CONGRATS ON A GREAT POLITICAL CAREER MR. PAUL MARTIN!!!!!

A great 18 years in the public life is over. Paul Martin is no longer the leader of the Liberals and alot of people were predicting this from the outset. Even if there was a liberal minority win then he probably would have stepped down as well. However, that did not happen and it did not go out on top like alot of us would have loved if he did.

The Right Honourable Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC, MP, BA, LLB (born August 28, 1938, in Windsor, Ontario) took office on December 12, 2003 as the twenty-first Prime Minister of Canada.

In 1988, Martin was elected as the Member of Parliament for the electoral district of LaSalle-Émard in Montreal. He was a candidate at the 1990 Liberal leadership convention, losing to Jean Chrétien in a bitter race that resulted in lasting animosity between the two men and their supporters. Nonetheless, the Liberal Party won the 1993 election and Martin was appointed minister of finance by the new prime minister, Jean Chrétien. At the 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, paid down $36 billion, and cut taxes cumulatively by $100 billion over 5 years, making it the largest tax cut in Canadian history.

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 if left unaddressed.

While Martin's record as finance minister was lauded in business and financial circles, there were undeniable costs. Some of these costs took the form of reduced government services. This was most noticeable in the Health Care sector, as major reductions in federal funding to the provinces meant significant cuts in service delivery. Moreover, there were cuts in government services across the board, affecting the operations and achievement of the mandate of most federal departments. Critics point out that Martin's actions as finance minister were consistent with a neoliberal agenda. Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that while Martin held an influential position within the government and the Liberal Party of Canada, his actions as finance minister were very much part of his party's program.

Prime Minister Chrétien and Martin frequently clashed while in office. It was often reported that Chrétien had never forgiven Martin for running against him in the Liberal leadership convention of 1990, and privately often condemned Martin in bitter terms to his aides. Some suggested that if Martin was not promised the Finance portfolio in the event of the Liberals 1993 election victory, Martin would have resigned, splitting the Liberal Party. In fact, Jean Lapierre who was a staunch supporter of Martin wore black armbands at the 1990 Liberal Party convention to protest Chretien's victory. Lapierre then crossed the floor to the newly formed Bloc Québécois party in the House of Commons. After Chrétien's third electoral victory in the 2000 election, there was much speculation in the media and in Ottawa that Martin was after Chrétien's job and wanted to force the prime minister into early retirement.

The conflicts between the two men reached a peak in 2002. Martin was removed from Cabinet, and was replaced by John Manley as Finance Minister. Soon after, Martin formally declared his intention to run as leader of the Liberal Party at the next party convention. Over the summer of 2002, Martin toured the country campaigning to succeed Chrétien while his Liberal organizers prepared to challenge Chrétien's leadership during a review vote in January 2003. During the fall, Chrétien announced that he would resign in the spring of 2004 after less than half of caucus agreed to sign a commitment to support him. The Liberal party called a leadership convention for the fall of 2003.

After that, Martin's opponents for leadership quickly dropped out of the race. On September 21, 2003, he easily defeated his sole remaining opponent, former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps by securing ninety-two per cent of the party delegates from across the country. On November 14, 2003, he was formally declared the winner at the Liberal leadership convention, capturing 3,242 of 3,455 votes. On December 12, 2003, he was appointed by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson as the twenty-first Prime Minister of Canada.

With all that positive discussion done on Martin, I will now leave this post without getting into the controversey that helped take down the liberal government. Please everyone, when you remember Paul Martin, please remember him as a great politician who was an amazing liberal party leader, I met him and shook his hand at a rally, I really enjoyed how he got the crowd in the room so fired up and inspired!!