Camilla Cornell was thrilled when she landed her first job out of grad school, as a communications co-ordinator for one of Canada’s most prominent executives: Frank Stronach.
It was, initially, a great gig – well paid, with a company car, an expense account, free office lunches and the opportunity to accompany him to various events.
At that time, 1986, Mr. Stronach was the highest-paid executive of a public company in Canada. He had cultivated relationships with powerful politicians in both the Liberal Party of Canada and the Progressive Conservative Party. He was sitting on the board of a federal Crown corporation, and the auto-parts company he founded, Magna International Inc., was expanding with new plants outside Greater Toronto – including one that took him and Ms. Cornell to Cape Breton.
Camilla Cornell in 1988. At the time, she worked as an editor for a Stronach-run publication, Focus on York; before that, she was a communications co-ordinator for Frank Stronach, founder of Magna International.Supplied
In April of that year, Ms. Cornell accompanied Mr. Stronach to the island, where he was opening a new factory, and then back on the corporate jet to Toronto, where he was due to give another speech that evening at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With a few hours to spare between their landing and the event, he asked whether she’d like to join him in his nearby suite, she says.
She initially said no. But he reassured her that it wasn’t like a bedroom, just a place to bide their time before the speech and that she’d be fine. So she went.
In his suite, he put on the television and went to take a shower. He emerged, naked, she says, before wrapping a towel around himself as he walked in front of her to the bedroom. She recalls feeling shocked and embarrassed. She averted her eyes until he emerged from the bedroom, dressed, and they headed to the elevator. When the doors closed, she says he trapped her in his arms, and tried to kiss her. She ducked away, and tried to laugh it off. That’s how women coped back then, she says.
But she spent the weekend worrying she’d be fired, says Ms. Cornell, who is speaking publicly about the incident for the first time. And she made sure she was never in a room alone with him again.
Although the encounter occurred within the context of her employment, Ms. Cornell, then 27, did not report this to Magna’s human resources department or any managers. (One of the few people she felt comfortable speaking with about the incident at the time was her then-roommate, who in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail confirmed that Ms. Cornell shared her account of what happened in the hotel suite and elevator.)
Ms. Cornell was outraged and upset – but she didn’t take any official action because she feared it would ruin her career. Her biggest stumbling block, though, was the notion of complaining about someone at Magna who was synonymous with Magna.
“He was the company,” she says.
At top, Mr. Stronach addresses a Magna AGM in 1986; at bottom, he leaves a Peel police station this past summer, where he faced new criminal charges.Zoran Milich and Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
That company has been coming under the microscope over the past several months as, the most recent court filings show, 18 criminal charges were laid against Mr. Stronach by Peel Regional Police. The charges stem from the complaints of 13 accusers dating back as far as 1977 and as recently as February. Magna has since retained two external law firms to investigate what, if anything, the corporation knew about allegations of misconduct – although Mr. Stronach has had nothing to do with Magna for more than a decade.
Mr. Stronach, 92, has said through his lawyer that he will plead not guilty to the charges, which include rape, sexual assault and forcible confinement, and will vigorously defend himself in court. Although he declined interview requests from The Globe, he has spoken to other media outlets. In an interview with CBC in August, Mr. Stronach said he was confident he would be able to prove his innocence at trial.
But Mr. Stronach’s former associates at Magna have been less talkative. Globe reporters made efforts to contact every Magna director who sat on the board with Mr. Stronach at the time of the alleged offences to ask what they knew, if anything, about them. The Globe identified 20 who were still alive and reached out to them with questions. Almost none responded.
But the experience of Ms. Cornell, who is not one of the 13 accusers in his court case, is illustrative of how intertwined the allegations against Mr. Stronach are with his companies. Four women who spoke to The Globe have detailed encounters they say they had with Mr. Stronach and each involved company resources. This included the use of company suites or properties, and in some cases, staff who they believe have some hard questions to answer about their role.
As for Magna itself, the company has declined to make any current executives available for interviews. The company has reiterated that Mr. Stronach sold his stake in 2010 and departed as chairman in 2012.
The allegations against Mr. Stronach “are alarming and, if proven true, completely contradict Magna’s core values and beliefs,” said spokesperson Tracy Fuerst.
Magna’s headquarters sit like Versailles in the middle of Aurora, Ont. A stone entrance frames the road, called Stronach Blvd., surrounded by manicured lawns that lead to the palatial corporate offices. On the grounds are also the Magna Golf Club, the horse stables and the family compound.
