Dear LHSC Board of Directors and Diane Beattie,
I want my $451,000 back. That’s right, every single penny of severance that was recently afforded to Diane Beattie after the LHSC Board of Directors forced her to resign.
When a scandal like this one breaks out, there is no reason whatsoever that such gross misconduct should result in such a comfortable severance. $451,000 is almost two years worth of Ms. Beattie’s annual pay ($250,000 – not bad, huh?).
This entire issue has been handled very poorly. The audit outing the $3.3 million untendered contract was produced 2 years ago, yet the public wasn’t made aware of it. Her friend Kelly Butt telling the London Free Press that what she did was right in the business world. That’s a load of bull seeing as the LHSC doesn’t belong to the normal business world – it’s a world where taxpayers foot the bill in an era where we very rarely see tax decreases even when promised… and those decreases usually lead to increases somewhere else.
Not to mention that if a CIO were caught mishandling $3.3 million at any other company when it can be proven someone else could do the work for cheaper, you can bet your ass they would be fired with no severance whatsoever. It’s gross misconduct and breaks every due diligence rule in the book. Why the LHSC Board of Directors didn’t just throw her out on her butt is beyond me.
I really like the way the Autopro at Wharncliffe & Riverside put it:
“Break Company Rules
Get $451000
Where Do I Sign Up?”
Indeed! Maybe it’s time we replaced the entire LHSC Board of Directors and C-level executives? If they’d like to keep their positions, I urge the Board to begin including all tenders, bidders (along with proposals) and winners into the annual report. It’s my hard earned money they’re spending and I have a right to know where it’s going and how it got there.
Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government really, really needs to clean up it’s act. This week was the first time I agreed with something Andrea Horwath and that, to me, is not a good thing. Lastly, CEO Cliff Nordal, stop looking for the source of the leak. They did the right thing and exposed something very, very serious. You’re only making yourself look like a jerk and that’s the last thing you need. If I were on the Board of Directors, I’d be asking for your head on a silver platter.