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“… [T]he [McGill University Hospital Centre] not only topped up Porter’s $241,000 salary in 2010 with a $63,000 stipend to ensure his ‘increased availability,’ the board of directors also agreed to upgrade his company car from a Mercedes to a Bentley. This came on top of taxpayer-funded memberships in exclusive clubs, a $500,000 low-interest loan and extra pay for research and teaching that Porter may never have actually earned.”

UD‘s not ashamed to say that she has missed Arthur Porter, and that she is therefore mucho excited as Canada enters another round of Portermania. Porter was the much-loved, much-gifted CEO of McGill University’s hospital, until it turned out that he’d rigged a bid on a new facility in order to arrange an 11.25 million dollar kickback for himself. The Bentley just wasn’t cutting it for Arthur Porter, a man responsible for “perhaps the biggest fraud ever perpetrated in Canada.”

UD‘s only regret is that he’s Arthur rather than Joseph Porter; if he were [Sir] Joseph Porter, she could write a whole version of When I Was A Lad for him (sample line: But when the breezes blow, I generally go to Panama.)

But really, beyond that, UD has no complaint at all. The yummy revelations of spectacular greed and corruption at McGill University and environs will keep coming and the whole thing will be far more interesting than (yawn) Rob Ford. Personal collapse stories call for our compassion, certainly; but the Arthur Porter story is about the collapse of a university’s board of trustees as well as a region’s legislative body. It’s about how Quebec continues to claim its title as the most corrupt province in Canada.

Margaret Soltan, May 22, 2014 5:48AM
Posted in: foreign universities

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