Across the street lies the Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex. The Stronach Regional Cancer Centre and the Frank Stronach Splash Pad, situated in Frank Stronach Park, are minutes away. His nearby restaurant, Frank’s Organic Garden, is where he sometimes dines.
Frank Stronach won a lot of accolades on the road to building his car-parts empire: honorary degrees, entrepreneur of the year and the Order of Canada. He associated with the rich and the powerful, and put many of them on his board. Among them were Mike Harris, former premier of Ontario; Franz Vranitzsky, former Austrian chancellor; Bill Davis, former premier, and Trevor Eyton, business titan and senator. He made Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska a strategic partner and had photo ops with Queen Elizabeth.
He was close with politicians – Ontario’s then premier Ernie Eves drew rebuke in 2003 when he held the provincial budget at a Magna training centre. Mr. Stronach advised Brian Mulroney on policy. He ran for office in Canada and Austria.
The story of Magna is legendary. The Austrian-born tycoon built the company from a tool and die shop, called Multimatic when it started in 1957, into a global auto parts giant with US$43-billion in sales today. He also branched out into other enterprises such as horse breeding, racetracks and a cattle farm. In 2018, Forbes pegged his fortune at US$1.5-billion.
When the company was on the ascent in the 1980s, Magna put a lot of effort into being known for something else: a place where its more than 10,000 employees felt cared for and safe. Its annual reports repeatedly touted its commitment to workers’ well-being. Employees “have the right to work in a safe and pleasant environment,” its 1983 annual report says. Mr. Stronach frequently invoked his introduction of a phone tip line where workers could report improper or threatening behaviour.
From its Aurora headquarters, Magna oversees an auto-parts business that takes in about US$43-billion in annual sales.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
But four former employees of Stronach-owned companies told The Globe and Mail their experience was different.
Under Mr. Stronach, Magna expanded into a host of non-automotive ventures, one of which was in media. In the late eighties, reporter Peg Billingsley says she was at a work party when the new owner of the community newspaper north of Toronto she worked for approached her from behind. Inches from her back, she alleges Mr. Stronach began to massage her shoulders.
Ms. Billingsley said she was alarmed by what she says was sudden, unwanted touching, describing his actions as “very intimate, very inappropriate because he didn’t even really know who I was.” She alleges the incident happened in 1989 or 1990. (The Globe spoke with a colleague who confirmed she recounted, soon afterwards, her allegation of this unwanted attention from Mr. Stronach).
Ms. Billingsley said from then on, she was careful to move to the other side of the room any time she saw Mr. Stronach at company functions.
A 2006 biography of Mr. Stronach, Magna Cum Laude, by the late business reporter Wayne Lilley, said that sentiment existed at Magna’s offices in Europe as well. Mr. Lilley details office Christmas parties where female employees would warn younger female staff about Mr. Stronach, “to the point of describing, from experience, the ‘moves’ to expect from the boss.”
The book includes an account from the late Tom Dillon, who oversaw Magna’s catering division. Mr. Dillon recounted an earlier time, at a New York restaurant that he ran, when Mr. Stronach took off with one of his employees. “Frank’s about sixty and the girl’s twenty-two, and she’d come back and be useless for a week after being in Paris.”
On Magna itself, Mr. Lilley wrote, “Stronach’s own wandering eye and his admiration for beautiful women may have had something to do with why little had been done to modify the macho corporate culture.”
In 1996 and 1997, women in the Detroit area filed lawsuits against Magna International that contended the plaintiffs faced discrimination and sexual harassment. They described an environment in which their male colleagues routinely took auto execs to strip clubs to help win contracts. The suits were not about Mr. Stronach directly, but did give a window into the corporate culture at the time.
In 2002, there was litigation that targeted Mr. Stronach himself. Nicole Will, a 21-year-old bartender at Magna Golf Club, sued Mr. Stronach and Magna Entertainment for wrongful dismissal. She alleged Mr. Stronach approached her at the club’s restaurant, invited her to play tennis and asked for her phone number. He also allegedly called her at home twice.
In the suit, which was settled for an undisclosed amount, she alleged she suffered from stress and anxiety as a result and was disciplined by her supervisor.
