Health minister’s campaign CFO appointed to provincial health board

Earlier this week, Alberta Health Services announced that they had appointed a new person to their board of directors.

Hartley Harris is an electrical engineer by trade and is currently the co-founder and president of the Calgary-based Catch Engineering, which focuses on the oil and gas sector, including such facilities as gas plants and refineries. He also chairs the board of the Energy Industry Electrical Engineering Associates.

But there’s something else about Harris that was left out of the announcement.

For example, even though his Twitter account is now private, I was able to access screenshots of some of it. Like, this tweet from Jason Kenney announcing that Tyler Shandro won the UCP nomination for Calgary–Acadia. Harris retweeted it.

There’s also this tweet from a Todd Houston from 2010:

Or this old school retweet in 2011 from Christina Rowsell of a (since deleted) tweet that Shandro sent out congratulating Harris on his appointment to the council of Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.

Or this tweet from Adam Legge, responding to another missing Shandro tweet connecting Shandro and Harris.

Looks like Harris and Shandro already knew each other. I guess it’d make sense he’d retweet Kenney’s tweet then, right?

That might not seem like a big deal though.

Unless you consider that Harris donated $2,281.19 to Shandro’s election campaign in 2019. He was also the chief financial officer for Shandro’s campaign.

According to the AHS website, board members are entitled to $14,250 a year, plus $665 for every board meeting and $475 for every committee meeting they attend, up to a maximum of $1,900 a month.

If Harris chairs a board committee, he gets another $1,900 a year per committee, and if ever sits on the executive, his pay jumps to $28,500 for vice chair and $47,500 for chair.

Board members may also be remunerated for travel and other expenses.

On a side note, Harris’s mother, Gwen, ran in two provincial elections under the Progressive Conservative banner.

In the 1993 election, she ran in the Edmonton–Glenora riding, losing to Liberal candidate Howard Sapers by over 2,500 votes. She also lost to Liberal candidate Linda Sloan by fewer than 1,000 votes in 1997 for the Edmonton–Riverview riding.

According to Elections Alberta, Gwen also donated to Shandro’s election campaign, as well as the UCP in general.