Doug Collins ® get this straight ‘EIDEALISTS END up in graveyards.”’ — Ron Hun- tington, former MP for Capilano, former minister for small business and now chairman of the board for Ports Canada, explaining to the Ouawa Citizen that he may not be long in his job. (f Parliament were sitting now, you would see an explosion over political interference in) Parts Canada, once the National Har- bors Board. The noise might be almost as great as it was in the stinking fish affair. You would also hear that power in the crown corporation has been usurned by a Brian Mulroney crony sopointed by the prime minister to 4e president and chief executive officer, and that keep- ing Quebec politicians happy is more important to top Tories than running a good ship. There hasn't been much about all this in the local media. And now that the clamps are on, Hun- tington wouldn’t talk to me about it. But the whole thing has been laid out in the Ottawa Citizen. Story after story. Day after day. Huntington is a loyal Tory and a man of integrity. But he finds himself in difficulty because he has tried to do a job. He was made board chairman to sort out Ports Canada and lessen central control, and if the vell-documented Citizen story is right, all seemed to be going well until Mulroney parachuted a guy called Denis de Belleval into the corporation last year. The appointment was supposed to be part of Mulroney's policy of “national reconciliation’® — meaning more power for the French. But it was alse the worst kind of patronage, de Belleval not only having been a Parti Quebecois cabinet minister, but one of the prime minister's close friends at university. The job pays $120,000 a year. Michael Swinwood, the crown corporation’s vice-president for legal services when de Belleval ar- vived, later made several written complaints about him to Huntington. Swinwood said that because of de Belleval, the assets of the cor- poration were not being properly protected, and that policy direc- tives issued by the board were not being adhered to — ‘‘leading to a state of chaos within manage- ment". He claimed further that de Belleval signed a $3.4 million tugboat contract without the necessary review by legal services, that he had told Ports Canada of- ficials they owed allegiance to him, de Belleval, not to the board, and that contrary to board policy he had instructed an official of the corporation to ‘‘phase out"’ Ports Canada Police. Plus much else. For his pains, Swinwood was later fired, even though Hun- tington had praised him for being efficient and ‘thaving done nothing wrong other than being aggressive in fulfilling his duties’. Huntington inctuded Swin- wood’s allegations in a report to the board and sent a copy to Don Mazankowski, now deputy prime minister but then minister of transport responsible for Ports Canada. The tuna fish scandal was big at the time and a message came back from the ivinister’s of- fice stating: ‘‘Please, no