Hell or high water

"Paul Martin - who led the country from 2003 to 2006 - is full of surprises. His book reveals a decent, rounded human being who grew up in Windsor and Ottawa as the son of legendary Cabinet Minister Paul Martin ("Paul Martin the Great," according to a Chinese translator, who was less kind to the son)." "Surprisingly, politics was not in young Paul's blood. Growing up, he loved sports and tough summer jobs as a deckhand or a roustabout. After law school in Toronto he plunged into family life with Sheila (and later their three boys), and into the Montreal business world. Here is another surprise, one that will delight business readers: he writes with infectious excitement about his years as "a corporate firefighter" for Power Corporation and about the thrill of acquiring Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) in what was Canada's largest ever leveraged buyout, calling it "the most audacious gamble of my life."" "In 1988, however, with CSL on an even keel, he entered politics as a Liberal MP. Sensing an opportunity he ran for the party's leadership in 1990, in a campaign that left a gulf between his workers and the winning Chretien team. In 1993, however be became Jean Chretien's minister of finance, with the country in trouble. He reminds us that things were so bad that "in January 1995, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial that said Canada had become an 'honorary member of the Third World' because of our debt." Yet the tough measures he and his team at Finance adopted brought the country back from the brink, leading many to describe him as the country's best minister of finance.". "His account of the widening breach with Jean Chretien is told with restraint, leading to the chapter wryly entitled "Getting Quit." Many insider facts emerge about the leadership campaign that led to his victory, and about his time in office, when he was hemmed in by the sponsorship scandal inherited from his predecessor. During these years great events and major world figures affected his life, but so did memorable figures such as the Sri Lankan boy on a tsunami-swept beach." "The book is firm but polite as it sets the record straight. His narrow loss in the 2006 election, for example, is set in the context of RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli's extraordinary intervention at a turning point in the campaign ("in the absence of a rational and justifiable basis for such disclosure" according to the official Kennedy report), and of the Conservative Parry's alleged breach of Ele

Year

2008

Language

English

Publisher

McClelland & Stewart

Editions

1

Pages

494

ISBN

9780771056925

Data source: Wikidata