Were Martha Piper and BMO waiting in the wings?
One of the known unknowns, as E. Wayne Ross explained, is that Martha Piper and BMO must’ve played a role in the “transition” or removal of Arvind Gupta from the President’s Office at the University of British Columbia. Now is the time to speculate. What was that role?
We may have missed it, but no one has explained how and why Martha was so readily available, at the drop of a dime, on resignation day, to race back into UBC’s President’s Office and begin sweeping things under the rug.
The known knowns of admin include the devices and mechanisms that churn and turn in the background as these types of what UBC still calls “leadership transitions” play out.
Another known known is that bank Corporate Directors do very little and so theoretically Martha could have been just hanging around with nothing better to do on that August day when John Montalbano gave her the call. And then John begins to call around to faculty members and admin, of course with different messages for the two groups. But that’s way too recent of a history to this thickening plot.
So is it way too fantastic that Martha just cares for the “magnificent University” that UBC is and jumped at the chance to save its languishing admin from certain failure. This is the righting of the ship theory that Wayne mentioned.
So yes, we need to know. Has the Bank of Montreal bought its way into UBC’s President’s Office? Over $2.2 million in recent “financial support” to UBC (chump change for BMO) can buy a bank a lot. $500k to the Sauder School of Business can buy a bank a lot. A BMO Corporate Director in UBC’s President’s Office can seemingly buy the bank something. Can it not?
The questions are exaggerated, for sure, and let’s have faith in the UBC Board of Governors. The Acting Chair of BoG is a Corporate Director of RBC, so what’s the concern? All the Canadian universities do this, so what’s the big deal?
At UBC, RBC counterbalances BMO. Trust the BoG and the administrators, Trust the chartered banks. Cut interest rates. End of question period. So, it is time to look forward.
President Piper now needs to please come clean on the August “leadership transition”.
*Yes, this is satire. Yes, this is parody. UBC says now is the time to speculate. Yes, this is gentle mocking. And the BMO connection is a conflict, is it not?
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