Another Scandal: Why Are We Still Surprised?

Dr. Arthur Porter is officially dead and charges against him have therefore been dropped. He is merely the latest hero to be toppled from his pedestal as his misdeeds—well, let’s call them what they are: serious crimes—have come to light.

The Globe and Mail reports that Porter, a medical doctor and former CEO of Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), was also “a member of Air Canada’s board of directors, [who thus] travelled the world for free. His former friend Prime Minister Stephen Harper had him sworn in as a member of the Privy Council so he could serve as chairman of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, the country’s spy watchdog agency.

Porter was also “close to Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, a relationship that began in 2004 when the politician, a neurosurgeon by training, was provincial health minister. Like many of Dr. Porter’s friendships, theirs ended with the news of the hospital’s megacost overrun and a $22.5-million fraud inquiry connected to the MUHC’s decision to award the construction contract to a consortium led by the Montreal-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.”

The Globe goes on to quote Jeff Todd, an Ottawa-based journalist who co-authored Dr Porter’s memoir: “In a way, Arthur was like Icarus, who came crashing down to earth when his wax wings melted because he flew too close to the sun.”

Really? His only fault was mere ambition?

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