Alberta committee recommends Phillip Peters to replace Wylie as auditor general

An Alberta legislature committee has reached into the auditor general’s office to pick a new person to lead the watchdog agency.

The committee voted Wednesday to recommend that Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet appoint Phillip Peters as the province’s next auditor general.

Peters is currently the general counsel and ethics officer in the agency, and he previously worked for the justice ministry as a tax lawyer.

If confirmed, Peters would be in the spotlight right from the start.

He would be tasked with completing a high-profile investigation into questions surrounding multimillion-dollar health contracts that his predecessor, Doug Wylie, was unable to complete before the end of his term.

Last year, Wylie offered to stay on for two more years.

The decision not to extend Wylie’s contract has drawn criticism from the Opposition NDP, which accused Smith’s United Conservative Party government of removing Wylie to protect its interests in the health-contract probe.

Smith has said the decision was about maintaining tradition and that not once in the past 50 years has an auditor general been kept on the job longer than the specified eight-year term.

“I think everybody knew that this contract was coming to an end,” Smith told listeners last weekend on her call-in radio show on 880 CHED and QR Calgary.

“We have to have a process in place so that there’s some certainty about what the next individual taking over will be able to do.”

The auditor general is an independent officer of the legislature responsible for auditing the books of every government ministry, department, regulated fund and agency. 

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Peters is set to take over from Wylie on April 29.

Wylie’s health contract investigation was sparked more than a year ago, after a former high-level provincial health executive alleged in a lawsuit that there was political pressure around lucrative deals for private surgical providers and health-supply contracts.

The controversy has been the subject of a review by a government-appointed judge and is also being investigated by the RCMP.

Over the summer, Wylie was granted an extra $1 million for his investigation. He said at the time that the sheer number of documents to be reviewed and interviews to undertake required outside help and legal advice.

Smith’s government and Wylie were at odds early on in his investigation, after it was revealed that Alberta Health told employees to contact a lawyer to co-ordinate interviews if the auditor general reached out and requested one. 

The government said it was standard practice, but Wylie’s office called it unusual.

On Wednesday, the process to appoint Peters came with its own controversy.

Brandon Lunty, the UCP chair of the legislature committee that made the recommendation, said in a statement that the appointment of Peters “is an important step in maintaining public trust and strengthening transparency.”

However, NDP committee member David Shepherd said the selection process was marred by “significant and profound deviations” from best practices and normal procedure.

Shepherd said that while Peters is qualified, there are other more qualified candidates.

He said it was “convenient” that government members chose to do the candidate search via a subcommittee and that the NDP can’t speak to the specifics on the record.

“It is no insult to (Peters) simply to note there were multiple candidates who simply were more experienced,” he said.

UCP committee member Scott Cyr accused the NDP of politicizing the search.

“They say, ‘We support him, but we want to vote against him.’ Well, you can’t have it both ways,” Cyr said.