We Need To Talk About Grant Devine, Danielle Smith and Plausible Deniability
Alternate title: a meditation on the increasing fragility of Canadian freedom.
I’ve never forgotten it: longtime Sask Party-architect and broadcaster John Gormley gleefully explaining, in detail, something he called “Plausible Deniability”.
I worked on that show between 2007 and 2011 - basically the Sask Party’s first government term. Because the show, Gormley and the Sask Party were one and the same, I saw and heard a lot.
The Sask Party’s first term was pretty straight, with the exception of Serge LeClerc.
Google Serge LeClerc. He’s a complicated story, but I’ll try to summarize:
a whackjob, drug dealing, violent criminal who served time in some of Canada’s most notorious prisons;
finds Jesus!
Paul Merriman’s dad (remember Teen Challenge?) Ted introduces a new and improved LeClerc to the Sask Party
and eventually LeClerc replaces Ted as Sask Party MLA for Saskatoon Northeast;
Surprise! Despite his Christian armour, LeClerc had actually never stopped with the blow and gay sex, seemingly with vulnerable individuals… and there were tapes.
(The front page photo of Jacob Hoggard, pictured above scouting for victims, right next to the LeClerc story… 🤯.)
Serge LeClerc’s downfall was arguably the first real scandal inside the Sask Party government. As you see in the opening sentence of the news story above, Wall was in front of it as soon as the CBC story broke. His authentic, wide-eyed responses to the allegations about LeClerc, followed by his righteous indignation and bold calls to action were the perfect responses.
Wall had not known about LeClerc’s behaviour but as soon as he did, he stepped up to do the right thing.
However, what you have to understand is that everybody in Wall’s office knew about LeClerc’s behaviour for months before the shit the fan.
Everybody except Brad Wall.
“Plausible deniability” gushed Gormley. I specifically remember thinking he was way too excited about it lol.
Don’t tell him cause he’ll implode, but he didn’t actually invent it.
The fundamental idea is to create a situation where a political leader can plausibly deny knowledge or authorization of an action, even if they benefited from it.
The "plausible" part is critical – it has to be believable to a reasonable degree, at least to the intended audience (whether that’s voters, the courts, etc.) It's not about absolute denial, but about creating enough doubt and ambiguity to avoid direct culpability.
So if something nasty broke and Brad Wall was forced to speak to it publicly, he would genuinely - plausibly - be able to deny having any previous knowledge of said nasty.
I’m certain that Plausible Deniability was deployed around the GTH boondoggle as well. I truly don’t think Wall knew what Bill Boyd was doing at the time.
(Honestly, I don’t think any of us yet know the entirety of what Bill Boyd was doing at that time. But I digress.)
In 2010 Wall’s closest advisers included Jason Wall, Reg Downs, Kevin Doherty and Iain Harry. John Gormley was in Wall’s ear multiple times a day, every day. Based on my daily observations, today I still don’t believe Wall made a single decision without consulting Gormley. There was (perhaps still is) a very intense, obvious bond between those two men.
Jason Wall, Downs, Brad Wall, Doherty, Harry and Gormley were also Grant Devine’s staffers in 1990… the same year bags of thousand dollar bills stolen from Saskatchewan residents were literally being walked out the back door of the Legislature.
One of the defining hallmarks of the Devine caucus fraud was the fact that Devine couldn’t be linked to any of it - even when he testified in court, Devine was able to plausibly deny knowledge of the scheme.
Now, I’m not saying whose job it was to keep Devine in the dark.
Solving the mystery of why or how Grant Devine didn’t know he was leading a crime syndicate was not solved by the criminal trials, or even ever publicly examined. But I cannot stress enough how difficult it must have been to keep Devine away from what was happening around him, given the sheer number of people in his office committing crimes.
(Here too, I don’t believe the number of people involved or dollars stolen was ever properly investigated; public payments to the fake, fraudulent companies set up by Devine’s Cabinet Ministers totaled well into the millions, but only $870K was ever prosecuted.)
(But I digress.)
In fact, by the time Grant Devine’s communications director got around to renting the CIBC safety deposit boxes that would eventually blow the con wide open, he had no choice because there were so many stolen $1000 bills stuffed into his desk that they were falling onto PC Party caucus floor in the Saskatchewan Legislature.
