65 Going on 35 — Paul Martin
Paul Martin is a former Prime Minister of Canada, after having served as Finance Minister under Jean Chretien. He is also the former owner of Canada Steamship Lines. He is currently an adviser for the Health Impact Fund and actively works with indigenous communities in Canada.
Myron: You are 79 years old correct?
Paul: Yes.
Myron: Do you have a favorite book?
Paul: Champlain’s Dream by David Hackett Fischer is certainly one of my favourites.
Myron: What advice would you give to somebody in their 20s if they wanted to launch a business?
Paul: Have a goal, a dream, and be prepared to give it everything you have.
Myron: When you hear the word “retirement”, how do you react?
Paul: I can’t conceive of it. When I end up with two or three days with nothing going on, I drive myself crazy, my wife Sheila too. I don’t think I will ever retire.
Myron: Who is Paul Martin today?
Paul: I’ll give you a little background. The first part of my life was going St. Mike’s at the University of Toronto. My undergraduate degree was in philosophy and history, which certainly wasn’t going to support me. I then went to law school at the University because I wasn’t sure what else I wanted to do. I was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1966 but decided not to practice law.
At that time, however, I was introduced to Maurice Strong, Canada’s leading environmentalist as well as a leader in Third World development. He came to my wedding and asked me about my plans for the future. I said, “To be honest, I want to go to Africa. I want to work in Third World development.” He looked at me and smiled, “That’s great. What Africa needs is another bright young lawyer!”
I got the hint and I said, “Wait a minute. You spent a lot of your life in Africa doing development.” He said, “That’s because I had a business background. Come work with me as my assistant and you’ll learn about business. Then you can go do whatever you want.” That’s what I did and as luck would have it, I loved business and had a bit of a talent for it.
Maurice was the president of Power Corporation of Canada at the time. Later on, I took a three-month leave because there was a Liberal leadership race on and my father was in it. So I went to help my father. While I was away, Paul Desmarais took over at Power Corp. When I came back, he was there, and Maurice was off working with the United Nations. So, Paul Desmarais gave me my real shot at understanding what business was all about.
By 1973, I had become the president of Canada Steamship Lines, which was a subsidiary of Power Corp and the company did quite well. In 1981, Paul called me and said he was going to sell Canada Steamship Lines and that he wanted me to help sell it. I offered to buy it instead. I was 41 at the time.
He said that if I could find a partner and negotiate, he would sell the company to me. I found a partner in one of my closest friends, Lawrence Pathy. At the time, Ladi was the president of Canada’s largest shipping company. In 1987, I bought my partner’s shares. One year later, I ran in the 1988 election and was elected as a member of the opposition.
Myron: Did you ever think of yourself as a Prime Minister?
Paul: No. Don’t forget that my earliest interest had been to go to Africa and work in Third World development. I had now spent 20 years in business and I thought that the time had come to give back. CSL was doing well and I had surrounded myself with an excellent management team. So, I ran in the Montreal riding of LaSalle — Émard.
Myron: What made you decide to enter politics in the first place?
Paul: My original goal in life was Third World development and the environment. The reason that I went into business was that Maurice felt that learning about business would help me get into Third World development. So, at this point, I’m in my 40s. I’ve been in business for 20 years and I was asking myself whether I was ever going to get around to giving back. I decided that the time had come. I ran for office. I won. Five years later, I became the Minister of Finance because of my background in business.
You go into public life because you want to make a contribution. If you want to help people, I believe you can do more in five minutes in government than you can do in five months outside of government. That is why I ran in the election and I had great hopes of becoming a cabinet minister. I did not do so to become Prime Minister.
Myron: What drove you to run for Prime Minister of Canada?
Paul: I ran for the leadership of the party when John Turner — who was the then Liberal leader — retired. I didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning, but I took a shot. All my life, that’s what I’ve done. A lot of this is luck. It’s taking advantage of an opportunity that presents itself.
The opportunity presented itself to go into business because that is how I would learn about Third World development. The opportunity to be the president of Canada Steamship Lines occurred because I was given the opportunity. Without that opportunity, I would not have been able to do any of this. When Paul Desmarais told me he was selling the company, he gave me and Ladi Pathy the opportunity to buy it. A few years later, Ladi let me buy him out. All of a sudden, I owned the company and had a very good management team in place. Then the time came to go back to my roots and give back to society but I had a young family so the chance to go to Africa was over. If I was going to do it, I should have done it ten years before. So, I decided to go into public life — a career I understood because my father had been in public life. Then, in 1993, after five years in opposition, we won the election and I became Finance Minister and ten years later Prime Minister.
Myron: How did it feel to be Prime Minister?
Paul: You have to have conviction. You have to have things that you want to do and there was a lot I wanted to do. There is no use going into public life unless there are things that you want to accomplish. Public life does not need people to occupy empty chairs. It needs people who have convictions and vision. There were things I wanted to accomplish. When I was Finance Minister, my first goal had been to balance the budget and then strengthen the Canada Pension Plan. Canada’s balance sheet was in terrible shape and I wanted to deal with that. After, there was the need to invest in healthcare and education, which we did.
