At the start of the pandemic in the early days of 2020, Alberta Health Services (Tyler Shandro was then minister of health) made the decision to source personal protective equipment, or PPE, from a holding company that was run by someone who, up until that point, predominantly worked in the field of oilfield training—Mraiche Holding Corporation.
The contact for Mraiche Holding Corporation was a Sam Hassan Mraiche using an email address from another one of his companies, Carver PA, a corporation that, by their own description, “specializes in providing training to the petrochemical industry.”
That initial purchase of PPE was reportedly for $228-million and included masks, gowns and thermometers. Most of the supplies were made in China. The quality control was so bad it made widespread news.
The masks, delivered under the brand name Vanch, were reportedly of such low quality that many didn’t even fit the faces of healthcare workers properly. They had nose pieces that unsafely didn’t hold their shape and because of that, couldn’t create a seal providing the proper protection for healthcare workers braving the pandemic. Perhaps worst of all, many masks came with an odour that healthcare workers claimed was making them sick.
Many have since pointed out the masks were not made by a single manufacturer, but by multiple manufacturers with varying quality. Contrary to the Government of Alberta documentation, Vanch is not the name of the manufacturer. It’s the brand name of a Chinese stationery group which sourced the masks from anyone who could meet their order, and then packaged the masks in their Vanch-branded boxes. Nonetheless, AHS continues to use Vanch masks.
So, to be clear, at the start of the pandemic, when protection for healthcare workers should have been a foremost concern, a company that had no obvious experience or track record in providing healthcare personal protective equipment received a sole-source contract for products that turned out to be substandard and allegedly harmful to the very healthcare workers it was supposed to protect.
And that company was run by Sam Mraiche.
AHS was paying 85¢ a mask from Mraiche Holding Corp. compared to 50¢ a mask from Acklands-Grainger. So Mraiche Holding Corp. was charging 70 per cent more for a lesser quality product, and Albertan taxpayers covered that cost.
This sole-source contract for problematic PPE was, in effect, the birth of a new company called MHCare Medical, operating under the Mraiche Holding Corporation (or Mraiche Investment Corporation) umbrella. And it wasn’t the last time they would deliver problematic product to Alberta at great cost to the taxpayer.
Later in the summer of 2022, Canada experienced a tridemic caused by ongoing waves of the Omicron COVID variant, a spike in RSV among children, and an early start to the flu season with a strain of influenza B that particularly affected kids. This caused an unprecedented demand for children’s pain and fever medication in the forms of acetaminophen, most commonly known as the brand name Tylenol, and ibuprofen, most commonly known as children’s Advil and Motrin.
It’s also worth noting that over the first half of 2022, most public health measures across Canada, except voluntary vaccination, were abandoned. In August of 2022, Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto recommended parents get prescriptions for those medications [acetaminophen and ibuprofen] to ensure supply in advance of the flu season, even though they are non-prescription, over-the-counter medications and a prescription would not ensure supply if the pharmacist were out of stock. By the time the Canadian Pharmacists Association was able to get out a rebuttal, mass hoarding in advance had already begun emptying shelves in eastern Canada and causing a 53 per cent increase in sales in US pharmacies along the border.
This caused a nationwide shortage of these two medications heading into the fall respiratory virus season. To make matters worse, the 2022–2023 influenza season started in October, roughly six weeks earlier than expected. As soon as pharmacies got stock, people would clean out shelves to stockpile it at home, even if their kids weren’t sick. In September 2022, Health Canada began working with global manufacturers to adapt their products for the Canadian market. By November 2022, the federal government had approved the import of nine brand name products from the United States and Australia, resulting in the import of over 4.4 million units over the winter. In parallel, Canadian manufacturers massively ramped up production of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen under brand names trusted by Canadians to release 13.9 million units by May 2023.
Normal demand across Canada for these medications is 300,000 to 400,000 bottles per year. The combination of sudden surge in illness in 2022 plus the hoarding emptied retailer shelves. But as sharply as that pediatric influenza B spike began in October, it fell in November, and largely ended over Christmas. It became obvious over the month of November that Health Canada’s pumping the market with imports would catch up to the market by year-end, especially with the drop in pediatric influenza and the related calming and hoarding.
Nonetheless, on December 6, 2022, premier Danielle Smith and then health minister Jason Copping announced they were signing a deal with Turkish company Atabay Pharmaceutical for five million bottles of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen to supply to Alberta pharmacies at a cost of at least $80-million.
Danielle Smith said: “Your government is taking action to help provide the medication Alberta families need. I’m happy to announce that we have secured a supply of five million bottles of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen for Alberta families right now.
“Your government is working with Alberta Health Services and Health Canada on the details and logistics to import this medicine, and you can feel confident that we are all moving as quickly as we can so that Alberta families can get what they need, and it will be available at your local pharmacy in short order once it arrives.”