Jane Boon wrote an essay for The Globe about a sexual encounter with Mr. Stronach in 1986. It 'certainly wasn't right,' she wrote, though she did not describe it as assault.Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
At the time of the alleged incident, Ms. Boon was 19, and Mr. Stronach 54.Supplied by Jane Boon
When Jane Boon was a 19-year-old college student working at Magna, part of a coveted sponsorship program offered by what is now Kettering University in Flint, Mich., she, too, attracted the attention of the company’s owner.
While she was attending the 1986 Magna annual meeting with a group of her fellow students, Mr. Stronach, 54 at the time, invited her to an afterparty at Rooney’s, the Toronto restaurant he owned. She took him up on his offer – an encounter that she detailed in an essay published in The Globe in June, a few weeks after the first criminal charges against Mr. Stronach were laid.
She says the Magna founder urged her to join him for dinner, where they were joined by former premier Davis, as well as other Magna VIPs.
By the end of the evening, the pair were sitting alone. When Mr. Stronach’s driver approached his boss about his plans, the CEO told the driver that Ms. Boon had drunk too much and was in no state to drive herself home. He told Ms. Boon to hand her car keys to the driver and insisted that she stay at the Magna guest house north of the city. She obliged, even though it was dawning on her that Mr. Stronach was probably expecting her to have sex with him – which she dutifully did. She doesn’t allege that she was assaulted, but wrote in her piece, “it certainly wasn’t right.”
Richard Leblanc, a York University professor and corporate governance expert, said Mr. Stronach’s interactions with Ms. Boon in full view of those in attendance – including some Magna leaders – should have spurred an investigation by the board.
“It should invoke scrutiny by any reasonable board of directors,” he said. “Even if it occurred in the 1980s or 1990s, you can’t say that dining with a teenager by the CEO is acceptable conduct,” Prof. Leblanc said.
“The excuse might be that times were different back then [and] they were, to a point. But it signals a board that may not be executing its full responsibility if … one or more directors had knowledge of this type of conduct and behaviour and the use of company assets.”
Prof. Leblanc said boards and directors have had the same legal obligations for decades. The main duty is to act for the best interests of the corporation, and that means to oversee and evaluate the performance of the top executive. Secondly, directors must behave with a duty of care, or “act as a reasonably prudent person would act under similar circumstances.”
“It’s not fair to say a board has a lesser duty if it was 40 years ago,” Prof. Leblanc said. “A duty is a duty and it is relatively consistent across common law.”
Inaction by a board could open it up to legal liability, he said.
Magna is a publicly traded company, but Mr. Stronach’s Stronach Trust controlled it with B-class shares. The shares carried 300 votes each compared with one vote per share held by Class A subordinate shareholders. This dual-class arrangement, in place since 1978, gave Mr. Stronach a 66-per-cent voting majority when electing board members.
Prof. Leblanc said the arrangement meant no director was truly independent and effectively neutered the board of directors.
“It’s very hard for the directors to push back if they’re not elected by shareholders. They’re elected by the majority shareholder, who is sitting there at the table,” he said.
Board members have a duty to pay attention, because the impact of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace is material, says Ena Chadha, chair of the Ontario Human Rights Legal Support Centre. Research shows that sexual harassment drives women out of jobs, hurts productivity, increases sick leaves and mental health issues and reduces performance.
“It’s costly, costly, costly,” she says. “It creates a poisonous environment, and boards are often so aligned with the CEO they pick.”
The Globe reached out to the surviving directors of Magna's board from 1977 to 2011 to find out more about its governance and oversight.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Today, the board members who served at Magna during the height of Mr. Stronach’s power have very little to say about what they knew about Mr. Stronach’s alleged conduct.
Magna’s board under Mr. Stronach was full of powerful men (and they were overwhelmingly men), most of whom were close associates of the company’s founder, either through politics, business deals or a shared Austrian heritage.
To get a sense of the degree of oversight, accountability and discussions at the time, The Globe identified the 47 directors who sat on Magna’s board between 1977, the year of the first alleged offence that led to charges, and 2011, Mr. Stronach’s final full year in the boardroom as chairman and founder. Only four were women.
Of the 47 directors, about 27 could not be reached, either because they were deceased or had no available contact information. The Globe contacted each of the remaining directors at least twice, requesting interviews and posing a list of questions using e-mail, social media and posted letters.
Most did not respond – including some who held senior roles at the executive level of the corporation as well.
None of the living politicians who sat on the board responded, including Mr. Vranitzky, a director from 1997 to 2011, and Mr. Harris, who was on the board from 2003 to 2012.
