With BC Hydro, ICBC, and BC Ferries out of the way, the last stop on the anti-privatization train is BC Rail. The usual suspects are already sharpening their knives.

Casting himself in the role of former Liberal MLA Paul Nettleton is a disgruntled past employee who launched a wrongful-dismissal suit against BC Rail. The lawsuit is already becoming a political football for the railway union that now wants a formal inquiry into allegations of 'sabotage' and 'conspiracy.'

But that's fear talking. Behind the union prattle is the usual anti-Liberal agenda to retain the status quo at all costs and thwart any attempts to reform the money-losing railway. BC Rail is handicapped by a $600 million debt and a $107 million deficit from last year.

Perverse logic sums up the conspiracy theory cooked up by former BC Rail head Mark Mudie. Fired for having a clandestine tryst with a college, Mudie hopes to convince the courts that he was the casualty of plot hatched by top brass to expedite privatization and trigger lucrative severance packages.

Not unlike the Nettleton letter that cried wolf over a BC Hydro sell-off, Mudie's charges are another veiled attack on the Liberal's mandate to reform BC Crown Corporations.

Mudie claims he was the foil to a master plan to sabotage the railway's profits and that's why he had to be removed. Otherwise BC Rail, presumably under his direction, would reverse a history of deficits and threaten to post profits, dashing hopes of an easy privatization.

Mudie's sabotage test has wide-ranging implications. If failure to make money for BC Rail constitutes "sabotage," then the RCMP should be called in to investigate random acts of sabotage carried out by the previous NDP government and their crown corporations.

British Columbia as "have-not province" today is the NDP's tribute to a decade of misguided policy, if not a sabotaged economy.

Mudie's smoking pistol that proves top executives initiated self-destruct and privatization sequencing is the railway's poor financial showing. (Disregard for the moment the restructuring and down sizing saved the railway even greater losses.) Since when are losses incurred by a BC Crown Corporation the precondition for looming privatization It would have to be the exception to the rule judging by the experience of BC Ferries and ICBC.

ICBC was $258 million in the red last year but its new makeover all but ruled out any form of privatization on the horizon. Strip away the $71 million provincial gas tax subsidy to BC Ferries and it would be in the red as well. It was only pseudo-privatized.

If you believe Mudie's other serious charge that BC Rail execs were angling for compensation packages to be awarded through privatization, you'll likely fall for the argument that the NDP deliberately erased itself off the electoral map so that defeated politicians could cash-in on generous severance and pension plans.

In the wake of the 2001 provincial election, BC taxpayers will fund defeated-MLAs over $11 million through a combinations of pre-1997 gold-plated pension plans, post -1997 group RRSP pension plans, severance packages and transition allowances. Getting dumped at the polls has taken on a whole new flare. Even loser candidates have cause for celebration.

Yes, the NDP were the authors of their demise. Suggesting it was a deliberate act of political seppuku is going a bit too far, as does Mudie in his accusations against BC Rail's top brass.

In the post-Enron era, there's no satisfying the public appetite for stories of reckless and unethical CEOs. But this dog-eats-man story is better suited to the pulp fiction pages.