If you must run a public company into the ground, do it in Canada.

In this safe haven for corporate bungling, you’ve got a better chance of getting a raise than getting the axe.

Underachieving Canadian chief executives rarely get sacked. Just ask Eugene Melnyk, Robert Milton, John Hunkin and Frank Dunn, a foursome of CEOs who continue to draw paycheques in corporate Canada despite woeful performances.

About the only ones getting sacked in Canada these days are the shareholders. Which doesn’t seem to bother the CEO, who shows up at the annual meeting sporting rose-coloured glasses, a fake smile and bullet-proof vest.

Company shares tank, credibility swoons and investor confidence plunges – but it doesn’t seem to matter in Canada, where passive boards have a history of fiddling while the company burns.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Canadian company with a worse reputation than Biovail.

Yet, Eugene Melnyk somehow remains at the helm of this corporate disaster.

Astonishingly, Melnyk also remains the drug company’s chairman, which these days is anything but a vote of confidence for shareholders.

Rumours persist that Melnyk will step down from one or both posts this year to spend more time with his hockey team (Ottawa Senators) but it’s a tad late, don’t you think?

Biovail shares (BVF-TSX) have already fallen out of bed, trading in the $23 range, more than 80 per cent off a peak of $130 four years ago.

The company’s credibility has already been dragged through the mud. It is being investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission while analysts have questioned the company’s accounting practices.

Melnyk, who has been CEO since the company was formed in 1994, remains one of the most overpaid CEOs in the country. In a two-year span in 2000 and 2001, Melnyk’s total compensation was an obscene $121 million.

Of course, Melnyk isn’t the only fatcat CEO getting a free lunch from dozy Canadian boards.

How about John Hunkin’s amazing longevity at CIBC?

Hunkin has survived as CEO of CIBC (CM-TSX) for the past five years while the company has suffered massive writedowns over its foray into the U.S. and taken a huge credibility hit as a result of its dealings with Enron, over which it has been fined $80 million US.

The bank has also been targeted by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in his probe into the U.S. mutual-fund scandal.

Frank Dunn has also been on the hotseat lately with the U.S.-based SEC undergoing a formal investigation of Nortel’s accounting practices, but he remains in the corner office.

The latest controversy at Nortel (NT-TSX), in which the SEC is probing two separate re-statements of financial statements, has already lopped about 25 per cent off the shares in recent weeks and it’s apparent that this company is long overdue for a fresh perspective at the top.

Yet Dunn, the company’s former chief financial officer who was promoted to CEO in November of 2001, continues to run the company while his chief financial officer, Douglas Beatty, has been suspended with pay.

Meanwhile, Air Canada, a real-life sequel to the slapstick comedy Airplane, appears on its last legs while longtime CEO Robert Milton remains standing.

Even with Air Canada (AC-TSX) operating in bankruptcy protection and possibly on the verge of collapse, Milton has survived in the CEO’s chair, much to the chagrin of shareholders who have watched more than $2 billion lopped off the market cap.

Air Canada shares have crashed from $20 in four years to the $1 range and many believe that they could be worthless before long.

Melnyk, Hunkin, Dunn and Milton would make a highly entertaining foursome in a reality television series such as Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, which should be mandatory viewing for some Canadian boards (people actually get fired on the show).

Unfortunately, in the eyes of stockholders, it’s been nothing but a horror show. The view from the cheap seats is that these grossly overpaid acts should have been pre-empted long ago.

SAGE WORDS: “A high station in life is earned by gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

– Tennessee Williams



HOT STOCK: SPECTRUM SIGNAL PROCESSING
SSY-TSX $3.50
Up $1.76 (+101.2%) on 2,732,500 shares (for week ending April 16).
Burnaby tech play Spectrum popped like fine champagne, tripling in two minutes flat on news of a $1.2-million US contract with an unnamed international defence contractor and euphoria over defence stocks. But that bubbly was tasting a tad flat if you played catch-up and bought the stock in the $8 stratosphere, as the shares were then sawed in half in four days of trading.



COLD STOCK: HELIX BIOPHARMA

HBP-TSX $2.64
Down 76 cents (-22.4%) on 206,200 shares (for week ending April 16).
If you have the stomach for playing the volatile biotech market, watch out for those falling knives. While many biotech stocks have been flying high in recent weeks, Helix has been in a freefall without a parachute. The Aurora, Ont., developer of anti-cancer therapeutics has been in decline since October when it peaked at $7.