actions upon becoming premier in October 2022 was to fire Hinshaw. Despite vaccinations and public health restrictions having been proven to lower infection rates, and despite its having been Kenney’s decision to lift restrictions prematurely, Smith scapegoated Hinshaw, blaming her for delivering “bad advice” as our hospital system repeatedly came close to collapse in successive waves of the pandemic.
Hinshaw’s replacement, Dr. Mark Joffe, was in the role two and a half years before he too was removed. His abrupt departure came amid a local measles outbreak that became the worst in North America. Joffe spoke out days after leaving the CMOH job. “Measles is a horrid illness. It’s much more severe than most childhood infections,” he wrote in the Calgary Herald. “It’s all entirely preventable with immunization.” U of C health law professor Lorian Hardcastle said Joffe’s op-ed was conspicuous, since as CMOH he’d rarely appeared in public: “It invites people to speculate that perhaps the province was controlling some of the messaging when he was in the CMOH’s office.”
In fact, by this point Smith had dramatically changed the management of public health emergencies, stripping decision-making authority from the CMOH and giving it to cabinet. As a Parkland Institute study noted, in the future Albertans will be left only with “hope that cabinet gives appropriate weight to the advice of the CMOH.” Life-or-death decisions might be based on science—or on conspiracy theories, hunches or political convenience.
The Chief Medical Officer of Health is only a small part of Alberta’s largest overall expense: health. Alberta has 106 hospitals, five psych facilities and tens of thousands of acute care, continuing care and mental health/addiction beds. In 2026 the province spent $34-billion on healthcare.
With such a mind-boggling sum on the line, we need to know how it’s being spent. In 2008 premier Ed Stelmach said there wasn’t enough transparency or accountability, so he consolidated 12 provincial health entities into one, called Alberta Health Services (AHS). AHS remained independent of government but would “clarify responsibilities” and make care “more effective and efficient.” The hope was that a sole entity would save money by buying equipment and drugs in bulk and centralize political accountability, with one board answering to the health minister.
Things at AHS stabilized, and at least two other provinces copied Alberta’s consolidation.
But then the pandemic hit, and AHS came under attack from UCP MLAs. The agency mandated vaccinations for staff, to protect patients and workers alike. That was a “crazed plan,” Peace River MLA Dan Williams told the legislature, equivalent to holding “a knife to the throat” of rural communities. Health minister Jason Copping overruled AHS. In early 2022, weeks after Alberta saw its most COVID cases ever, and less than a year after renewing her contract, Kenney fired AHS CEO Dr. Verna Yiu. Given that AHS praised Yiu even as she was ousted, it looked like Kenney was firing her to appease extremists in his party and help him in his upcoming leadership review.
But Kenney got a low show of support in that review, outfoxed by David Parker and Take Back Alberta’s mass buying of UCP memberships. In the ensuing leadership race, Danielle Smith attacked AHS, claiming many health workers had quit because of its immunization policy, paradoxically later accusing the agency of “manufacturing” staff shortages. She said she’d dismantle AHS.
Mentzelopoulos alleged that AHS contracts had inflated prices and possible conflicts of interest. Danielle Smith fired her.
Smith won the party leadership and began a purge at AHS. In November 2022 she fired the 11-member board and replaced it with a single administrator, John Cowell. Cowell hired Mauro Chies as AHS CEO. Then Cowell was out, with Smith naming Lyle Oberg as board chair. The new board fired Chies and brought in Sean Chilton. A month later, in December 2023, Chilton was replaced by Athana Mentzelopoulos. Then Smith turfed Oberg, replacing him with Angela Fong. Months later Fong too was out. In January 2025 Smith fired Mentzelopoulos and once again replaced the entire AHS board with a sole administrator, Andre Tremblay. Said U of C health economics professor Braden Manns, in studied understatement: “It’s not good to have all this instability in the health system.”
But Smith—even if by accident—did bring a measure of accountability to a discombobulated AHS. Mentzelopoulos, as CEO, saw procurement rules being ignored. She later alleged in a wrongful dismissal suit that private surgical contracts awarded by AHS contained inflated prices and may have been tainted by conflicts of interest, and that political officials, including the premier’s chief of staff, had pressured her to proceed with the deals. Some of the contracts were with a company owned by Sam Mraiche, who has connections not only to minister Mickey Amery but also to Smith; the premier was photographed with Mraiche in a private suite at an Oilers playoff game.
Mentzelopoulos says the premier fired her for investigating contracts amounting to over $600-million in public money. Smith says the CEO was incompetent. Under public pressure, the premier brought in a retired judge to investigate. His report found “real or perceived” conflicts of interest in the procurement of medication and in private contracts. But, he added, some people refused his interviews or didn’t answer his questions. “Because there wasn’t the kind of vigorous examination and cross-examination that would take place in a formal setting [i.e., an inquiry],” justice Raymond Wyant wrote, “I couldn’t come to conclusions on the credibility of information provided verbally by interviewees.” He also noted occasions where he thought “full and complete information” wasn’t being provided.