To this day, Grant Devine remains seemingly unblemished by the criminal activity in the Legislature that ran rampant under his watch.
We still don’t know whose idea the scheme was, which revolved around fake radio advertisements.
We just know it was pitched to caucus by the Minister shadowed by Brad, John Gerich.
Gerich never revealed who gave him the idea, but it was not his.
It was, however, seemingly dreamt up by someone who knew radio and broadcasting, real well.
I digress.
AGAIN.
Plausible Deniability is the first thing I thought of when I saw Alberta Premier Danielle Smith deny any previous awareness of the serious allegations of corruption being levelled at her and Alberta’s UCP government.
This particular scandal has been percolating before Christmas last year, driven largely by Calgary’s Nate Pike.
We’ll come back to that.
Key to the story are former CEO of Alberta Health Services (AHS) Athana Mentzelopoulos, Danielle Smith and her advisers, as well as an Edmonton-based businessman named Sam Mraiche and his medical supply company, MHCare. Smith and her staff have been widely photographed in Mraiche’s luxury box at NHL games.
Nevermind the copious and glaring evidence so far - Mraiche’s proximity to Smith is fuelling speculation all on its own that she was either informed or willfully blind.
Smith punched herself in the face with that one when she gutted Alberta’s Conflict of Interest Act so she could hang out and accept gifts from people like Sam Mraiche.
Danielle Smith made grifting legal in Alberta - she didn’t make it ethical, competent or behaviour worthy of a Canadian premier.
On February 5, 2025 the Globe and Mail published an article claiming Mentzelopoulos was wrongly dismissed just two days before she was to meet with the province’s auditor general to discuss the findings of her own internal investigation into procurement practises at AHS.
In the story, a letter from Mentzelopoulos was cited claiming she faced political pressure — including from Smith’s former chief of staff Marshall Smith (no relation to Danielle) — to sign bad deals with MHCare.
On February 6, 2025, the Alberta Auditor General’s office announced it had “recently commenced” a formal investigation into procurement and contracting processes at AHS. He confirmed a notice of the investigation was served to everyone involved, including Danielle Smith’s office, on the morning of January 31, 2025.
That’s five days before the Globe and Mail broke the story.
On February 8, 2025, after three days of pretending nothing was happening, Smith was forced to release a statement on Twitter:
“I have read various media stories containing allegations regarding the procurement and contracting processes of AHS. They are troubling allegations and they should be reviewed as quickly as possible. We need to get to the bottom of this issue quickly to identify any potential wrongdoing, correct it, and address it appropriately. I have also asked that AHS’s internal review be completed as quickly as possible and delivered directly to me so we can study the results and make improvements or adjustments to these processes.” - Danielle Smith, February 8, 2025, Twitter
You gotta love it when politicians promise to police themselves for wrongdoing.
Danielle Smith is either evil - because only an evil person would screw around with sick people’s care for money - or incredibly, shockingly stupid.
Or both.
When she was finally questioned in-person by reporters on the sordid affair, a smug and obnoxious Smith doubled down on her protests of ignorance.
“I first became aware of it when I saw the newspaper reporting on it, and we’re interested in hearing what the auditor general has to say. If there’s wrongdoing, we’d like to get to the bottom of it, and if there isn’t, we need to find out why AHS is standing in the way of chartered surgical centres.” - Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, February 12, 2025
Pretty classic behaviour from anyone in as much trouble as Danielle Smith is right now - deflecting suspicion of wrongdoing back onto the agency she was meddling with.
Which is more suspicious than anything else.
That said, I believe Danielle Smith didn’t know about the Globe and Mail story until the Globe and Mail published it. I also believe she wasn’t aware of the specifics related to the AHS allegations.
The big difference here, and you can see it in her demeanor, is she sure seems like she at least knew something was very wrong.
How could she not have?
The scope and visibility of the alleged corruption is massive.
The procurement issues span major contracts—$70 million for children’s pain medication from Turkey (much of which was undelivered or unusable), COVID-19 PPE, and surgical deals—totaling over half a billion dollars.