The few board members that did respond were terse.
“The allegations against my father, Frank Stronach, are deeply disturbing,” said Belinda Stronach, a director from 2007 to 2009 and 1989 to 2002. “As that matter is before the courts, I cannot comment further.”
In recent years, Ms. Stronach has had an acrimonious relationship with her father, which led to a three-year courtroom battle over control of the family businesses that was settled in 2020.
D. Robin Sloan, a director in the 1980s, said he has no recollection of allegations of wrongdoing nor settlements involving Mr. Stronach being discussed by the board. Mr. Sloan said by phone he didn’t know much about Mr. Stronach’s personal life, and the recent charges are a surprise. “Very much so, actually, especially the ones where he is accused of raping. I just cannot believe that,” Mr. Sloan said.
The Globe also tried eight executives; they either did not respond or declined comment.
The Globe sent a detailed list of questions to Magna about past investigations, settlements and how employee concerns were handled. In response, Ms. Fuerst said it has launched a “targeted review of historical records,” dating back to Mr. Stronach’s time at the company.
“This review process is complicated with the passage of time (going back 40-50 years), but should relevant information be located, we will follow a strict protocol to respect the legal rights of all and cooperate with authorities,” Ms. Fuerst said in an e-mail. Magna also said that its governance structure has been enhanced since he stepped down.
To date, she said, the company’s internal document review has revealed one settlement of a harassment allegation against Mr. Stronach and Magna Entertainment Corp., which was reported in the press. (Although she did not identify the case she was referring to, there was media coverage of the 2002 lawsuit launched by Ms. Will).
Jane Boon says any review should go well beyond “just rummaging in boxes” for past files. “I haven’t heard from anybody, and I’d be a pretty easy interview, if they wanted to actually talk to an employee who asserts Stronach behaved inappropriately. Constraining it to files seems like a pretty nifty way to give the company a clean bill of health going forward, and use whatever report is generated to put some distance between Magna and Stronach.”
Ms. Boon says no one at Magna has reached out to her, but if they do, 'I'd be a pretty easy interview.'Ashley Fraser/The Globe and Mail
Although Magna was the largest company that Mr. Stronach operated, it was far from the only one.
One of them was a Stronach-owned horse farm north of Toronto, known at the time as Beechwood Farm. A woman who worked there as a groom for his stable is one of the complainants whose case resulted in criminal charges against Mr. Stronach. Her name is protected under a publication ban. She agreed to answer questions from The Globe through her lawyer.
She said that in July, 1980, a few days before her 21st birthday, to celebrate, she and some employees went to Rooney’s – where she’d heard there were staff discounts. Mr. Stronach gave her a glass of champagne, she says. On the dance floor, she alleges he put his hands up her dress and ripped her pantyhose, “in full sight of other patrons and bar staff.” He then took her to a booth, where she alleges he groped her.
She alleges he raped her later that night. At that moment, she said in the e-mailed response via her lawyer, “I realized he was no longer just my employer. He was now my rapist, and I needed to survive.”
She had aspired to be a veterinarian, but says that career aspiration was derailed. As for Ms. Boon, she says she left the auto industry and a dream of becoming an engineer after her experience.
Mr. Stronach is one of several high-profile, once-powerful business leaders now facing allegations of assault. Last month, disgraced former fashion mogul Peter Nygard was sentenced to 11 years for four counts of sexual assault. Earlier this year, Quebec billionaire Robert Miller was arrested and charged with sex offences against 10 victims.
Mr. Stronach’s lawyer, Leora Shemesh, said in an e-mailed response to The Globe’s questions that her client will be pleading not guilty to all of the charges against him. She said he “continues to profess his innocence.”
This summer, after hearing about the criminal charges, Ms. Cornell contacted the police. In a video interview with York Regional police, she described her experience in the elevator with Mr. Stronach, because, she told The Globe, she thinks it could help corroborate other women’s accounts.
“I said to them, in the big scheme of things, this is a minor incident, but I believe those women, and this is why I believe them.”
Ms. Boon, for her part, went public because she says she wants to see his reputation corrected – and she says it’s time for the spotlight to include Mr. Stronach’s corporate enablers. “It’s appalling how Stronach was able to leverage corporate assets for such vile purposes, and then use his reputation as a shield.”
With reports from Stephanie Chambers and Rick Cash in Toronto and Mike Hager in Vancouver