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Front Burner Transcript for October 28, 2024

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, everybody. Jayme here. So just a warning before we start today, there are some graphic details involving sexual assault in this episode. So please do listen with care.

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JP: If you take a drive around Aurora, Ontario, just north of Toronto, there's a name that comes up again and again: Frank Stronach. There's a Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex. Just a few minutes away, the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre. And the Frank Stronach Spray Pad right inside Frank Stronach Park. And not too far from there, Frank's Organic Garden, Stronach's restaurant. Those buildings and landmarks, they tell you something about the kind of influence the 92-year-old Canadian billionaire wielded. As CEO of Magna International, a global leader in auto parts manufacturing, he was a big deal in the business world. In the '80s alone, the company's sales grew 12-fold to over a billion dollars annually. Stronach would go on to be praised by prime ministers and presidents. He received the Order of Canada. He started his own political party in Austria. But in June of this year, the man whose name is emblazoned on all of these landmarks was arrested. He was charged with five criminal counts, including sexual assault and rape. And since then, the counts have grown to 18, from 13 women, and they span decades, from 1977 to this year. Stronach categorically denies all of the allegations. Today, my colleague Mark Kelley is here. He's been reporting on the Stronach case for the Fifth Estate since the allegations first came out. And actually, he interviewed Stronach about them.

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JP: Mark, hi, thank you so much for coming on.

MARK KELLEY: Great to be here with you, Jayme.

JP: It's always great to have you. Frank Stronach has been one of the wealthiest, most influential business leaders in Canada. He grew this massive auto parts empire. I wonder, how does he see himself? How does he see his own success?

MARK KELLEY: Well, I've had so many conversations in the past few months with Frank Stronach, and he certainly sees himself as a, as a champion of the working class. He sees himself and his success, and we really should underline his success. I mean, this is a guy who started a small tool and die company, you know, making molds and machine parts in a rented garage in Toronto in the '50s. He built Magna International, which builds car parts, into a multibillion-dollar-a-year company. I mean, when he left in 2010, their sales were, like, close to $25 billion a year. And what he likes to say is he did this in collaboration with his employees. He had this scheme set up where the employees would get 10% of the profits. And he had said to me in our conversation, 'Mark, what drives the economy? Hardworking employees! That's what drives the economy.' And he always would equate that happy employees equals profitability. So he built that ethos into his company and really into his success as well. And it was interesting where we, we got a clip of a speech he was giving recently. He says:

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FRANK STRONACH: I think the reason I've done well is I treated the employees as partners. Constantly, every day I thought, what do I have to do that employees respect me?

MARK KELLEY: That's what he was saying in May at the Keystone Awards for Job Creation in Peterborough, Ontario. Shortly after that, police would lay the first round of criminal charges against him.

JP: Right.

MARK KELLEY: So that, that's where then the contrast comes in of here I am, you know, a friend to my employees. Five criminal charges are released after that, some of them involving former employees.

JP: And just lay that contrast out for me a little bit more here. What is it that these 13 women say happened here, generally speaking, as well as other women who have come forward?

MARK KELLEY: Yeah, because for the 13 women who have filed complaints that have led to police charges against Frank Stronach, not all of them are former employees. Some of them are. Some of them dating back... the oldest complaint dates back to 1977. The most current, 2024. So you're talking about almost five decades...

JP: Yeah. Wow.

MARK KELLEY: ...of issues here, of incidents here that the police are now building their case on. And, you know, for one woman that we interviewed, she was a former employee. She didn't work at Magna, per se, she worked at the stables, because Frank Stronach was also really big into thoroughbred horses, horse racing. So he had stables in Aurora where his, where Magna is centred, north of Toronto. And this woman -- we're calling her 'Lee' to protect her identity. She was 20 years old at the time. She was a horse groomer. And this was a dream and a job of a lifetime for her working there, because she cared so much about horses and she saw her future as being one day a veterinarian. So she's working in these stables, and that's where she meets Frank Stronach for the first time. And she didn't know who the guy was, didn't know anything about his success. Just heard later that he's the guy who owns the stables, owns the horses here. Well, it's on the eve of her 21st birthday when some of her colleagues say, hey, let's go to this nightclub that Frank Stronach owns called Rooney's, and maybe there'll be an employee discount there. So they decide with her to meet the two other horse groomers, that the three of them would go to Rooney's together. And that's where she says she ran into Frank Stronach.

