There’s a disconcerting air of unreality surrounding the latest allegations of Dr. Raj Sherman.
He is accusing the Alberta government of negligently letting 250 Albertans die of lung cancer while on waiting lists for surgery.
He said “physicians who raised these issues were either punished or driven out of the province or paid out in millions to buy their silence.”
These are incendiary accusations.
Sherman initially suggested he would deliver public proof of their truth.
Then he climbed down, saying the proof was not his to give and calling for a public inquiry.
On Monday, his political theatre was an embarrassing flop.
He tabled a box of documents at the Alberta legislature. In the main, they covered facts that have long been well known about waiting lists.
But Sherman failed to deliver anything remotely substantive on his critical accusations.
He offered nothing to support his theory of a multimillion-dollar criminal conspiracy between physicians, legislators and health-care administrators.
Sherman had implicated two former Alberta health ministers (Iris Evans and Gary Mar), the former head of the Edmonton health region and the registrar of the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons as key members of a coverup.
It would take criminal masterminds to pull off a feat of that complexity.
I doubt that the cabinet ministers, physicians and government bureaucrats are smart enough to manage it.
More fundamentally, I doubt that they are either corrupt or stupid enough to even try.
The Alberta government has done a lot of dumb things over the years. Every government does.
It has been narrow-minded, self-aggrandizing and bullying, by times.
But there has never been an overarching sense that its key MLAs or administrators are reckless thugs.
That’s what it would take for all of Sherman’s allegations to be true.
The box of documents he brought to the legislature on Monday did not advance his cause or his credibility.
Inside the legislative chamber, where he sits as an independent MLA since he was expelled by Conservative caucus last November, Sherman can blithely make accusations of malfeasance that would quickly land him in a courtroom defending a libel suit if he repeated them outside that chamber.
That privilege has been an essential element of parliamentary democracy for hundreds of years.
But it can’t be used recklessly.
It has to sting for people like Evans and Mar.
Whatever you think of their politics, they have been reputable, hard-working public servants for decades. Seeing their names dragged through the mud by Sherman — without any proof or recourse to defend themselves — must truly stick in the craw.
Four months ago, Sherman was kicked out of the Progressive Conservative caucus after publicly criticizing his government for mishandling the health file.
Based on his recent public behaviour, that decision seems increasingly justifiable.
Since then, Sherman has pledged to seek the leadership of a provincial political party, and to name his choice this month.
The Tories, Liberals and Alberta Party all have leadership races under way.
With Sherman’s erratic behaviour in recent weeks, it’s highly doubtful that he would now be warmly received by any of them.
For most folks, just being an MLA is more than a full-time job.
Sherman, in addition to his time on that front, also continues to work one long day a week in an Edmonton emergency ward, has a young family and is helping an aging father recover from a serious illness that almost killed him last fall.
It’s more than a wonder that he can handle it all.
Based on his recent performance, perhaps Sherman needs to focus more on his personal and family health than his political ambitions.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.