They claimed this medication would be available for import in a few weeks if Health Canada practised the spirit of co-operative federalism. They also claimed parents would be able to keep their kids out of the hospital if they could buy the medication in pharmacies.
Danielle Smith said: “I think one of the reasons for this announcement is to make sure that we are providing parents with the medication they need so that they can treat at home and ensure that they can break the fever at home. That’s the most important step we can do to keep the pressure off the hospital.”
During this shortage many physicians issued public statements that while these medications provide comfort care, they aren’t lifesaving, and they don’t halt the progression of a virus. They manage the symptoms.
Copping falsely claimed that there was no manufacturer in Canada, even though Johnson & Johnson manufactures their version of these products in Guelph. Copping also falsely claimed that Health Canada had approved the raw ingredients from the Turkish manufacturers but not the final product.
Even after the debacle with PPE, the government used Mraiche’s company in a sole-sourced contract to obtain children’s medication.
Alberta has about 700,000 children under the age of 12. The Alberta Pharmacists Association claimed they could use about 500,000 bottles, if received in December as promised by Smith and Copping, but did not commit to buy any. Alberta was ordering more bottles than the entire population of the province. Five MILLION bottles.
Premier Smith and health minister Copping were confident that Albertans wouldn’t be on the hook for the surplus, and that Alberta would be able to sell the bottles to other provinces. For additional context, five million bottles is about 10 to 14 times the entire national demand for children’s pain and fever medications. Between imports and increased domestic production, Health Canada stockpiled over 18 million bottles that winter. Surplus inventory after the winter was more likely to be a problem than a shortage. Out of the $80-million total budget, the Government of Alberta committed to purchase $70-million worth of meds at $14 a bottle, which is about twice the retail price. The other $10-million was for unspecified internal costs.
The Atabay dosage was not the same as the North American dosage, which is a safety issue triggering advance warnings from pharmaceutical colleges as well as Alberta Blue Cross. Because of this, the Atabay products could only be brought in by “exceptional import” in a process requiring attestation of the shortage by Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health.
But there was also the problem that Atabay hadn’t supplied medicine to the Canadian market, and their products—that Alberta taxpayers had just paid millions for—did not meet Health Canada specifications: dosage, child safety caps, warnings, dosing devices, packaging, labelling and more.
Copping admitted that Alberta taxpayers would have to subsidize the price to other provinces to match their wholesale prices; that wholesale cost of $14 a bottle was, and is, significantly more than the normal retail cost of the trusted supply that had already seen a huge manufacturing increase a month before this deal was even made.
The problems continued.
The medication itself didn’t even start to arrive until January, but because of issues with the labelling and the dosing, that first shipment of 250,000 bottles could only be distributed to Alberta hospitals, where nurses could be trusted to perform the extra work of converting the dosage before administering the medication to patients. Medication for the public to purchase in pharmacies didn’t arrive until late March, two months after Health Canada allowed another exceptional import and well after the shortage of the trusted brand name supply had been resolved.
The medication had to be stored behind the counter, as the pharmacists were required to teach parents how to adjust the dosage. But the problems didn’t stop there. Because of the delay in nine shipments, and the wrong dosage, no other provinces had any interest in buying them. Also, since Health Canada has not provided regulatory approval for any Atabay product at a national level, any other province could only get them on a case-by-case application to Health Canada—again for exceptional import—which again would require a shortage.
Alberta was ultimately only able to import 1.5 million of the five million bottles purchased, because the shortage justifying the exceptional import had ended and Health Canada never provided approval for anywhere other than Alberta. New health minister Adriana LaGrange directed this massive overshoot to Alberta hospitals. This inventory was dumped into AHS books even though AHS never had a shortage and had its own suppliers through 2022 and 2023, and the original stated intent for these medications was that they had been purchased for retail sales in pharmacies.
Perhaps most concerning, though, the medication that was distributed to hospitals for use was only approved for ages 2 and up. AHS determined that because of its consistency, if used with newborn babies in the neonatal intensive care units, it could place them at a risk of a condition called necrotizing enterocolitis, which kills the intestines of infants, when the medication is administered through feeding tubes.
Alberta Health Services discontinued the use of the medication entirely. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. All told, Alberta hospitals used the medications for only two months before returning to their already established supply. But that only further underscores the question: if the medication was originally purchased to be distributed in pharmacies for the public to buy, why was it ever redirected to the hospital supply?
Alberta only received 1.5 million bottles of the five million bottles the province paid for. And of that 1.5 million, only a total of 4,700 bottles made it to community pharmacies for the public and only 9,000 bottles made it into hospitals across the province. Alberta ended up paying to store the rest of the medication, and has no way to recoup any of the money spent. Given that only 13,700 bottles ever made it into any kind of circulation, Danielle Smith paid $5,839.42 per bottle using taxpayers’ money.