Ultimately the Wyant report doesn’t say whether AHS overpaid, or for what, or on whose order. Nonetheless Smith declared herself and her government absolved.
Athana Mentzelopoulos had scheduled a meeting with the Auditor General to discuss her concerns at AHS but was fired before it could happen. On February 6, 2025, auditor general Doug Wylie announced he would investigate the health ministry and AHS to “look at the effectiveness of management and control processes, including governance and oversight… while addressing concerns or allegations related to contracting and potential conflicts of interest.” He assured Albertans that his office is independent and should be considered “a credible and trusted source of information on government spending and activities.”
Due to the “sheer volume of documents and interviews,” however, Wylie said his investigation would take time. His office was already examining Smith’s dissolution of AHS—billions of dollars’ worth of assets being transferred to new ministries in what Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid called an “insanely complicated” upheaval “with vast opportunities for money to fall off the gurney.” Wylie was also simultaneously examining why, under the UCP’s watch, AHS had for two years failed to publish its business plan as legally required.
That November, Wylie said he’d need two more years to complete the investigation spurred by Mentzelopoulos. But his term was set to expire the following spring, in April 2026. Wylie asked for more time. “I wasn’t seeking reappointment for a full eight (years),” he told reporters. “I was seeking an extension for two, to deal with the transition.” The UCP said no. As NDP MLA David Shepherd put it: “This is the government choosing to… remove the individual that’s currently investigating them in one of the most serious scandals, some of the most serious allegations we’ve ever seen against an Alberta government.”
In April 2026 a UCP-dominated committee named Phil Peters as Alberta’s new auditor general. Peters inherited the Wylie investigation but can “approach it differently,” explained Burman University political science professor Marc Froese. “He can choose to interview different people, compel the release of different records. All that stuff can change.” Froese said it looked to him like the UCP wanted “to change the channel on the bad news story. …I think they were hoping for a candidate who would be a little more low-profile.”
From the start, Albertans have wanted to know who’s benefiting from government decisions. Our first public accounts, for example, show the province paid $3,809.69 to expropriate land. We knew who got compensated, for how much, even the land survey coordinates. But why that land? Why so much money? And were any MLAs in a conflict of interest, having enriched friends, donors, even themselves?
Eventually it wasn’t enough that reporters and opposition parties could publicly question politicians’ potential conflicts. In 1991 an independent panel recommended that Alberta create an office to carefully scrutinize MLAs. Today the Ethics Commissioner compiles and posts financial disclosure statements, meets MLAs who seek advice, and conducts investigations, posting the results publicly. Alberta’s first commissioner, Robert C. Clark, described the role as “90 per cent priest and 10 per cent policeman,” saying he spent most of his time on proactive compliance.
A 2009 York University report on ethics commissioners that included Alberta argued it’s hard to audit their efficacy. But “comparing media stories about conflicts of interest before and after the appointment of an independent ethics commissioner provides an indication,” it reads. “This evidence [shows] a dramatic decline of conflict of interest stories in most jurisdictions following the establishment of the office.”
Alberta’s ethics commissioner, on Premier Smith’s phone call: “It is a threat to democracy to interfere with the administration of justice.”
Alberta’s most consequential ethics investigation was by Ethics Commissioner Marguerite Trussler in spring 2023. The previous winter, premier Smith had spoken with a man who was under house arrest while facing charges. On that call—later leaked to media—Smith offered to make inquiries on Artur Pawlowski’s behalf and told him she discussed his case with justice officials “almost weekly.” The allegation, wrote Trussler, was that Smith “sought to influence the prosecution of Pawlowski [and] thereby improperly tried to interfere with the administration of justice.”
With an election looming, Trussler expedited her investigation. Her findings, released May 17, were serious. “Speaking to an Attorney General about a specific ongoing criminal case, in the way that Premier Smith did… with Minister [Tyler] Shandro, is not acceptable,” Trussler wrote. “Just as was the case with Prime Minister Trudeau in the SNC-Lavalin case, Premier Smith was the only person who, by virtue of her position, could clearly exert influence over the Attorney General and had the power to remove Shandro from his position as Minister of Justice and Attorney General. I believe [he] must have felt considerable pressure and concern for his tenure as Minister…
“In the whole scheme of things, it is a threat to democracy to interfere with the administration of justice,” Trussler continued. “It is the first step toward the type of judicial system often found in a non-democratic or pseudo-democratic country where members of [the government] and friends of those in power are shielded from prosecution or are acquitted by the courts on the instructions of those in power. As well, those opposing the Government face trumped up charges and are convicted based on political instructions to the judiciary, which slavishly follows the government agenda in order to keep their positions. [Judicial] independence is a cornerstone of any democratic society, and democracy will fail without it.”
