The province struck a deal for the medicine three years ago to fill a gap during the COVID-19 pandemic.JASON FRANSON/The Canadian Press
Three years after Alberta’s government paid $70-million for children’s pain and fever medicine, its front-line health provider says it has worked out a deal to off-load what remains of the controversial stockpile.
Alberta Health Services spokeswoman Kristi Bland, in a Friday statement, confirmed the medicine is being donated to the charity group Health Partners International of Canada to distribute to “vulnerable communities worldwide.”
“Preliminary shipments of products have started to leave Alberta, and additional shipments will happen in the coming months,” she wrote.
Jackie Cousins, president of Health Partners, said the group works with others to ship medicine where it is needed, and that donations of medicine could end up in more than one country.
In an email, she said some of the Alberta medicine would be sent to war-torn Ukraine.
The medication has proven to be problematic for Premier Danielle Smith’s government. It struck a deal for the medicine three years ago to fill a gap during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alberta paid $70-million to MHCare Medical for the medication in 2022 during a countrywide shortage.
Alberta paid more than six times usual price for pain medications in $70-million import deal, according to government briefing note
The province only received about 30 per cent of the shipment, and it has sat on 1.4 million bottles since the spring of 2023 after front-line health staff reported problems, including that the medicine’s thicker consistency risked clogging feeding tubes.
At an unrelated news conference Friday, Opposition NDP finance critic Court Ellingson said the government “refuses” to take responsibility for the medicine and has “no plan” to recoup funds.
“That somebody is able to make use of this Tylenol somewhere, I’m going to say that that is a good thing, but there are so many other challenges there,” he said.
“(Smith’s government members) need to acknowledge that they were the ones that made these inappropriate decisions, that we’re still on the hook for (product) … that we did not get product, and we don’t know if that money is coming back.”
Smith hinted in March that her government was working on a deal to send scores of the medication elsewhere. At that time, then-health minister Adriana LaGrange called the medications “good quality drugs” and said it bothered her that they were going unused.
The government has said it’s still looking to get its money’s worth by working with MHCare to import other medications to fulfill the $70-million deal.
MHCare has since became embroiled in a provincial contracting and conflict of interest scandal after the former head of Alberta Health Services filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the province.
In the lawsuit, which hasn’t been tested in court, Athana Mentzelopoulos alleges she was fired for looking into inflated government contracts awarded to private surgical companies.
The lawsuit mentions MHCare multiple times, but the company is not named as a defendant. MHCare has said any allegations of wrongdoing on its part are “unwarranted and unjustified.”
The allegations have prompted numerous internal and external investigations, including by the RCMP.
