Paul Martin's Legacy

As Paul Martin exits 24 Sussex Drive, he remains for Canadians a complex and contradictory character. And in that he personifies the Liberal Party, and even the country itself.

Capitalist to the core, an entrepreneur, and a believer in the virtues of the market and of free trade, Paul Martin was one of the few successful businessmen ever to reach the prime minister’s office. In 1973, he became president of Canada Steamship Lines and in 1981 he bought the company from Power Corporation’s Paul Desmarais. That risky venture made him a very wealthy man. While CSL’s headquarters remained in Montreal, its decision to expand its international operations and to fly foreign flags over many of its vessels prompted repeated accusations that the company was avoiding Canadian taxes and was paying workers much lower wages than those received by its employees in Canada.

Along with Jean Chretien, whom he royally disliked, Martin achieved power following the federal election of 1993 when he was appointed finance minister. He will be remembered as the man who cut federal social spending to the bone in a complete repudiation of the famous Red Book, the platform on which the Liberals won office. In his 1995 budget, Martin slashed social spending relative to the size of the economy to levels lower than any seen since 1951. Critics believe those cuts gravely undermined the nation’s public health care system and opened the door to the rapid growth of the private delivery of health services.

There was, however, another side to Paul Martin. He was a genuine, although cautious reformer, in the manner of that most durable of Liberal leaders, William Lyon Mackenzie King. His fiscal toughness, he would argue, turned Canada’s economy around, replacing federal deficits with surpluses. As prime minister---under pressure from the NDP, to be sure---Martin reversed the cuts to federal social spending he had made as finance minister. In September 2004, his momentous health care deal with the provinces put billions of dollars in federal funds back into the system. On the eve of the election campaign, he negotiated an historic agreement with aboriginal leaders and first ministers that pledged the spending of billions of dollars on aboriginal development in the years to come. During the election campaign, Martin announced a far reaching public, not for profit, child care program. (With Stephen Harper in office, the aboriginal program could be scrapped and the child care program is a dead duck.)

In a poem about Mackenzie King, mid twentieth century political thinker F.R. Scott captured the essence of Liberal oscillation between cautious conservatism and occasional radicalism in words that could have been written about Paul Martin: “He never let his on the one hand know what his on the other hand was doing.”

What makes Canada unusual in the advanced world is that a centre party has been its dominant political force for many decades. The norm in other countries is for powerful parties on the left and right to overshadow the centre. Because it is a two headed monster that faces both left and right, the Liberal Party is loathed by its opponents for what they see as its lack of principles. A centre party is rarely an innovator. The Liberal Party has often eaten the lunch of its foes----taking ideas for social programs from the NDP, and serving up tax cuts to keep the political right at bay.

When he was sworn in as prime minister in December 2003, Paul Martin seemed set for a long stay in power. His accession to the highest office, however, came only after a lengthy struggle waged by Martin and his followers within the Liberal Party to unseat Jean Chretien, a battle born of hubris and idealism. Determined to clean up the Liberal Party in Quebec, Martin cancelled the Sponsorship Program on his first day in office. In response to the tabling of Auditor General Sheila Fraser’s devastating report in February 2004, Martin established a commission of inquiry under John H. Gomery, a judge of the Quebec Superior Court, to investigate the mismanagement of the program.

Behind closed doors, members of the Chretien wing of the Liberal Party condemned the calling of the Gomery inquiry as a catastrophic blunder. Jean Chretien, they said, would have shrugged the whole thing off and gotten away with it. But having acknowledged the seriousness of the scandal, Martin was pummeled for it through two election campaigns by all three opposition leaders who refused to concede that he might have been acting out of a genuine determination to clean things up.

Rarely eloquent, Martin nonetheless showed real passion for Canada, and in that he was unique among the federal party leaders. He rejected the idea that Canada should participate in George W. Bush’s missile defence scheme. Martin’s frequent warnings about the dangers of American domination of Canada were airily dismissed by his opponents who saw in them the flailing of a desperate man. What they did not credit is that he had discovered on the job what previous prime ministers had learned---that it is very difficult for Canada to survive as an independent nation on the doorstep of a superpower.

Martin’s tragedy was that he took office as a Liberal leader from Quebec who hoped to win the hearts of Quebecers in a way that Jean Chretien never could. Instead, ensnared in the sponsorship scandal, Martin presided over a precipitous decline in federalist fortunes in Quebec.

The election campaign that sealed Paul Martin’s fate was conducted with all the dignity and decorum of a bare fisted brawl in a hockey arena. But even though Martin was continually bloodied by his three major opponents and by a howling pack of journalists, he did not complain. Although he left the rink battered and bruised, he did so with considerable grace.

How will he be remembered? Unlike most politicians, Martin is a good listener, with a voracious appetite for new ideas and perspectives on the world. An energetic and youthful man for his years, he will find useful outlets for his passions. As time passes, it may be realized that he grew while in office and gained a wider and deeper understanding of this complex country and its people. He may even be regarded with some affection especially as people rethink the unfairness of the shabby treatment he received at the hands of political opponents and the media.