Trussler found Smith in contravention of section 3 of the Conflicts of Interest Act. She recommended no punishment, however, arguing the Act forced her to issue her findings mid-election, putting her in “an extremely difficult position.” Smith won anyway, and weeks later offered an apology that downplayed the severity of Trussler’s findings. “The suggestion that somehow she meant well or had no ill intent doesn’t quite line up,” Mount Royal University political scientist Lori Williams said. “She was told quite explicitly this is something she couldn’t do.” Said NDP leader Rachel Notley, “You don’t get to apologize your way out of breaking the law.”
Soon The Globe and Mail reported Smith would replace the ethics commissioner for “raising the ire of the UCP.” In spring 2024 Trussler’s contract, like the Auditor General’s, wasn’t renewed. And the UCP broke a long-standing convention in naming the new ethics commissioner. Shawn McLeod has close connections to the UCP. He was a party member and in 2023 sought the UCP nomination in Edmonton-Riverview. As a Globe headline put it, “The UCP has ensured Alberta’s new ethics commissioner will never be seen as independent.”
The ethics commissioner is compelled to investigate public concerns. But since his appointment in 2024 McLeod hasn’t published even one report. This isn’t because no one is contacting him. The Alberta Wilderness Association asked the commissioner to investigate forestry and parks minister Todd Loewen for a conflict of interest related to his family’s ownership of a hunting outfitter. McLeod declined. Ecojustice asked McLeod to investigate David Yager, a Smith adviser and oil and gas consultant who was named to the Alberta Energy Regulator board. McLeod declined that one too.
As one Alberta landowner told media: “What are they hiding? If there is no concern about Yager’s involvement… then why not follow the rules and investigate?”
“What are the UCP hiding? If there’s no concern… then why not follow the rules and investigate?”
Alberta was born not only in a spirit of political transparency but in expectation of accountability. Just five years in, Alexander Rutherford’s government was found to have guaranteed railway loans that far exceeded construction costs and to have offered bonds that paid interest well above market rates. The minister of public works resigned. Members of the Liberal caucus voted against their own leader. Premier Rutherford launched a royal commission. Soon he too resigned.
This is how Albertans of all partisan stripes should expect their elected representatives to act when confronted with clear evidence of their self-serving behaviour. But Jason Kenney’s and Danielle Smith’s governments have defied expectations.
The UCP’s inaugural leadership race was tainted by cheating, and the investigation into the deception was shut down by the man who most benefited from it. That party later made electoral investigations much harder to conduct. Desperate to keep a UCP leadership he’d conspired to win, Kenney made decisions that contributed to more Albertans dying of COVID. His successor fired and scapegoated public health defenders. Smith’s government now stands accused of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, its health decisions rooted in glaring conflicts of interest. Smith herself tried to interfere in a criminal case—an egregious abuse of power. Her response every time has been to banish or muzzle watchdogs and besmirch their reputations.
Lately abuses have been proliferating without the headlines generated by high-profile firings. The province’s Chief Electoral Officer can no longer seek a court review of referendum questions. Elections themselves can now more easily be tainted, because Elections Alberta not only has less time to investigate possible rule-breaking, it also needs “reasonable grounds to believe an offence has occurred” before even starting an investigation. “This is a much higher threshold than the previous [standard],” wrote U of A political science professor Jared Wesley. “In the CEO’s own comparison, [it’s] similar to the level of evidence police would need to make an arrest.”
In 2026 separatists illegally obtained the province’s voter list—the largest leak of personal information in Canada’s history—but Elections Alberta is barred from “confirming or denying to a citizen whether or not, unbeknownst to them, their [name] was added to a citizen initiative petition.” As Wesley put it: “That is a remarkable admission. The province’s election agency is telling Albertans it may not have the legal tools it needs to investigate threats to the integrity of our election system.”
Elections Alberta itself is part of the debacle. “After all,” former election commissioner Lorne Gibson told Alberta Politics, “they provided the data to [Alberta’s] Republican Party, and they’re responsible for safeguarding the privacy of the voter register and list.” But the UCP in 2019 fired the Election Commissioner—making Elections Alberta responsible for investigating itself. Said Gibson: “There is something wrong with this picture.”
The UCP may yet stoop even lower. Earlier this year Smith threw out the report of the independent 2025/26 electoral boundaries commission and put UCP MLAs in charge of creating the ridings that will be used in Alberta’s next election. The new ridings—to be revealed in a few weeks—are widely expected to be gerrymandered, with NDP-voting areas in Edmonton and Calgary grafted onto UCP rural strongholds to dilute the progressive vote. For the first time in Alberta’s 121-year history, fair elections may not be a given. “I’d been naively hoping they wouldn’t go to the extent of interfering with redistricting,” wrote Edmonton Journal columnist Keith Gerein. “[But] it’s been clear for awhile that the UCP sees few democratic norms as untouchable.”
Evan Osenton is the editor of Alberta Views. His article about charity casinos, “Who Wants Albertans to Gamble More?” won Gold at the 2024 Alberta Magazine Awards.
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