JP: Right. And just tell me a little bit about what she says happened.

MARK KELLEY: Well, she was there. She says she wasn't a big drinker, but there she was, in this glitzy, fancy nightclub. She looked over her shoulder, and who did she see walking towards the table but Frank Stronach himself.

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MARK KELLEY: And then what happens next?

LEE: Next thing I know, I'm out on the dance floor and he's holding me really, really tight. And I was literally being held like this. And I was trying to get loose. And then he shoves up my skirt and he punctures my pantyhose, and he sticks his fingers right inside of me.

MARK KELLEY: So Lee was shocked about what was happening at Rooney's itself, Jayme, but that wouldn't be the end of it. Now, what happened next in her night and the recollection of the night is both vivid memories, but also blackouts. She said she wasn't a drinker. She's not exactly sure how much champagne she had to drink at Rooney's. The next thing she remembers, she's waking up in a, in a condo, an apartment, somewhere on the Toronto waterfront.

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LEE: I remember waking up lying in a bed. I was on my back, I was looking up at the ceiling. And I could see my face in the ceiling. And I could see him on top of me. And he was... he was having sex with me. Raping me. I was just trying to figure out, you know, where am I? How did I get here? What's going on? And I knew that I was in a bad situation. I mean, him being a rich guy, in my head, he couldn't afford to have, you know, people say things about him and stuff like that. I thought I was going to be dumped in the harbour.

JP: Yeah. That's really hard to hear. And I just want to say, Stronach denies these allegations. Right, Mark?

MARK KELLEY: Stronach has strenuously denied, categorically denied all the, all the allegations that have been made against him over the last few decades.

JP: Lee, did she go to the police at the time?

MARK KELLEY: She didn't. And what's surprising in my interview with her, and that's one of the key questions. Why didn't you go to police? She said, look, I was 20 years old. And as she put it, I was shovelling manure for a living. She says, nobody would believe that a man of Frank Stronach's stature would have sex with me. I mean, as you heard from her, she was afraid that she was going to be dumped in the harbour. But somehow that she could be seen as a liability, as somebody who could harm Stronach's success. So she kept that secret to herself. She only, she only spoke to a couple of people within her family about it -- she couldn't even tell her mother about it -- and kept this secret for years. And it slowly began to eat away at her. And it wasn't until 2015 when she went to, she was living in a small Ontario town, that she decided to go to police. They referred her to go to the Toronto Police Service.

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LEE: I guess I'd been thinking of it for a long time. Like, you are a survivor, but you're not letting anybody know you're a survivor. I was on Twitter a lot, so I was like, It's time. It's time to come forward and say something. And I started with the police. It was intimidating. It was really intimidating. I was ready to tell my story, but... [sighs] they kept pushing me. It started to feel like an interrogation. I started to feel like I wasn't being believed.

MARK KELLEY: Do you feel they were judging you?

LEE: Yes, very much so. Very much so. When I left there, I... Yeah. I, I was expecting to hear back. I never heard another word back from the police. Not a phone call, not an email, nothing.

MARK KELLEY: We contacted Toronto Police Service just, by the way, Jayme, to ask them about that. They said because it's an ongoing investigation, they can't comment on it.

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JP: I want to hear more from you about what you heard from other women that you interviewed. What did they tell you? I understand there are some patterns here [MARK: Yeah.] that have emerged.

