As Jean Chretien’s finance minister, he was Michael Wilson with a red tie, disingenuous grin and a wife as boring as he is. For nine years he doubled as Jean Chretien’s ideas man, which was supposed to be Lloyd Axworthy’s job until it was discovered that Axworthy’s brain could be disconnected from his spine with a simple downturn in fiscal revenue estimates. Martin owns a steamship company that won’t employ Canadian workers and doesn’t pay Canadian taxes.
That this man got to be Prime Minister of Canada for almost a year demonstrates just how far to the right we’ve drifted. The best political speech he ever gave was the one announcing his resignation after being defeated at the polls in January 2006 by a right-wing robot and a herd of cats.