The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 88

H-8 CfcCOajCttC, Montreal, Saturday. March 22, 1986 Banking moguls made Northland fail: boss Mystery man helps man who blew whistle CALGAPY (CP) Actions by the federal inspector general of banks and the Bank of Canada pushed Northland Bank into failure, Robert Willson, chairman of the Calgary-based bank, said yesterday. "It's my view, sir, we didn't go down," Willson told Mr. Justice Wil-lard Estey. "It's my view we were put down." Estey, heading an inquiry into the collapse of Northland and Canadian Commercial Bank of Edmonton, was trying to understand how Northland could fail last September, only months after optimistic assurances from management, auditors and regulators the bank was solving its problems.

Willson, chairman since Northland was founded in 1976, said reports to Inspector General William Kennett about the state of the bank's loan portfolio triggered Northland's closure. Kennett, after reading the reports from two of his inspectors, told Bank of Canada Governor Gerald Bouey in late August Northland was no longer viable, Willson said. ment was premature and ultimately self-fullfilling. His view echoed earlier testimony by Northland president Bill Neapole, who said federal regulators pulled the plug too soon on Northland, without giving its long-term survival strategy enough time to work. Willson reiterated management's stance the.

bank's strategy to refinance bad loans and keep them out of the loan-loss column in the financial statements was sound, given Northland's small size. Bouey said the central bank would withdraw the liquidity support it had been providing. The Bank of Canada had injected more than 330 million into Northland by the end of June to make up for a drain in deposits. Bouey's decision would make it impossible for Northland to continue doing business, Willson concluded. Barbara McDougall, minister of state for finance, on Sept.

1 ordered liquidation of Canadian Commercial and the closure of Northland while a curator assessed its future viability. Willson said the curator's appoint the mystery man's licence number. Norburn was fired in January from Fleet Industries Inc. in Fort Erie, after making public his concerns about slipshod inspection procedures for military and civilian aircraft components. He is suing the company for wrongful dismissal.

He was fired without severance pay and went without unemployment insurance payments for two months because of a dispute over whether he quit or was fired. About raised by employees at the Fleet plant helped support Norburn and his family before he started receiving benefits. Recently, Fleet's lawyers served Norburn with notice of intent to sue for slander, but there was no mention of damages and an actual suit has not yet been filed. THOROLD, Ont. (CP) Bob Norburn, a former quality control inspector battling a major defence contractor over allegations of slipshod workmanship, has a mystery benefactor.

A well-dressed mystery man pulled up at his home in a grey and silver Cadillac on Thursday morning and said he wanted to support Norburn's cause. Then he handed over a brown envelope containing $5,000 in used $100 bills. Norburn, 37, says the polite, soft-spoken, professional-looking man identified himself only as a businessman from Burlington, near Hamilton, and turned over the sealed envelope. Norburn said he was shocked when he opened the envelope and found 50 $100 bills inside. The front-door meeting lasted about two minutes and Norburn said he didn't think to get down Turner blasts at Tories after Chretien plot charge everything above board," Turner said during a session with McMaster University students on the eve of a key convention of the Liberal party's Ontario wing.

"We don't have meetings in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel with disguised knives," he added. His remarks were a thinly veiled reference to friends of Mulroney, in HAMILTON (CP) John Turner, retaliating against Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's allegations that the Liberal establishment engineered the resignation of Jean Chretien, took aim yesterday at backroom plotting in the Tory party which contributed to the 1983 downfall of former leader Joe Clark. want to tell you that we do and up to the time Clark resigned at a Winnipeg party convention in January 1983. At a Conservative convention in Montreal last week, Mulroney accused the "Andre Ouellets and the Raymond Garneaus" two prominent Quebec Liberal MPs who support Turner of plotting against Chretien to force his resignation. cluding Montreal lawyer Michel Cogger and former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores, who plotted against Clark in 1982 at meetings regularly held in the posh Montreal hotel which is managed by a Mulroney friend.

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