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EDMONTON: Alberta's top health bureaucrat is leaving his position, days after rebuffing reporters at an emergency meeting on long wait times by telling them he was busy eating a cookie.

Alberta Health Services chairman Ken Hughes said Wednesday that after receiving ``clear direction'' from Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky, CEO Stephen Duckett and the board agreed to part ways.

``We agreed his ability to be effective in that role was compromised,'' said Hughes.

Duckett was in the United States with his family and unavailable to comment, Hughes said.

Hughes did not confirm a specific figure regarding severance, but said Alberta Health Services will live up to its contract with Duckett.

That document stipulates that if he was fired without cause, taxpayers would be on the hook for about $700,000. That represents a severance of one year's salary, 15 per cent of his salary in lieu of all other benefits and moving expenses back to his home country of Australia of up to $20,000.

Chris Eagle, currently a vice-president with Alberta Health Services, takes over as acting CEO.

Duckett's status had been looking increasingly tenuous over the last week as debate raged over who is responsible for long emergency room waits. The lineups have drawn increasing criticism from doctors and patients and sparked an outburst from Raj Sherman, an Edmonton government member who is also an ER doctor.

Sherman was so critical of both the bureaucrats and his fellow members of government that he was suspended from caucus.

Hughes said the cookie incident was just one of the reasons Duckett is no longer CEO.

Reporters tried last Friday to ask him questions after a meeting of health-care administrators in Edmonton to discuss emergency wait times. Duckett ran away, claiming he was busy eating a cookie. He later apologized, but video of the incident went viral and inspired satirical web videos making light of his remarks.

Premier Ed Stelmach called the comments offensive and said the health services board could consider that description a strong message as to how Duckett should be treated.

``His ability to carry on and conduct the roll as chief executive officer was compromised by his current circumstances,'' Hughes said. ``One element of which was that (cookie) incident.''

Although the board is supposed to be at arm's length from the government, Zwozdesky did not apologize for giving it its marching orders.

``The board operates in an arm's length fashion but they are responsible to me as the minister and I take that responsibility very seriously,'' he said.

At least one board member has resigned over the decision.

``I expect there will be a couple more,'' Hughes said.

Stelmach pronounced himself content with the board's decision.

``The direction provided by the minister to the board certainly reflected the views of Albertans, especially the many I've heard from,'' he said.

Duckett was originally hired in January 2009 from his job as chief executive for the Queensland Centre of Healthcare Improvement in Australia, where innovations such as weekend surgeries and incentives to reduce wait times had worked well.

Although Duckett advocated contracting out some surgeries to private clinics, he was cautious about importing Australia's hybrid public-private health care to Canada.

Almost immediately after taking the reins of Alberta Health Services in March 2009, he was faced with a $1.1 billion deficit. About $650 million in administrative and procurement savings were found, but staff cuts through early retirements began.

By August 2009, Duckett announced controversial plans to cut 150 beds at Edmonton's Alberta Hospital, a mental-health facility often used by the justice system. Those cuts later grew to 246 beds.

The next month, the board announced it would cut another 300 acute-care hospital beds as patients were shifted to new private assisted-living and long-term care facilities.

Hundreds of vacant jobs were left unfilled and hundreds more health employees were offered early retirements.

Then in January, newly appointed Health Minister Gene Zwozdesky began reversing some of Duckett's cuts, including the acute-care bed closures.

Opposition politicians suggested the problem wasn't just Duckett. They said making day-to-day medical care the responsibility of the health board protects politicians from being held accountable and guarantees conflict between the board's CEO and the government.

``The minister is accountable politically for the health system and is accountable in the legislature,'' said NDP Leader Brian Mason. ``This structure allows him to avoid accountability for what's gone on.''

Liberal Opposition Leader David Swann said Duckett needed to go, but said he shouldn't be made a scapegoat for an unworkable system.

``He needed to be let go. He had lost the confidence of everyone in the system but he had an impossible task to do.''

Swann said rsponsibility for health care should return to the department and be broken into five regions to restore a measure of local control and flexibility.

The Conservative government disbanded Alberta's nine health authorities and three specialized boards 1 1/2 years ago in favour of the centralized board.

Swann's approach sounded fine to Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith.

``The government is trying to distract attention by suggesting that it's really just a question of replacing the guy at the top,'' she said before Duckett's departure.

``I don't think that you can solve this problem by hiring a better central planner. You need to dismantle the system.''