When I become Prime Minister, my passion was to address the terrible conditions of Canada’s Indigenous people. At my swearing-in as Prime Minister I asked that the process begin with a smudging ceremony. This is an Indigenous tradition. I wanted that symbol to be part of how I took office as Prime Minister.
One of the first things I did as Prime Minister was to call Canada’s Indigenous leaders to gather with the premiers of the provinces and territories, and my cabinet, so that we could lay the groundwork for the Kelowna Accord. This was an agreement between the federal government, the provinces and Indigenous leaders that among other things would eliminate the funding gap that existed for Indigenous education, healthcare, child welfare, housing and clean water. These systems were grossly underfunded, especially in comparison with spending in the rest of the country. In healthcare, education, child welfare and housing per capita, Canada was spending 40% less on Indigenous people than non-Indigenous people. This was morally wrong. Unfortunately, three years later, my party lost the election and the new government did not continue through with the Accord.
Myron: So, politics was over for you. What did you do then?
Paul: After I stepped down, Kofi Annan asked if I would like to do some work in Africa. I accepted and found myself co-chairing a commission for the African Development Bank and then the Congo Basin Forest Fund, which protected the largest tropical forest in Africa. I did that for two years, working in both Montreal and the Congo.
Then, because the poverty among the Indigenous people in Canada was as grave as the poverty that exists in Africa, I thought it was time to come home and dedicate my time to Indigenous matters.
I came back to Canada in 2008 after two years of working in Africa. Along with others, I set up a foundation called the Martin Family Initiative. It focuses primarily on education, healthcare and child welfare for Indigenous people.
Through our work we have seen that focused investment in Indigenous children and youth is the key to breaking the cycle of disadvantage too many of their parents faced. Whether it is through encouraging entrepreneurship in a high school business course, mentoring students who want to pursue postsecondary education, helping principals of First Nations schools acquire the evolving knowledge they need to ensure their students succeed, improving literacy outcomes for elementary students, or working with young parents to foster their infants’ wellbeing, MFI recognizes the importance of partnering with Indigenous communities to strengthen capacity from within.
Myron: Where is your time spent today?
Paul: 80% of my time is spent on Indigenous matters and 20% of my time is spent on the G20. When I was a Finance Minister, the G20 didn’t exist. Only the G7 existed and only seven countries were involved. China and India were not a part of it and there were no representatives from South America, Africa and parts of Asia. This made no sense. I convinced the other members to set up a separate organization called the G20. The first meeting was in Berlin and I was named chairman.
Myron: Are you still involved?
Paul: I am, but not as a member of government.
Myron: Looking back, would you have done anything differently?
Paul: Well, I would have liked to have won the election in 2006 because then the Kelowna Accord would not have been scrapped. We lost ten years because of that. Thank heavens, the Trudeau government is doing a lot of the things we wanted to do in the Accord.
Myron: Is there anything that you have not done yet that you still want to accomplish?
Paul: In terms of Indigenous education, healthcare and child welfare, we have a long way to go. As I said, I spend 80% of my time on Indigenous matters. I’d like to do ten times more. I think this is one of the most important economic issues we face as a country and the most important moral issue. Indigenous people are the youngest population in the land. Every Indigenous child born today should have the same opportunities as a non-Indigenous child. That is what drives me.
Myron: What is the best advice that you have ever been given?
Paul: I think it was my father telling me that you have to give back. Also, Maurice Strong telling me that I had to go into business.
Myron: If you could sit and chat with anybody in the world right now, who would you choose?
Paul: I remember being asked that question 25 years ago. I chose Nelson Mandela and I had that chat. Who would I like to chat with today? Well, let me give you a statistic. Indigenous people are 4% of our population but Indigenous children make up 50% of the kids in foster care. One day I was talking with a young Indigenous person who told me that he had suffered greatly and that he had been thinking of committing suicide. He then reassured me, saying that he had thought about it but wasn’t going to go through with it. He said he had met an Elder in his village who spoke to him and convinced him to make something of himself. That Elder changed this boy’s life. He’s the person that I want to meet.
Myron: What words or quote do you live your life by?
Paul: My father came from a very poor family. He survived polio as a young man. He said to me, “There is nothing you can’t do if you want to do it badly enough.”
Myron: How do you deal with adversity?
Paul: I have a terrific family. I have been married to my wife for 52 years. The best thing I ever did was to marry Sheila.
Myron: Where do you hope to be in ten years?
Paul: I really hope to be seeing the results of MFI’s work with Indigenous communities. We have a number of programs that deal with Indigenous education, the relationship between mother and child and Indigenous business. Ten years from now, I would love to see the kids that have benefited or graduated from these programs.