Arrest warrant issued for another former Harper appointee: Arthur Porter wanted for fraud
The Globe and Mail has the story -- but note they've closed the comments section. All the more reason to discuss this here.
A health care executive who Prime Minister Stephen Harper once appointed to oversee the national spy agency is now a wanted man.
Quebec’s anti-corruption squad issued arrest warrants Wednesday for Dr. Arthur Porter and four other men embroiled in allegations of fraud swirling around the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal’s English-language hospital network.
Dr. Porter, the former head of the MUHC who sat on the Security Intelligence Review Committee from 2008 to 2011, and Yanai Elbaz, the MUHC’s director of redevelopment, face charges of committing fraud against the government, accepting bribes, and conspiracy.
Two high-profile former executives of Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, former CEO Pierre Duhaime and former construction head Riadh Ben Aïssa, are charged with fraud, conspiracy and paying bribes.
Dr. Porter was MUHC's head and the chief negotiator on the $1.3-billion contract granted to SNC-Lavalin in 2010 to build a massive new hospital for the network.
Dr. Porter oversaw and managed the MUHC for seven years. Mr. Harper appointed him in 2008 to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which investigates complaints about Canada's spy agency. In 2010, Mr. Harper made Dr. Porter the chair of the committee.
In order to legally serve on the SIRC, Dr. Porter was sworn in as lifetime member of the Queen's Privy Council. The committee's own literature says the position comes with clearance to examine all information held by CSIS.
Also worth checking out the CBC news documentary on Porter.
I wonder how long it will take before Harper becomes a wanted man for turning Canada into a dictatorship SOMETHING all our war vets faught against!
Really, our troops murdered people in Afghanistan to prevent Canada being turned into a dictatorship. The WWII vets are nearly all dead and gone like my Dad who if he had lived would have been 92 this year and he joined in 1939 at 18 years old.
My dad was a WWII vet as well, had been in the miltary long before the war started. He did a lot of military writing and military history under Colonel C. P. Stacey, who we entertained at our house in Ottawa several times. Got injured in the war while doing a training exercise with live ammunition, documented in a book by another family friend, Courtney C. J. Bond, who had a long career with the Ottawa Little Theatre after the war. Bond was my father's best friend, and he tortured me endlessly. But he was a great guy.
My wife was reading the precis of the article above and she wondered aloud whether he had moved to the Cayman Islands. Of course that was just a nasty comment.
CBC reported tonight there is an extradition request for Porter. But we don't have an extradition treaty with the country.