Alberta Health Services meets about CEO's future

The board of Alberta Health Services is holding a previously unscheduled meeting about the future of CEO and president Stephen Duckett.

The meeting started Tuesday night in a telephone conference call. The chair of Alberta Health Services, Ken Hughes, will make himself available to answer questions from the media on Wednesday.

On Friday, Duckett refused to answer questions from reporters after an urgent meeting on emergency care in Edmonton. Instead, he repeatedly stated he was too busy eating a cookie.

In the Alberta legislature Tuesday, Premier Ed Stelmach called Duckett's comments "quite offensive" but later said the decision about his future remains with the AHS board.

"The board has the responsibility to take all that evidence in its due diligence and they are going to consider all of the evidence and make a decision," Stelmach said.

Duckett has since apologized for his behavior, but there has been considerable public backlash to the exchange, as well as criticism from Alberta Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky who said the remarks were inappropriate. 

A video of the incident has been viewed on You Tube more than 120,000 times.

On Tuesday, Alberta Liberal leader David Swann repeated his calls for the board to fire Duckett.

"He's not the right man for the job," Swann said. "It's an impossible job, given the failed experiment that this government has tried. We need to move on."

Swann's comments were echoed by Wildrose Alliance MLA Rob Anderson.

"Not only should Stephen Duckett be fired but essentially that whole superboard should be fired and we should return autonomy of healthcare back to local doctors, nurses and hospital boards," Anderson said.

Duckett, an economist and former senior Australian health official, was hired in Jan. 2009 to head up Alberta Health Services under former health minister Ron Liepert.