MARK KELLEY: Rooney's, that nightclub where Lee says that she had met Stronach and that Stronach had not only picked her up, but, you know, molested her there in plain view of others, that this was a sort of a connective tissue. That there were other women who told similar stories about meeting him there. I guess it was Thursday nights was Frank's night, and there was always a table in the back of Rooney's that was reserved for Frank Stronach. And it was there we spoke to another woman who claims that she was met. She was not an employee of Stronach, but she met Stronach there. She too says she was taken to a Harbourfront condo and sexually assaulted in that condo. And so, you know, these are, these were all young women. Some, as I mentioned, who were employed by him, others that weren't. But there was-- it seemed to be a pattern that was forming there. And what's fascinating, too, that in a conversation that we had with Stronach, he then admits to us that he paid a cash settlement to two women that he met at Rooney's and then, and that they claimed he had molested in the parking lot afterwards. So he volunteered this information that he had, he'd reached a settlement with them. He says it was a complete misunderstanding, he did nothing wrong. But his lawyer told him, You're a corporate titan, this is bad for your image. Pay them out and let's move on. And he admitted to that in one of our interviews.

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FRANK STRONACH: This is--

MARK KELLEY: It was against their will.

FRANK STRONACH: This is absolutely where some make statements. It's absolutely wrong. I can look in the mirror. I've never done anything improper. There was once where my lawyer called me and said, look, I got a complaint from a lawyer that you were, that you molested, you know... Next to Rooney's was a parking garage. They were just, actually, the two women said, do we, we're leaving now too and thing, and they filed a complaint. So I said to my lawyer, What do you want me to do? Well, he said, Look, you have such a high profile, you're riding high. I want you to repay the thing here and it's, it's over.

MARK KELLEY: A settlement.

FRANK STRONACH: Yeah. No, it just...

JP: His former employees, you know, you've talked to some of them. Just tell me about what they told you.

MARK KELLEY: Frank Stronach was known, and this, this expression kind of makes me queasy when I hear it, but they said, oh, he was a ladies' man. And it's almost sounds like a term of endearment, but in this context, it's anything but. And this was a person who got what he wanted. And he was a person who, you know, he had a network of people around him who would support him. He would have a driver. And there were instances where he would instruct the driver to get involved, to take some of the women, either take their cars to a second location or to facilitate his attempts at meeting these women and then leaving to a second location with these women. So that, too, became part of that pattern that we saw built into what the allegations... again, Stronach categorically denies these stories. He says he has done nothing wrong.

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FRANK STRONACH: I haven't done anything wrong. And we have a lot of data which totally, you know, will prove that those things are lies. Okay? But I cannot get into it. But I feel sorry for the woman which makes those charges, okay?

MARK KELLEY: Frank, we've spoken to some of the women who have made these allegations.

FRANK STRONACH: Yes.

MARK KELLEY: And they have a very, very vivid memory of the encounters that they say they still live with, the trauma that they still live with. Why, decades later, would they be lying about this to police and to...

FRANK STRONACH: Yeah, but again, I, I, I can't talk about that, right? We had-- that comes up in court and I say, Look, x x x x, right? It's a lie, it's a lie, it's a lie. Okay?

MARK KELLEY: This sort of, this pattern and, and the complicity that was surrounding him with people who seemed to be aware of what was happening and were facilitating it to make it happen.

JP: Right. Right. I know you talked to one employee who said basically that his predatory behaviour towards young women was this open secret, right?

MARK KELLEY: Yeah, that, that was a woman who was working at the Magna Golf Club. Her name's JJ Wright. And she started working at the golf club as a bartender. And she was 19 years old at the time, and she said it was an open secret.

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JJ WRIGHT: The open secret in the club was that Frank was predatory with young women who worked there. And I was told that on multiple occasions by different people. So I was aware that at least one woman had been paid off who he was inappropriate with. I don't know if we would have talked that openly about details around the payoffs or any inappropriate behaviour that happened, because that could mean losing our jobs.

MARK KELLEY: That was in 2007, when she was there. You look back to the first criminal charge against him, that's 1977. So you see the period of time that has elapsed there. And there would be, as I mentioned, there would be more criminal charges that date to just this year. So this is, this is a long span of what others have called predatory behaviour.

JP: What is alleged to have happened recently?