Given Smith’s chief of staff role is one of her closest advisors, you’d have to believe he kept her in the dark on government deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
I absolutely believe that.
Again, just because it’s not illegal doesn’t make it right or translate into competent or legitimate governance.
These were public health expenditures during a worldwide pandemic, overseen by AHS, an agency Smith has openly criticized and sought to restructure for years.
Her stated dissatisfaction with AHS’s performance, combined with her push for private-sector involvement in healthcare, suggests Danielle Smith very much had a vested interest in AHS procurement.
Doesn’t matter - the buck stops with Danielle Smith.
That is the job.
Her claims she didn’t know - even about the allegations - should be as much grounds for her immediate resignation as anything, but that’s not the world we live in anymore.
Today the people we elect will never, ever voluntarily give up that power, even in the face of immense pressure to do so.
The guard rails are gone (See: Danielle Smith changing the Conflict of Interest Act to suit her corruption; as well as Saskatchewan since, well, forever.)
We cannot expect or count on politicians to resign, or even do the right thing anymore.
At the heart of a political scandal is Who Knew What & When.
Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange claims she’d been asking Mentzelopoulos for evidence of AHS wrongdoing for eight months without response.
The entire AHS board, which knew about Mentzelopoulus’s investigation and she says had urged her to go to the RCMP, was sacked by Smith and LaGrange on January 31, 2025.
Smith’s government framed these dismissals as part of a planned health system overhaul, but the coincidence—coupled with Health Minister Adriana LaGrange’s December 2024 directive to stop Mentzelopoulos’ internal investigation—stinks like a cover-up.
Thing is, folks like Scott Moe and Danielle Smith use Plausible Deniability not because it’s a flawless strategy, but because it’s pragmatic. We’re supposed to overlook the admission of incompetence while they shield themselves against accountability, heartened by the realities of their power.
Danielle Smith’s Plausible Deniability around knowing about AHS procurement issues until February 5, 2025, fits this mold.
It’s safer to plead ignorance than admit complicity, even if it invites skepticism.
Someone, somewhere made the decision that keeping the leader in the dark was more beneficial than meeting the expectations of Alberta and Saskatchewan voters and taxpayers that their leaders should know what’s happening under their watch.
Then there’s the hedge.
Investigations like this are dependent on paper trails.
If there’s no email, call log, or witness tying a politician directly to a scandal, deniability holds weight. Smith’s team likely knows this: if Mentzelopoulos’s allegations can’t pin her with hard evidence, “I wasn’t briefed” could keep her out of court.
Politically, it buys time by muddying the waters long enough for the news cycle to shift or for allies to rally.
When something goes wrong—say, corruption in a $614 million contract—admitting “I didn’t know” might look weak, but it’s better than “I knew and approved it” if the latter risks legal liability or public outrage.
Plausible deniability isn’t about looking good—it’s about staying in the game.
The public expects them to “know,” yet the machinery of government in Saskatchewan and Alberta has been overhauled to insulate its leaders from the responsibilities of governance.
Understand that what Scott Moe, Danielle Smith, the Sask Party and the UCP are doing is exploiting the gap between responsibility and control.
Governing involves delegating to thousands of people in the public service. No politician can or should micromanage every decision, especially in complex systems like healthcare or procurement.
So why do politicians tolerate the incompetence label? Because it’s survivable.
The real question is why do voters tolerate - thereby validate - incompetence?
We’ve been doing it so long in Saskatchewan, it’s totally normal now.
Pretty sure Saskatchewan residents would more shocked if Scott Moe did something competent instead of internationally embarrassing, but as long as the evidence stays circumstantial and his rural base stays loyal, the trade-off works and any Sask Party politician can survive anything, I guess.
That’s on us, to be clear.
If Naheed Nenshi can’t get his shit together and Albertans don’t rise up, Smith’s overhaul of AHS, framed as fixing a broken system, could end up turning her “ignorance” into a narrative of reform.
If Alberta voters tolerate that, they’re going to validate it and the next scandal and subsequent non-action will be even worse.
Instead of dramatic handwringing demanding inquiries and focusing on process, critics—like Nenshi—should be hammering the contradiction:
If you’re in charge you should know, and not knowing equals failure.
