Tim Murphy

This week we had the pleasure of having Tim Murphy as our guest speaker. Tim started working as senior political advisor to Paul Martin in 2001 when Paul Martin was finance minister. When Martin became the prime minister in 2003, Tim was appointed chief of staff (Tim noted that his counterpart in the US had his own plane… not so much for Tim here in Canada). Tim noted that Paul Martin was a brillient finance minister, key in taking Canada out of 21 years of deficit budgets and giving us annual surplus’. Tim sees another 21 years of deficits on the horizon. He shared his thoughts on five key challenges facing our government today:

• Prosperity: Not just here in Canada, but worldwide
• Sustainability: Both with the economy and environment
• Equality of Opportunity: For the aboriginal populations in particular, noting that it’s the largest growing population segment in Canada
• Governance:  International and domestic accountability
• International Stability: Both around terrorism and region vs. region (Gaza for example)

He also gave us a couple predictions:

Federal Election in 2009: In tough economic times, minority governments can make the quick descisions necessary. We’ll hopefully get a majority government, but if we get annother Conservative minority, he predicts that Harper will leave the PMO shortly after re-election.

Provincial Election: He doesn’t rule out John Tory as a strong candidate in the next provincial election (in roughly 2 years). Many have counted him out, but if McGinty doesn’t make the hard desicions he needs to in order to keep Ontario and it’s cities on track, he could face a tough election.

Tim also made an interesting comment on the way media portrays politicians. He gave a couple insights.

First, Paul Martin was a tough man to work for. Paul was able to juggle many balls and often threw normal lines of authority out the window (such as going straight to a jr staff member to get real answers). It was the political system around him that couldn’t keep up. The media on the other hand made it look like Paul couldn’t keep up.

And second, while in a meeting with George W Bush, Tim observed that George was in fact quite well spoken and really commanded the attention of those in the room. He had a steel within that definitely showed itself in person.

Tim works as a lawyer at McMillan LLP. It’s good to know we’ve had good people like Tim working hard for our country.