MARK KELLEY: We've been trying to talk to as many people who worked with Stronach over the decades. You know, people who worked with him at Magna, people who worked with him at his racetracks, that he owns multiple racetracks in the United States. He started a political party in his native Austria called Team Stronach, and he ran for office there. He was actually elected and a small group from his party was elected until that whole party was abandoned. And we were contacting people in Austria. And, you know, he was protected. A lot of people didn't want to talk to us. But we did then look at his more recent businesses. And he's got a business now, it's called Frank's Organic Garden. And it's a market and a restaurant in Aurora, his home base. And there we were able to talk to three young women, all former employees, who worked there. And they talked about a very uncomfortable work environment. They talked about incidents where Frank would be touching the female employees inappropriately. We spoke to a woman. We're calling her 'Riley' to protect her identity.

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RILEY: In a way, I was uncomfortable every single time I ever had an interaction with him, because he is an intimidating man. Like, he has so much money, he has such a big name and everything.

MARK KELLEY: And she's asked for that because she's, she's afraid of reprisals from Frank Stronach. And she recounted a story to us about what she heard from another employee.

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RILEY: Frank went up to her, and asked if they could go have dinner at The Keg and discuss possible future promotions, raises, all that kind of thing. So she agreed and went with him. He drove her, instead of over to The Keg, he drove her into the Walmart parking lot and then proceeded to try and make advances toward her. He tried to force her to perform fellatio on him, but she was resisting and pushing back and, like, trying not to.

JP: And Mark, is it fair for me to say that Stronach is denying these allegations as forcefully as he is the historical ones?

MARK KELLEY: Well, the historical ones, yes. But Jayme, but on this particular one, about this incident about what happened in the car, when I asked him about that, he actually acknowledged that something did happen. But what struck me is he said, No, no, it wasn't me on her. It was, it was the opposite. And I said, What, you mean that she was, she was coming on to you, Frank? Is this what you're suggesting? He said, Well, there's an explanation. The truth will come out. It will all come out in court. But I did nothing wrong. Again, in my conversations with him, just shocked to hear the things he was admitting to, which don't necessarily put Frank Stronach in a great light.

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JP: Mark, I want to hear more about these conversations that you had with him. I mean, you interviewed him twice, right? [MARK: Yeah.] And first, I just have to ask you, why, why would he do this? He has been accused of these very serious crimes. These cases are before the courts. He also reached out to you, I understand?

MARK KELLEY: Yeah. And he said, I've seen you on TV. You know, you're exploring the truth and I think you've got integrity. So I want to tell you my story. So, you know, we met a couple of times, discussed what... you know, I said-- he wanted to talk about his economic vision of Canada. I wanted to talk about the sex crime charges against him.

JP: Yes.

MARK KELLEY: And we sat down and that's, you know, he got to tell me a little of his economic vision of Canada. I got to ask him a lot of questions about these very disturbing allegations that women are making against him.

JP: And what was your general impression of what he thinks of all of these allegations against him?

MARK KELLEY: There's not even a moment of hesitation that perhaps he's done something wrong. He is defiant that he has done nothing wrong. You know, he says, Look, when I ran Magna, he said, just to prove to you, when I was there... And at the time he was there, I mean, they had upwards of 170-, 175,000 employees. He was saying, I was the guy who installed an anonymous tip line. So if there was any misconduct involving any of the employees at Magna, you could, you could call it in and something would be done. And that's what-- part of what he wanted to give. That version of himself as we sat down to talk. But, you know, he repeats it over and over again: I know who I am. I know I can look at myself in the mirror. I know when I go to the pearly gates and meet God that I have done nothing wrong.

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MARK KELLEY: These are serious allegations and you could end up in prison. This is the possibility here with these charges.

FRANK STRONACH: No. My thing is, I'm above everything. Right? Look...

MARK KELLEY: But you can't be above the law.

FRANK STRONACH: No, no. No, no, it's, we got to improve the law. Those are very serious, serious charges and I realize that. But on the other hand, I am who I am. And, yes, do I like it? No. But it outweighs that I do the right thing. Because when you go to heaven, if you meet God, He knows. He knows did you do the right thing or the wrong thing.

