After months of subpoenas, medical delays and doctors’ notes, former ORNGE CEO Chris Mazza walked into a legislative committee Wednesday to plead his case in the court of public opinion. The one-time golden boy and trauma surgeon was a pale shadow of his former strapping self — now gaunt, greying, balding, bespectacled, humbled.
Voice quavering, short of breath, gaze unsteady, smirking nervously when confronted with his questionable behaviour.
Yet still strangely defiant — and in denial.
The notorious $1.4-million man, who burnished his handsome pay with generous bonuses and interest-free loans, declared he has a clear conscience.
Mazza could explain everything — and nothing. Tempting as it is to demonize the good doctor, he can’t help who he is.
Never mind whether Mazza is a mere egomaniac or full-blown megalomaniac, as his detractors suggest; a common bully or corporate sociopath. The responsibility to restrain him remained with his overseers — the board of directors, the bureaucracy and cabinet.
Yet none had the guts or gumption to rein him in. Until a series of damning articles in the Star last December did him in.
Mazza couldn’t have done it on his own. He needed enablers, defenders and directors to help him wreak havoc on our helicopters.
All these months later, the disgraced Mazza has learned little and told us nothing of value. But he revealed much about himself:
During a day of brutal questioning, he defaulted to profound self-pity bordering on narcissism. Mazza mewled that it was “wounding for me personally” to hear one MPP’s criticism. He bleated about the government throwing him under a bus, calling himself “naïve.”
Always the victim.
Close to losing his composure, he never broke. During six hours of questioning, he grew ever more confident and unrepentant in defending his reign of error and terror.
Asked whether he had regrets, he feigned blamelessness: “I did the best I could.”
At every turn, Mazza turned the questions back on his questioners — insisting he never flew solo at the air ambulance service because he always had backing from his board and the bureaucracy.
Compensation: approved. Corporate spinoffs: okayed. Overpriced headquarters: all above board — and the board signed off on it.
He wasn’t wrong about that, even if he wasn’t quite right, either. As a doctor (I note that his lawyer upbraided an MPP for failing to use the honorific “Dr.” in addressing his client), Mazza knows two things above all:
First, a physician must do no harm — even as a CEO.
Second, a physician must obtain informed consent before treatment — especially high-risk surgery.
To cover his back, Mazza went through the motions of securing consent without seeking informed consent. For that, despite his disingenuous protestations of innocence, he deserves our contempt.
As a CEO, however, Mazza knows another dirty little secret: A board of directors is too often a fig leaf, concealing rather than revealing the important bits.
Too many boards are basket cases, and Mazza was blessed with a particularly pliant one. “My chairman,” as Mazza kept calling the bumbling Rainer Beltzner, pocketed $200,000 in one year while his daughter landed a cushy job at ORNGE.
Nice work if you (and your daughter) can get it. Little wonder Beltzner was so considerate about CEO compensation, provided housing loans, and allowed Mazza’s girlfriend to get a fat paycheque of her own.
Don’t blame Mazza. He was just being himself — then and now. It’s the overseers who underachieved on this one.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Cohn, Martin Regg
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