Just out of hospital, his life in boxes, ORNGE founder Chris Mazza says Health Minister Deb Matthews only had to ask and he would have cut his high salary and cleaned up problems at the troubled air ambulance firm.

“Yes ma’am, yes sir,” is how Mazza says he would have responded. But Matthews never called, Mazza told a Queen’s Park committee probing the ORNGE scandal.

Flanked by his mother, father, both brothers, girlfriend and his family lawyer, Mazza alternated between quiet whimpers, irritated defiance, and frequently blamed his memory loss on the 2006 death of his son, an unidentified “sickness” and the shock of losing the “heart and soul” of his life: ORNGE.

Committee members, all MPPs, grilled Mazza for six hours, grinding closer and closer to the issue they believe is most important: Why did Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government allow ORNGE to fester?

To hear Mazza tell it, he and his staff were in frequent contact with the health ministry and ministry of finance, firing off reports and giving briefings. Mazza said he even had three chats with the premier, filling him in, all informal conversations at events. In one, former ORNGE lawyer and Liberal Party of Canada president Alf Apps hooked up the two of them for a 15-minute chat, Mazza said. The former emergency doctor also testified that he frequently asked ORNGE’s top communication executive, Jennifer Tracey, if Matthews wanted a briefing and was told “no.”

After the hearing, at a quickly called press conference, Matthews rebutted that account.

“I actually went to ORNGE in February 2011, met with frontline staff, I expected him to be there and he wasn’t there. When I became aware of problems at ORNGE, I actually called him in for a meeting in my office and he didn’t come. He sent the chair of his board and the COO.”

Tracey, in an interview, said Mazza’s claims were untrue. “At no point did I discourage any meetings with government nor did I convey that the minister did not wish to meet with ORNGE staff or Dr. Mazza.”

The scene Wednesday was a spare committee room at the legislature, source of an annual $150 million in public funding for the service Mazza created to airlift patients.

Compelled to appear by a rare Speaker’s warrant, Mazza arrived with a small entourage and a speech.

“I always acted with the best interests of the public of Ontario,” said Mazza, describing how in 2005 he conceived and grew ORNGE from what he described as Ontario’s “antiquated” air ambulance service. One year in, his son Josh died in an alpine skiing accident. Mazza said his “guilt” over his inability to protect his son caused him to pour all of his strength into building ORNGE to save lives “to make him proud.”

“The public dismantling of ORNGE has triggered deep-seated emotions related to my son’s death that I am as yet unable to deal with effectively,” said Mazza, whose voice dipped and rose throughout the day and at times he seemed on the verge of crying.

Tory MPP Frank Klees (Newmarket—Aurora), who has made ORNGE his personal mission, and other MPPS peppered Mazza with questions about how his $284,000 salary in 2006 grew to a total payout of roughly $2.6 million in the most recent year ($1.4 million in salary and bonuses plus $1.2 million in loans and a cash payout the province is trying to collect).

Mazza said he had forgotten dates and amounts. He painted himself as a visionary, not a details guy. He told MPPs he had just left hospital, had moved, his belongings, including tax returns, were in boxes.

Liberal MPP Liz Sandals (Guelph) asked Mazza if he thought this huge salary jump, at a time when the province was short on health-care cash, was “greedy.

Mazza rallied, responding that he had a big job, running what he equated to a “small hospital” and two air services, one for helicopters and one for fixed-wing aircraft.

As the day wore on, Mazza continually stated that all of the controversial decisions that the committee was vexed about — salary, his loans, the decision to hide most executive salaries from public scrutiny, the hiring of his girlfriend and her meteroic rise — were decisions of his board of directors and other executives.

In one exchange, Mazza was questioned by Klees on a $500,000 housing loan that helped him purchase and renovate an Etobicoke house. Mazza, at first, said he had little information on the loan or how he came to receive it.

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“Was that a surprise?” Klees asked. Mazza replied that former ORNGE chair Rainer Beltzner was aware of “significant challenges in my housing circumstances” and after that, the money appeared.

In many cases, Mazza said “black spots” clouded his memory of specifics the committee was trying to ferret out.

No mention was made of the ongoing Ontario Provincial Police investigation into Mazza and ORNGE. As part of a deal approved by the committee, witnesses are not asked whether they have been interviewed.

The committee did delve into an issue at the heart of the OPP probe — the $6.7 million marketing services agreement that Italian helicopter firm AgustaWestland paid to a Mazza controlled for-profit firm shortly after ORNGE purchased 12 helicopters at a cost of $144 million, money financed with public dollars.

Previous witness testimony has led Klees to label this a “kickback.” MPP France Gélinas (NDP—Nickel Belt) asked ORNGE why a giant company like AgustaWestland would ask Mazza’s company to perform marketing services.

“Nobody else was doing what ORNGE was doing,” Mazza responded. “I negotiated (with AgustaWestland) the principle that we could have a marketing agreement and passed that to finance (at ORNGE).”

Committee members believe they have established that this $6.7 million came from an overpayment to the Italian firm that other ORNGE executives had convinced the firm to waive — until Mazza overrode them. Mazza told the committee that paying this extra money to ORNGE was called for by the agreement and was the right thing to do with a firm that ORNGE needed to work with for many years.

“The word kickbacks has been thrown around and I want to refute that. I have never nor would I ever receive such a thing,” Mazza testified.

Did he strike fear into employees, as others have said? No, Mazza told the committee.

Was it a good idea that Long, a former water ski instructor and waitress became an ORNGE employee and was sent off for an executive MBA, and rose to a high level position? Mazza said he had nothing to do with her career, but he understands the “optics” were not good. He agreed Long had a “direct line” to him but that was all part of his management plan to “keep a hand on the pulse” of frontline staff.

When Long lost her job, with Mazza, she had risen to associate vice-president. Long was “articulate, timely and a very, very hard worker.”

Committee members ended by asking if he felt sorry for letting down 13 million “shareholders,” the people of Ontario and if he would like to apologize.

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