A $49-Million Question Danielle Smith Struggles to Answer

A largely forgotten topic popped up during my year-end interview with Premier Danielle Smith a few days ago.

Well, it popped up because I asked about it.

Say hello, again, to the “Turkish Tylenol” fiasco that celebrated its two-year anniversary last Friday, Dec. 6.

It was, and is still, a debacle that cost Alberta taxpayers $70 million. And, as I write this, the government cannot tell me for sure where $49 million of that money ended up.

It is either with the Turkish-based company Atabay that supplied 1.5 million bottles of generic acetaminophen, or with the Alberta-based company MHCare that imported it.

The government says the $49 million is considered to be a “credit,” and Smith said the province is hoping to use it to get more products from Atabay.

“We are working with Health Canada to identify a way to fulfil that contract,” said Smith. “They [Atabay] are a generic drug company, so there's a way that we would be able to identify products that health services need.”

Would she reveal what products?

“I can’t,” replied Smith. “I can't pre-empt the Health Canada process.”

Smith had no problem revealing the product two years ago when she saw herself as the knight in shining armour riding to the rescue of frantic parents trying to find bottles of Tylenol on pharmacy shelves picked clean.

“Many families are feeling overwhelmed, dealing with, especially, fevers, coughs and other issues with their kids,” said Smith at the time. She was right.

What went wrong

You could argue Smith’s heart was in the right place. And so was her instinct to never let a crisis go to waste, especially when she could be a hero while also owning the federal Liberals who were scrambling to get children’s pain medication onto shelves.

But it turned out to be a promise made without proper planning, transparency and accountability. It backfired spectacularly — and in so doing provided a glimpse into the motivations of a premier who too often makes decisions and policy on the fly, with Albertans left holding the bag.

The government, through Alberta Health Services, prepaid the entire $70 million up front (with an extra $10 million spent on processing and transportation). Only 1.5 million bottles of acetaminophen at a cost of $21 million were delivered before Health Canada stopped more importation because the shortage in domestically produced children’s pain medication was over. In fact, Health Canada reportedly warned Alberta the window to import might be closing quickly. But Alberta pushed ahead.

Not only that, but because of its high viscosity, the Turkish-made drug clogged the feeding tubes of fragile patients in hospitals and was banned in neonatal intensive care units. And because it was weaker than regular Tylenol, it was sold only behind the counter in pharmacies.

The Globe and Mail reported that only a few thousand bottles were ever distributed to hospital pharmacies and it was unlikely Alberta would ever receive the other 3.5 million.

Alberta’s Plan B to sell the bottles to other provinces failed because nobody wanted it. Alberta has found itself stuck with a product with a diminishing shelf life.

Making things even more muddled is the fact Health Minister Adriana LaGrange doesn’t seem to know what happened. She wasn’t health minister two years ago and wasn’t involved in the contract, but when asked a few days ago about how much money was outstanding, she claimed it was $42 million and that Atabay had the money.

However, Alberta Health Services said it’s actually $49 million.

Where is that money? AHS and the Alberta government couldn’t say. They told journalists to contact MHCare and Atabay directly. As I write this, neither company has responded to a request for comment.

‘I sure learned a lot’

When I asked Smith what happened, she said the province was simply trying to move quickly to solve a shortage of children’s pain medication.

But she admits she didn’t realize the complexity of the task involved: “I sure learned a lot about the Health Canada process on that because it took a lot longer than I expected it to.”

To top it off, the government admits the contract stipulates that whoever holds the money gets to keep any interest earned.

This can perhaps be viewed as a microcosm of how Smith governs.

She is articulate and personable and is skilled at winning over an audience — but that counts for naught when she makes simplistic declarations and takes action apparently on a whim.

At one time she thought she could issue pardons to Albertans found guilty of breaking pandemic restrictions, could simply change the Alberta Human Rights Act to protect anti-vaxers, and could introduce a sovereignty act that would ignore federal laws.

It seems to be the same casual mindset around a litany of important issues such as her proposed Alberta pension plan, how she passed sweeping legislation to limit gender-affirming care for minors and how she fired the board of Alberta’ $170-billion Crown corporation AIMCo while appointing former prime minister Stephen Harper as chairman of the board.

Smith’s actions too often appear to be a combination of personal bias and political impulse mixed with pandering to her socially conservative base.

Two years ago, she tripped over herself into the “Turkish Tylenol” quagmire.

She says she learned a valuable lesson.

We shall see.