Conscientious Canadians of all political stripes and faiths are asking apersistent and unanswered question these days: who is Paul Martin?

It is a surprising question to be asking, after the man has been ourfinance minister for nine years, an opposition member in Canada’s Parliamentfor five before that, and a long-time ambitious, patient, political aspirant who is nowenjoying Prime Ministership and a still respectable approval rating.

Part of the answer is our own astonishing amnesia about his longpreparation for the job of prime minister, a preparation exclusively in thecorridors of corporate power. Part of it is our deep desire to have apresentable leader to offer the world.

But we must urgently ask it now and search for some answers. Theseanswers are best found in his record.

We must ask, not to dampen any enthusiasm for a prime minister whowill both lead us and choose how we identify ourselves and tackle ourdeepening social deficit, but to be clearheaded about where he will likelygo, and to sharpen our resolve to either encourage the direction or toresist and critique it.

This is the man who claims a deep affinity with his father, Paul MartinSr., Liberal member for Windsor for many years, a small-town lawyer, thenpolitician and left-leaning cabinet member. But Paul Jr. spent30 year as a Chief Executive Officer for two companies, Power Corporationand Canada Steamship Lines (CSL).

Company officers universally have a goal, clearly stated in MarkAchbar’s new film The Corporation: maximize profits andcut away losing holdings. But public office calls for a crucialunderstanding of and commitment to the public interest, not to the bottomline.

Does Martin own up to the fact that Canada is now in eighth place in theannual United Nations Human Development Index? Does he recognize thatsocial inequality grew in Canada during his term as finance minister, whenhe was consumed by deficit cutting? Does he stay awake nights thinkingabout child poverty, and how it has increased, despite all pledges to thecontrary? Is he pleased by a higher number of low-paying jobs? Does he hearCanadians declare they do not want our foreign policy made in Washington andare utterly opposed to Star Wars II? How much did he know about thesponsorship scandal, and when?

In 2000, Martin sat on a five-year, $193 billion surplus but, transfixedby deficit hysteria, refused to mend the safety net which he had virtuallydestroyed. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Manitoba justicecoalition Choices showed that the deficit targets could be met without asingle spending cut. His insensitive choices, always accompanied bygrandiloquent language, show him as a man out-of-step with Canadian values.Martin seems to have repudiated the Liberal Red Book of 1993, and movedinstead to embrace the Washington Consensus, a program marked byprivatization, deregulation, smaller government and unfettered free trade.

Is this gentleman — regarded by many as charming, intellectually curiousand decent — trustworthy? Or is he in the lap of the Business Council onNational Issues (now called the Canadian Council of Chief Executives)? Wecannot avoid asking: does CSL continue to ply international waters with its ships registered under “flags of convenience,” thusescaping Canadian tax and labour laws? Lastly, does he really believe thatongoing approval from the generally-disregarded federal Ethics Counsellorconstitutes any kind of a moral guide to be followed?

Progressive Canadians, seeking a just society and a independent placefor Canada in the world, must catch and keep Paul Martin’s ear. As veteranwriter Douglas Fisher wrote after the throne speech, “Such a profusion ofintentions but a minimum of specifics.” We need to persistently stay in thevision of the Liberal government. As John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s attorneygeneral said in the 1970s: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

Canadians wanting an activist government which favours the common goodmust pay attention to our prime minister’s deeds, rather than his language.