A concept that applies just as equally to voters.
You and I are in charge of and should know exactly what’s going on with our governments so we don’t fail democracy.
You know, the democracy those World Wars supposedly preserved?
Which brings us back to Nate Pike and his show The Breakdown, which provided extensive coverage of alleged corruption in Alberta’s health procurement processes, before he was forced into the dark earlier this week.
As a local Alberta politics podcast and web series, The Breakdown - hosted by Pike, a Calgary paramedic - gained prominence for its deep dives into provincial issues, leveraging publicly available data, Freedom of Information and Privacy (FOIP) requests, and expert interviews.
Pike’s coverage of the Alberta Health Services (AHS) scandal was a cornerstone of his work - resulting in a $6 million defamation lawsuit levelled against him by MHCare Medical and its CEO, Sam Mraiche. Today a court order has silenced Pike and Breakdown completely, though hopefully not permanently.
On December 26, 2024, Pike posted a segment reacting to MHCare’s lawsuit (filed just before Christmas with a 20-day response window, or Pike would lose by default). In that episode Pike courageously doubled down on his work, accusing Mraiche of using a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) to intimidate.
Which he did.
(Sue me Sam, I fucking dare you. I want you to.)
Pike had also contextualized the AHS firings of CEO Athana Mentzelopoulos and its board, which was wholly validated by her lawsuit. He talked about pressure from Smith’s ex-chief of staff, Marshall Smith, to have him fired from his AHS job as a paramedic, which was another detail Mentzelopoulos’s suit corroborated.
Before going dark, The Breakdown’s final episode on February 16, 2025, was a brief seven-minute update where Pike announced the Alberta-court-ordered shutdown of its platforms (YouTube, social media, website). Prior to that his coverage had shifted to a legal defense fund (raising support via GoFundMe) and a call to resist silencing, framing the lawsuit as a broader threat to Canadian freedom.
Which it is.
Pike’s work resonated with Albertans wary of UCP and Danielle Smith’s lies. What he lacked in the polish of traditional outlets, he made up with raw, crowd-sourced momentum. His absence has left a void in grassroots scrutiny of Danielle Smith’s greasy behaviour, now under Auditor General and potential RCMP review.
Nate Pike served as an extension of your right to know. He was leveling the playing field against corrupt authoritarians. Without Pike’s work, as his silencing shows, the public is left blind and unchecked power tramples basic human rights like freedom of speech, assembly, even voting—all of which require information to exercise meaningfully.
People disengage when they’re kept in the dark and nobody knows that better than corrupt politicians.
Like hello, have you met the Sask Party?
Legal threats like Sam Mraiche’s simply reveals the fragility of Canadian freedom, which means a lot less when even one voice is crushed, especially if replacements don’t emerge.
What people like Pike and I do is not flawless, but we are a tool for transparency and power-checking, which mainstream media doesn’t do anymore. We’re the closest you’re going to get to peering behind the curtain, as Pike did—until a rafter was dropped on his head.
Because we willingly do it, to our own peril.
PIke’s vanquishment was abrupt and should send a chill down the spine of every Canadian.
Truth doesn’t come cheap in 2025—it takes guts, grit, and people willing to dig into the dank, dirty corners of power to expose what’s hidden there. From Alberta’s health scandals to the fights yet uncovered in Saskatchewan, we’re your eyes and voice when corrupt politicians demand silence and your mainstream media outlets are beholden to their government ad dollars.
Going forward without people like Nate and I taking the risks we do to inform you, you won’t necessarily be enslaved, per say, but you will be holding a knife in a gunfight in the dark against a well-armed opponent wearing night vision goggles.
It’s up to us - not the government, or Danielle Smith or Scott Moe - to keep the light bright and shining in the right places.
Have a good weekend,
Media and newsrooms in Saskatchewan cannot and are not getting you the information you need to live in a healthy, democratic province anymore. I’m doing my best to continue to bring as much of it to you as fast as I can. If you’d like to support my work beyond your subscription, for costs like the multiple subscriptions and accounts I need to access and purchase information provided in posts like this one, etransfers are gratefully accepted at tammyrobert0123@gmail.com. Every dollar helps keep me and this work going.