MARK KELLEY: And then he puts it on the women and suggests they're disgruntled employees. They're motivated by money, that they're trying to get some cash settlement out of me. Or that they're part of this... you know, he talks about this idea that there's this conspiracy against him, because he's had revolutionary economic ideas that people would want to stop him. So, you know, he's got his own sort of conspiracy theory that's going there. Lots of explanations for what could have happened. None of them, though, that reflect poorly on him. He maintains throughout this that he has done nothing wrong.

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JP: Mark, why do you think it took so many years for these allegations to come to light? You know, there's so many of them.

MARK KELLEY: Yeah. I mean, that's, that's really the key question, because as we're looking at that, we're building our own chronology, we're-- a series of events that have happened. Part of it, as, you know, I mentioned in the case of Lee, who says she went to police, nothing happened. So I think that could be one element, Jayme. The other thing, too, is this culture of silence that was built around him. You know, we spoke to or we reached out to more than 40 people in Frank Stronach's orbit over the years. Very few of them would get back to us. I think right now there's a sense that there could be a culture of silence on the one hand, but a culture of complicity on the other hand. And I think those people were actively trying to protect Stronach, because by protecting Stronach, you are also protecting the business empire.

JP: Right.

MARK KELLEY: But, you know, we've heard as well that -- when we spoke to one of the women, one of the complainants. She says she was warned by the Peel police, who are now conducting the criminal investigation into Stronach: Do not talk to journalists. In fact, we were told by one of them that they threatened to fine anyone -- because there's a publication ban in place -- fine any of these women who would agree to speak to journalists. Which is... well, I won't, I won't get into the ethics of that, because at the end of the day, the police have a criminal case here. They want to hand-- hand it off to the Crown, that they want it to be bulletproof. They don't want this to be-- have these women somehow interfere or upend the case. So that's one thing. We're also told that there were a lot of NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, that women were forced to sign so they couldn't tell their story. Perhaps there was a cash settlement that was involved. [JP: Yeah.] But, you know, if you look, and I want to give you an example here. Belinda Stronach.

JP: Frank's daughter.

MARK KELLEY: Frank's daughter, Belinda Stronach. You know, some of your listeners may remember her. She held office, she was the MP for the area up there. When she was asked to comment, you know, she'd been working with her dad for years and they've had a bit of an acrimonious relationship. They'd had a fight over the family business that went on for years in court and cost millions of dollars until they settled it. But when she was asked to comment, her, her quote is, and I quote, "The allegations against my father, Frank Stronach, are deeply disturbing." Period. And then she says she can't comment further because it's before the courts. But think about that. At no point in there does she say, I can't believe this, this is shocking. I've never seen anything. Coming to his defense. So what I find really interesting, is for years I think there was this culture of silence that helped protect Frank Stronach, but now he finds himself alone. And a lot of the people that rode his coattails to financial success are nowhere to be seen now.

JP: Certainly not an unfamiliar story, hey, when it comes to rich and powerful men. Um. How do the women feel now that this is out in the open? What are they saying to you now?

MARK KELLEY: There's a mixture. I mean, I think--

JP: Yeah. I would imagine.

MARK KELLEY: I think one of the things, when I-- you know, speaking to Lee, one of the things that really has helped her... I mean, it hurts and it helps. It's a bit of a paradox. It hurts that there have been multiple women who claim that they are victims, but it helps because there are multiple women who claim they're victims. And that she felt very alone, and when she heard there were others, she realized, I'm not alone. I think there's also a, a bit of doubt in their hearts, from the ones that we've spoken to, that there will be any justice or there will be any accountability in this case. Frank Stronach's 92 years old. [JP: Mm-hmm.] You know, he can afford lawyers who may bring in procedural delays, who knows what. He says he's ready to face justice. You know, I asked him about this. One of the last things in my second conversation interview that I had with him, at his stable, he says, You know, all these, these claims against me, these allegations against me, that, that's not what I stand for. And I said, What do you stand for? And he thought about it for a second. Then he said, "Justice." Well, we'll see about that.

JP: Mark, thank you very much for this.

MARK KELLEY: Thanks, Jamie.

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JP: All right, that's all for today. You can watch the Fifth Estate's investigation Stronach: Power and Silence now on YouTube. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach faces slew of sex assault charges - Transcript

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