Pau ST PIERRE i ° Paulitics & Perspectivese A FORMER government bureaucrat has won the biggest _award in Canadian history for wrongful dismissal. As the buck male deer said just before he was shot, this deserves a second look. The award was for $3,371,114 and is what the taxpayers now owe to Joel Bell, age 49, former presi- dent of the Canada Development Investment Corporation. CDIC is a Crown corporation, like the gov- ernment postal service. fn his brief tenure as CDC boss Mr. Bell presided over Canadair, de Havilland Aircraft of Canada, Massey Ferguson‘and other jewels of our government's corporate crown, Before assuming command of CDIC, Mr. Bell had been executive vice-president of Petro Canada, another government corporation. There he was paid a salary of $242,000 a year. I; you have trouble comparing your life to those of the people hired to serve you, if you think that a third of a miilion dollars a year as promised to Mr, Bell is a lot, consider how much was paid to the successor of Mr. Bell,..’? it’s not an unusual amount for the mandarin caste of the civil ser- vice, but it is worth noting that it is more than twice as much as we pay our prime ministers. He left Petro Canada to get more money at CDIC. Just as Mr. Bell was taking over CDIC something happened. The Canadian voters threw out the Liberal Party, which had made many patronage appointments, and elected the Conservatives, who said they were too pure and fine to do such things. They may have done it at least once. Mr. Bell, Liberal appointee, was fired within 60 days for no ap- parent reason except that the Con- servatives knew somebody they thought should have his job. Mr. Bell sued for wrongful dismissal. Mr. Justice Richard Holland of the Supreme Court of Ontario agreed with him. He said Mr. Bell had been shabbily treated. People working the green chain at the local sawmill have a hard time adjusting to the idea that people getting $250,000 a year can be shabbily treated. They have been brought up to think that shabby treatment in this country begins at the $25,000 level if you're working and at welfare rates if you aren't. They have simply got to learn. Looking at the Bell case might help them. Here is the resume. When Mr. Bell took the new job, he got an interim salary of $291,529 a year. He was promised $371,000 the following year. That is an annual increase of 27.25 per cent. of EPILEPSY HAVER RETIN . Our success. Contact your local association Many a green chain man, a Safeway checkout girl or a farmer would consider such a raise not too shabby. But remember, please, here we are dealing with a different class of Canadian citizen. If you have trouble comparing your life to those of the people hired to serve you, if you think that a third of a million dollars a year as promised to Mr. Bell is a fot, consider how much was paid to the successor of Mr. Beil, the man chosen by the new squeaky clean Conservative government. He was paid $447,500 a year. As we can learn from the details of the Bell lawsuit, $447,500 is one hell of a lot more than $447,500. A million a year would seem closer. One problem with our society is that the public don’t know how much their civil servants are paid. A bigger problem is that they don’t know how much they are re- ally paid. Let us join the judge in calculating Mr. Bell’s lost salary which resulted from his wrongful dismissal. He was paid about $300,000 a year at first move and promised $370,000 the second year. There was no indication he would be forbidden raises in the following years. But be conservative. Estimate his salary at $300,000 a year for his promised five years of tenure. From this, deduct the $70,000 a year which he reports himself to be earning now in the private world. This leaves a loss of $230,000 a year. In five years, that adds up to $1,150,000. But what about the other $2.2 million of the award? They are not for punitive dam- ages. There were none. The award was confined to the losses Mr. Bell suffered as a result of being fired. What, then, were the perks he lost? On the green chain, the rule of thumb is that a worker gets 15 per cent above his pay in various benefits. At the higher levels of bureaucracy, this seems to be more than 100 per cent. If you wonder how this can be, read Mr. Bell’s list of the cor- porate benefits of which he was left bereft. They include a pension of 70 per cent of his best three years in the government service, director’s fees and what are called long-term in- centive payments. The unwashed can only guess what long-term in- centives are. We can be fairly sure they aren’t paid to guys riding shotgun on garbage trucks. Other items included medical and dental insurance coverage, medical examination benefits, fi- nancial counselling, automobile benefits and club memberships. Ask any stenographer how much free financial counselling is part of her salary package. Ask the young man at the hamburger stand how much his automobile benefits are. As the Income Tax people how much Canadian executives pay on their club rnemberships. Ask if there are two classes of citizens in Canada. You can be part of 9 - Friday, April 20, 1990 - North Shore News Romanian orphan arrives Saturday From page 3 litle daughter will be here,’’ he said. ‘‘We’re making one final at- tempt. The baby has its documents and passport signed by the Roma- nian prime minister so both of them will just leave.” Originally Ottawa had refused to allow Adrianna into the country because it did not recognize the heaith papers issued to the couple by the World Health Organization. But Ottawa then changed its mind and sent a telex to its em- bassy in Bucharest granting a minister’s permit to override the technical delay. Carbonneau’s wife also tried to adopt two young Romanian boys, but one of the youngsters had hepatitis and was not allowed into Canada, and his wife has thus far been unable to find the mother of the other boy to ask for permission to adopt him. Carbonneau said his daughter is the first adopted Romanian to come to Canada since the ouster of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu last December. : Far away is close to home. 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