Paul Martin

Paul Edgar Philippe Martin was born on August 28, 1938, in Windsor, Ontario, into one of the most political households in Canada. His father, Paul Martin Sr., represented the region in the House of Commons for more than three decades, served in the cabinets of four Liberal prime ministers, and ran unsuccessfully for the party leadership three times ^[1]. The younger Martin grew up between Windsor and Ottawa, absorbing the rhythms of campaigns and constituency work, and he was raised bilingual, comfortable in both English and French ^[2].

He studied philosophy and history at St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, then earned a law degree from the same university and was called to the Ontario bar in 1966 ^[1]. Rather than follow his father straight into politics, Martin chose business. The decision reflected a wish, which he later acknowledged openly, to make his own name before trading on the family one ^[3].

As a young man he took jobs far from the capital, including summer work as a deckhand and as a labourer in the Alberta oil patch, experiences he often cited when describing how he came to understand working life outside Ottawa ^[3].

Martin joined Power Corporation of Canada, the Montreal holding company controlled by Paul Desmarais, and rose quickly through its ranks during the late 1960s and 1970s ^[2]. In 1974 he became president of Canada Steamship Lines, a Great Lakes and ocean shipping firm then owned by Power Corporation. Seven years later, in 1981, Martin and a partner, Laurence Pathy, bought the company in one of the largest leveraged buyouts in Canadian history to that point; Martin later became sole owner ^[1].

Under his control, Canada Steamship Lines expanded internationally and invested in self-unloading vessel technology, and the company made Martin a wealthy man ^[4]. The business record became central to his political identity. Supporters presented him as a manager who understood balance sheets; critics later pointed to the firm's use of foreign flags of convenience on some vessels as a tension with his public role ^[4].

When he entered cabinet, Martin placed the company in a blind management arrangement, and in 2003, before becoming prime minister, he transferred ownership of Canada Steamship Lines to his three sons to reduce conflict-of-interest concerns ^[4].

Martin entered the House of Commons in the 1988 federal election, winning the Montreal riding of LaSalle-Émard for the Liberal Party ^[1]. Two years later he ran for the party leadership, finishing second to Jean Chrétien at the 1990 convention in Calgary. The contest left a lasting rivalry between the two men and their camps, a fault line that shaped Liberal politics for the next fifteen years ^[5].

During the early 1990s Martin co-authored the party's 1993 election platform, popularly called the Red Book, which promised job creation and deficit reduction after years of Conservative government ^[2]. When Chrétien won the 1993 election, he appointed Martin minister of finance, handing him a federal deficit that had reached roughly 42 billion dollars a year and a debt burden that had drawn warnings from international observers ^[5].

The appointment turned out to be the making of him. For those tracing Paul Martin facts through the 1990s, the finance portfolio, not the leadership loss, is where the story gathers force ^[2].

Any account of Paul Martin achievements begins with the 1995 federal budget. Declaring that the government would meet its targets "come hell or high water," Martin cut program spending more deeply than any Canadian finance minister since demobilization after the Second World War, reduced transfers to the provinces, and shrank the federal public service ^[5]. The measures were contentious, particularly the effect on health and social transfers, but the fiscal turn was rapid. By the 1997-98 fiscal year the federal books showed a surplus, the first in nearly three decades, and Ottawa recorded surpluses every year for the rest of his tenure ^[1].

Martin used the surplus years to pay down federal debt, cut personal and corporate taxes, and restructure the Canada Pension Plan with the provinces, raising contribution rates and creating an independent investment board to put the plan on a sustainable footing ^[2]. On the international stage he was a founding architect of the G20 forum of finance ministers created in 1999 after the Asian financial crisis, and he served as its first chair ^[6].

After years of open tension with Chrétien, Martin left the finance ministry in 2002, then won the Liberal leadership in November 2003 with an overwhelming majority of delegates. He was sworn in as prime minister on December 12, 2003 ^[1]. His government's notable acts included the Civil Marriage Act of 2005, which made Canada the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, a ten-year health funding agreement with the provinces, and the Kelowna Accord of November 2005, a five-billion-dollar framework negotiated with provincial governments and Indigenous leaders to close gaps in health, education, and housing ^[7]. He also declined to join the United States ballistic missile defence program in 2005 ^[2].

Martin's premiership was overshadowed almost from the start by the sponsorship scandal, which concerned federal advertising money misdirected in Quebec during the Chrétien years. In February 2004 the auditor general, Sheila Fraser, reported that millions of dollars had flowed to Liberal-connected advertising firms with little or no work performed ^[5]. Martin responded by calling a public inquiry under Justice John Gomery, a decision that kept the affair in the headlines through his time in office ^[5].

The June 2004 election reduced the Liberals to a minority government, the party's first since 1979. Governing then depended on opposition support, and in May 2005 the government survived a confidence vote by a single vote after Conservative member Belinda Stronach crossed the floor to join the cabinet ^[1].

Gomery's first report in November 2005 exonerated Martin personally of any role in the scheme, but the political damage held. The opposition parties combined to defeat the government on a confidence motion on November 28, 2005, and in the election of January 23, 2006, Stephen Harper's Conservatives won a minority. Martin conceded, resigned as Liberal leader, and left office on February 6, 2006 ^[1]. The incoming government subsequently declined to implement the Kelowna Accord as negotiated ^[7].

Martin married Sheila Ann Cowan in 1965, and the couple raised three sons: Paul, Jamie, and David ^[1]. The family kept a farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, near Knowlton, which Martin treated as his retreat from Ottawa throughout his career ^[3].

He remained a practising Roman Catholic, and he spoke publicly during the same-sex marriage debate about reconciling his personal faith with what he described as his duty to uphold the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ^[2]. His 2008 memoir, Hell or High Water, gave his own account of the deficit fight, the feud with Chrétien, and his abbreviated premiership ^[3].

After leaving Parliament in 2008, Martin concentrated on two causes. The Martin Family Initiative, founded with his family, works on education and early learning outcomes for Indigenous children across Canada ^[8]. Abroad, he co-chaired the Congo Basin Forest Fund, a British- and Norwegian-backed effort to protect Central African rainforest, and he continued to advise on African development finance and on the evolution of the G20, which was elevated to a leaders' summit during the 2008 financial crisis, an outcome he had long advocated ^[6].

Assessments of his career tend to divide the finance years from the premiership. As finance minister he changed the default assumptions of Canadian budgeting: after 1998, balanced books became the political norm for both major parties for a generation ^[5]. As prime minister his record was compressed and contested, though the Civil Marriage Act and the Kelowna negotiations remain widely cited landmarks, the latter as much for its cancellation as its content ^[7].

Any fair Paul Martin biography also records the judgment of Indigenous leaders, many of whom have described him as one of the few prime ministers who treated reconciliation as a personal commitment after office rather than a talking point in it ^[8]. That later work, unpaid and largely out of the spotlight, has softened the verdict on a premiership that ended sooner than he intended.