Thank you Paul Martin

With the G8/G20 Summits underway and Canada taking a position as a world leader in this time of world financial crisis, I think it is time to recognize a great Canadian leader who stabilized our finances and led us to this safer place. This man is our former Prime Minister Paul Martin.

He was born in Windsor in 1938 and his mother was part Metis. He grew up in Ottawa and represented a riding in Montreal as an elected representative. He married Sheila and had three sons after he completed his education at the University of Toronto Law school. He retired from politics in 2008.

I think he did his greatest service for Canada when he was finance minister under his predecessor Jean Chretien. He served as Minister of Finance from 1993 to 2002. He oversaw many changes in the financial structure of the Canadian government, and his policies had a direct effect on eliminating the country's chronic fiscal deficit.. At that time, Canada had one of the highest annual deficits of the G7 countries. As finance minister, Martin erased a $42 billion deficit, recorded five consecutive budget surpluses, and paid down $36 billion of national debt. There were undeniable costs in the form of reduced government services. This was probably most noticeable in health care, as major reductions in federal funding to the provinces meant significant cuts in service delivery. Martin's tactics, including those of using surplus funds from pension plans and Employment Insurance, created further controversy.


During his tenure as finance minister Martin was responsible for lowering Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio from a peak of seventy per cent to about fifty per cent in the mid-1990s. In December 2001, he was named as a member of the World Economic Forum's "dream cabinet." The global business and financial body listed Martin along with United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as top world leaders.

Also during his tenure as finance minister, Martin coordinated a series of meetings between the finance ministers of all provinces to discuss how to address the pending crisis in the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). Consequently, Martin oversaw the creation of a general public consultation process in February 1996 that eventually led to major structural reform of the CPP. The results of this public consultation process were collected and analyzed by the Finance ministry. Eventually, it led to a proposal for overhauling the CPP, which was presented to Parliament and was approved soon after, thereby averting a pension crisis.

On February 24, 2005, Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew told the House of Commons that Canada would not participate in the American National Missile Defense Program, and that he expected to be consulted in the case of a missile being launched over Canadian air space. Martin's decision came with much praise, but others saw that the government was distancing itself from the U.S. His government continued to cooperate with the United States on border control, refugee claimants, and defence, and he appointed seasoned Liberal politician Frank McKenna as Canada's ambassador to Washington.

Martin was criticized for failing to reach a foreign-aid target of 0.7 per cent of GDP, most notably by Bono of Irish rock group U2 (who claimed that he was going to "kick [Martin's] butt," over the issue). Martin later responded that, in his view, many foreign leaders had made pledges that were too fanciful and that he would only commit to targets that he knew his government could be held accountable for.

Martin promoted the expansion of the G8 into a larger group of twenty nations G20. He also forged a closer relationship with the People's Republic of China by announcing the strategic partnership initiative during PRC President Hu Jintao's state visit to Canada in September, 2005.