It Helps to Travel in the Right Circles: Paul Martin
Maurice Strong, one member of the entourage of our Governor General Adrienne Clarkson for her circum-polar trip compliments of the Canadian taxpayers, helped Paul Martin get his start with Canadian Steamships Line. Read about it and some details of his wealth--about which Martin, himself, has not been forthcoming--at the following links:
The Mapleleaf website, which has been keeping track of Martin's international shipping empire of 37 bulk cargo vessels, claims CSL controls assets of almost $700 million and in March 2001 had annual revenues of $280 million.
Asked how a man who owns a sprawling farm in Iron Hill, Que., a home in Montreal and a condo in Ottawa connects with people who have a hard time paying the rent, Martin became testy.
"Let me tell you. You know, my father didn't have any money. The fact is my father's family, my mother's family -- they don't come from money. My mother's family were farming people."
"To put it another way, if I didn't understand that what life is all about was, in fact, exactly the people who live around the corner from here and who look at you to make life better for them -- if it wasn't for that, then I wouldn't be in public life."
Martin's holdings have been the source of controversy since 1988, even though he tried to protect himself from this through public disclosure. The scrutiny intensified when Martin became finance minister in 1993 and placed his holdings in a blind trust.
There were questions about CSL ships being flagged in offshore tax havens and the use of low-paid foreign workers. And there have been questions about how blind his blind trust really was. Allegations of conflict of interest have been dismissed by the government's ethics counsellor every single time.
