Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

Regrets

An Appalling Indiscretion

(Abbreviated from Shooting the Messenger,  Boreal Books)

When I came back from lunch she wasn’t there. "Where is she?" I asked Arthur. When he told me, I only felt a twinge of remorse. That would change. It wasn't my decision, after all. It wasn't even Art's. I had told Art, who had told the chairman, who had told Art what to do, or so Art told me. Only years later would I fully appreciate the pain and humiliation I must have caused.

The Energy Supplies Allocation Board (ESAB) was part of the Trudeau Government’s commitment to what it called a Made in Canada Price for Oil. This initiative took on a new urgency after the first energy crisis in 1973 which saw OPEC prices for crude more than double. Eastern Canada got most of its oil from OPEC; the pipeline carrying oil from Alberta stopped at Sarnia in southern Ontario. If nothing was done, most of Ontario, Québec and the Maritime provinces could expect to pay a lot more for oil, while Western Canada and parts of Ontario would continue to enjoy low prices.

Alberta did not have the disproportionate clout it has today and Trudeau chose to use revenues from the sale of oil from Alberta to the United States to subsidize oil imports from OPEC and Venezuela and thereby equalize gas prices across Canada.

On a regular basis, our registered accountant and auditor, who was also my boss, would travel to every oil company's head office in the United States to confirm that the documents submitted as justification for billions of dollars in compensation were legitimate.

It was during a visit to the New York offices of the owners of the refinery at Come-by-Chance, Newfoundland that he discovered claims paid out for more than 30 million dollars of oil that had never been delivered.

There was no secret about what went on at ESAB; it was a small organization, 30 employees or so. I should have known that when the secretary asked, "What if the press got a hold of this?" she was just doing what everybody else did: indulging in idle, somewhat pointless speculation and gossip. I told Arthur what the secretary had said about "the press getting a hold of this.” When I returned to work after lunch, she was gone.

When the guards came for me, I imagined what it must have been like for her. This made me feel both better and worse. Better, because in a way I felt it was what I deserved for that appalling indiscretion—poetic justice and all that; worse, because I imagined what was happening to me happening to her.