Alberta voted for accountability. We got self-review.

Retired Manitoba judge Raymond Wyant was appointed by the Government of Alberta to conduct a third-party review of the AHS procurement matters surfaced by the Mentzelopoulos lawsuit. The terms of reference for that review were set by the same government whose conduct was the subject of the review.

The terms of reference excluded several of the most-reported elements of the matter:

• The $1.6‑million home rented by then-chief of staff Marshall Smith from a Mraiche family member.
• The Edmonton Oilers playoff luxury-box tickets accepted by multiple cabinet ministers.
• The hiring of Mraiche relatives into government-related roles.

Wyant interviewed only one member of political staff — Marshall Smith. The report concluded that AHS had failed to follow its own procurement procedures, and that the Health Ministry and AHS had failed to follow their own rules in signing off on a private surgical centre. Both findings are damning. Both were also bounded by the questions Wyant was permitted to ask.

Forensic accountant Steve Allan was appointed by the Kenney government to lead the Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns — the so-called Allan Inquiry. Public records establish that Steve Allan had, prior to his appointment, donated to the UCP leadership campaign of the Justice Minister who appointed him to the role. The inquiry's $3.5-million budget is documented on the Receipts page.

The independence of an inquiry is not measured solely by the qualifications of the inquirer. It is measured by the absence of relationships of obligation between the inquirer and the appointing authority. That measurement was not met here. The inquiry found no wrongdoing by the campaigns it investigated.

The Alberta Energy Regulator is the body that licenses oil and gas operations in the province, sets the orphan-well levy that funds the Orphan Well Association, and is the gatekeeper for whether a producer in financial distress is permitted to acquire additional wells. Several of the AER's most consequential decisions in recent years — including the size and structure of the orphan-well levy — have been made in proceedings that are not subject to public hearings, and whose internal correspondence has not been released.

University of Calgary researcher Drew Yewchuk has documented, in legal commentary and FOIP requests, the gap between the AER's stated transparency posture and the actual public availability of the records that would document its decisions. The orphan-well liability transferred to Albertans — $30 billion and counting — is a function of decisions whose underlying documents the public has not seen.

David Yager has held a sole-sourced contract from the Government of Alberta to advise on oil-and-gas cleanup policy. During the period of that contract, Yager has been a paid consultant to oil-and-gas industry interests, and is a member of the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator — the body that licenses the cleanup of those interests.

In July 2025, Albertan Dwight Popowich filed an ethics complaint with the Office of the Ethics Commissioner of Alberta. The complaint was followed by approximately 1,700 letters from Albertans to the Ethics Commissioner. The matter remains before the Commissioner.

Marshall Smith, then chief of staff to Premier Smith, moved into a $1.6‑million home in August 2023 that had been purchased by Fatima Mraiche, the sister of Sam Mraiche, whose companies have received approximately $614 million in AHS contracts according to the Mentzelopoulos lawsuit. Marshall Smith subsequently hired multiple Mraiche relatives, including Sam Mraiche's son Khalil, into government-related roles.

Marshall Smith was the only member of political staff interviewed by retired judge Raymond Wyant during the government-commissioned review of the AHS procurement matter. He has denied any improper involvement in contract decisions.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Alberta has been described in Globe and Mail reporting as a friend and relative of Sam Mraiche. The Minister of Justice is the cabinet member responsible for the appointment of Crown prosecutors, and is the primary political principal of the province's prosecution service. He has not, to the public knowledge, recused himself from any matter touching on the AHS procurement file.

On June 11, 2025, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act — FOIP — was repealed and replaced by the Access to Information Act, ATIA. The replacement was tabled by the Smith government and passed under government majority. One month earlier, in May 2025, the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner had issued a report finding that the Government of Alberta was already failing to comply with the existing FOIP statute.

What the Commissioner said the government was already doing wrong

• Disregarding access requests as "overly broad" without legal basis.
• Applying Cabinet-record exemptions in ways that exceeded their statutory scope.
• Treating political-staff communications as exempt where the statute did not exempt them.

What ATIA does

The new statute codifies several of the practices the Commissioner had identified as illegal under FOIP. Key changes documented by independent legal commentary:

• Statutory discretion to disregard requests as "overly broad" — previously a practice without legal basis, now a statutory authority.
• Cabinet-record exemptions expanded to include "background and factual information" not previously exempt.
• Communications of political staff are now exempt as a matter of law.
• Increased OIPC discretion to refuse inquiries.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner is an independent officer of the Legislative Assembly. Her finding that the practices in question were illegal under FOIP is on the public record. The legislature responded by changing the law.

Subsequent to the Mraiche-related disclosures, amendments were made to the framework governing the acceptance of gifts and benefits by members and cabinet. The practical effect of those amendments has been to broaden the scope of what may be accepted, characterised as in the course of "official business," without triggering disclosure obligations.

A more permissive gift-acceptance regime is, in principle, a policy choice. The choice is documented on the legislative record. It is not a choice typically made when an existing regime is functioning well.

The Premier has, on two separate occasions in Question Period, been asked to table the correspondence between her office and the Office of the Ethics Commissioner concerning the Saudi-paid private-jet travel of October 2025. She has declined both requests. The full record on the Saudi flight is on the Transparency page.

Rob Anderson, the former Principal Secretary to Premier Smith, has been the subject of public reporting concerning a first-class flight booked at public expense and a separate trip to Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The choice of class of service is, on Government of Alberta travel policy, discretionary above a certain threshold. Mar-a-Lago is a private club. The combination of public expense and private-club venue is what makes the file a public-record matter.