Good morning from Alberta.

It’s not often that The Globe and Mail publishes stories on itself or any of its journalists, but this week that is exactly what happened.

On Monday, The Globe reported that Alberta correspondent Carrie Tait was being harassed and targeted online by an anonymous account on X that posted “surreptitiously obtained” photographs of her in public settings while also describing her private movements.

The photos, posted by an account calling itself The Brokedown, show Carrie meeting with two women who are former political staffers in the government of Premier Danielle Smith. In the days leading up to the social media posts on July 10 and 12, details of the pictures were also hinted at by a podcaster who has been criticizing Carrie and The Globe’s reporting.

The X account, launched this month and now suspended, promised in one of its first posts that it would “start exposing Carrie Tait’s sources in the continuing health care saga. You are not going to want to miss this!”

Carrie, if you have been following The Globe’s Alberta coverage over the last few years, has been investigating allegations of political interference at the provincial health authority, publishing numerous stories after painstaking work to develop sources and obtain government documents and correspondence.

While Carrie has written about allegations from Athana Mentzelopoulos, the former chief executive of Alberta Health Services, significant work preceded allegations made in the wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed in February by Mentzelopoulos.

Mentzelopoulos’s allegations have not been tested in court. In a statement of defence, the Alberta government said she was fired for incompetence.

Mentzelopoulos’s allegations are now being investigated by Alberta’s Auditor-General, the RCMP and retired Manitoba judge Raymond Wyant, who was appointed by the province.

The Globe’s investigation was really born in December, 2022, when Smith announced a deal to import children’s pain medication from Turkey. That $70-million contract helped spur The Globe to look further into how the plan was conceived and achieved.

It was The Globe’s Alanna Smith who first reported in October and November, 2023, that fewer than 5,000 bottles of the medicine ever made it to pharmacies and that just 1.5 million of the 5 million bottles purchased in the deal ever arrived, leaving the province on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2024 when Carrie started work to report on rumours she had heard about government ministers and other officials attending Edmonton Oilers playoff games as guests of MHCare Medical, the importer in pain medication deal, and company owner Sam Mraiche.

In July, Carrie was the first reporter to reveal that several ministers had in fact attended games, and that the Premier herself had attended a game in Vancouver with tickets provided by a director of a provincial Crown corporation. While the Premier dismissed suggestions that it was unethical, critics accused the government of “cronyism.”

Then this year, The Globe reported a series of scoops focused on the controversies around procurement.

In February, Carrie and Alanna revealed for the first time that two private surgical facilities that signed contracts with AHS are part-owned by Mraiche. The documents showed that some of the negotiated prices were more than double what competitors were charging.

In March, Carrie and Alanna revealed that the AHS board of directors was fired on the same day it was scheduled to receive a report from investigators examining whether some of its business deals were subject to “improper activity,” according to a document they had obtained.

Then in May, Carrie reported that Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery is a long-time friend and relative of Mraiche through marriage.

MHCare and Mraiche have denied doing anything wrong and the company released a nine-page letter in the spring defending itself, saying it had been “unfairly attacked” after being associated with allegations that the province signed contracts in its favour. MHCare released another statement on Thursday saying the company and its owner have been “subjected to a string of false allegations that have caused ongoing reputational harm.”

The Globe and Carrie have spent a significant amount of time and resources investigating this “health saga” over the last few years. The surveillance and harassment campaign targeting Carrie has been widely condemned by everyone from Smith to national journalism organizations.

As The Globe’s editor-in-chief David Walmsley said this week: “Any attempt to interfere with legitimate newsgathering is an attack on the public’s right to know.”

Carrie and The Globe will continue to pursue this story.

This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.