Although the government tried to hide the existence of a middleman who allegedly orchestrated the entire deal, it has since been confirmed to be the importer, MHCare Medical, the company owned by Sam Mraiche. They received the $70-million from Alberta Health. It is unknown how much of that they paid to Atabay for the 1.5 million bottles actually shipped. It’s also unknown whether the five million bottle minimum purchase was required by Atabay or by MHCare Medical.
Even after the safety debacle with the masks and the PPE, the government still decided to use Mraiche’s company in a sole-sourced contract through AHS to obtain children’s medication. The products never received regulatory approval, they had the wrong dosage despite a custom manufacturing run, and multiple shipments were required to get the safety caps and labelling right—seemingly by trial and error—requiring secure disposal. Again, all paid for by Alberta taxpayers. Some have since speculated that individuals within the UCP government had attempted to purchase the five million bottles of Atabay product in order to bootstrap MHCare Medical into being a national distributor of pharmaceutical products, starting with the children’s acetaminophen in the hopes that there would still be a shortage when the imports finally arrived.
The taxpayers carried all the risk of that minimum buy, of the failure to meet the regulatory requirements and of demand drying up before the late arrival of the product. It was an entirely predictable $80-million catastrophe. The mismanagement of the government and MHCare Medical caused both parties to fail at establishing MHCare as a distributor of pharmaceuticals, if that was their goal. To this day, they only have a Health Canada licence to import, not to distribute or retail. They do not list any pharmaceuticals for sale.
How is it that Sam Mraiche and MHCare medical kept getting contracts after their Vanch masks failed to meet the required ASM standard? Most of them wouldn’t fit or hold any shape, and many of them caused breathing issues and skin rashes in healthcare workers. And after 100 per cent of the children’s acetaminophen product failed to have the standard dosage, was never approved by Health Canada outside of exceptional circumstances, was months too late and effectively cost $80-million to only get 13,700 bottles to hospitals or pharmacies?
In 2023 Sam received the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee medal from UCP minister Muhammad Yaseen in a ceremony that was quickly posted to the MHCare promotional website and their YouTube channel. There’s no advertising like free advertising.
Sam Mraiche has won more than a quarter billion dollars in sole-source contracts from Albertans to supply medication that was only used in hospital for two months, was minimally used in pharmacies, that no other province wanted; and masks and other PPE that healthcare workers call problematic.
On May 10 Danielle Smith flew to Vancouver with two staffers and an impressive entourage to watch a game in an elite private skybox with tickets that were gifted to her by a private citizen, one Sam Jaber. Jaber was appointed to the board of Invest Alberta on November 22, 2023, by Danielle Smith. The fact that Smith accepted these tickets is a problem in and of itself or at least it would be almost anywhere else in Canada….
Who else was at the game? The photo of the premier at the hockey game appears to be a peek into the sprawling network that Sam Mraiche has built for himself. In the back row, we have Aaron Barner, senior executive officer for the Métis Nation of Alberta, then Sam Mraiche, then Andrea Sandmaier, the president of the Métis Nation of Alberta, and then Sam Mraiche’s wife. Also in the picture are David Eby and his family. But the key to understanding all of the invisible connections in this picture is the person who isn’t even in it, the person who made the whole picture possible: Sam Jaber.
Mr. Jaber is a businessman and accountant whose primary business appears to be the accounting firm Jaberson and Associates. That business is run out of an industrial office strip mall at 5430 136 Ave NW in Edmonton. The other business run out of that address is Phoenician Accounting and Tax Services. Jaberson and Associates and Phoenician share a business address, phone number and a client portal that says “Welcome to the Jaberson and Associates client portal” but is hosted on the Phoenician website.
Four numbered companies were registered by Sam Jaber in September of 2023, just two months before he was appointed to Invest Alberta. The records address for all four companies is Sam Jaber’s offices. All four of these numbered companies use the contact email address ocorcescu@carvercorporation.com.
An online search reveals that Olesea Corcescu used to be a payroll administrator for Phoenician Accounting, an accountant with Carver and a senior accountant with MHCare Medical.
The registered office for all four companies is 3001, 14815 119th Ave NW in Edmonton. That address is also the location of the Carver building, a three-storey office block that also serves as the headquarters for MHCare and the Carver PA Corporation. That’s the same Carver Corporation that Sam Mraiche used as his contact throughout the Vanch debacle before he converted the holding company to MHCare Medical Corporation in 2020.
Sam Mraiche, whose companies provided controversial products on not one but two high-profile occasions, and who has presumably made a boatload of money off of those deals on the taxpayer dime, has a long-standing business relationship with Sam Jaber. The same Sam Jaber that gave Danielle Smith expensive elite skybox tickets.
From the Oct 27, 2024, episode of The Breakdown, a podcast about provincial politics produced by Nate Pike. Founded five years ago, The Breakdown has over 40,000 followers on social media and YouTube and is available on most podcast platforms.
You can find The Breakdown on X @TheBreakdownAB
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