What makes these two Canadians great?
Two famous Canadians were in Regina this week — one reputed to be the richest man in Canada and the other a former prime minister and one of the best finance ministers in Canada’s history.
While Jim Pattison and Paul Martin are quite different people, they have some things in common. Both were highly successful in business, and both have a strong volunteer streak. And both are spending what normally would be their ret i rement years helping less-fortunate, disadvantaged Canadians.
Martin was in town earlier this week, attending some federal Liberal Party meetings at the behest of his old friend and cabinet colleague, Deputy Liberal Party Leader Ralph Goodale. He had just spent the weekend in Saskatoon attending the Canadian School Boards Association annual conference.
Martin was there to talk up the Aboriginal Youth Entrepreneurship Program, which was launched in Saskatchewan in 2013 to increase aboriginal school attendance and graduation rates. Now in its third year, AYEP now receives funding from all levels of government and the private sector.
“The future of Canada doesn’t just depend on the resources that lie in the ground: it depends on the talent of those who walk upon it,’’ Martin told conference delegates.
As founder of the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative, Martin believes the solution to many, if not all, of the challenges facing aboriginal people is education. When he first ran (unsuccessfully) against Jean Chretien for the Liberal leadership in 1990, among his supporters was Sol Sanderson, thenchief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, who helped found the Assembly of First Nations and worked to have treaties entrenched in the Canadian Constitution in 1982.
As finance minister, Martin saw first-hand the plight of First Nations and Metis and determined to do something about it. When he was prime minister, Martin worked for 18 months with aboriginal leaders, like former AFN chief Phil Fontaine, to develop the Kelowna Accord, a $5-billion deal signed in 2005 between the federal government and all five national aboriginal groups that would have laid the groundwork for improving the education, employment and living conditions for aboriginal peoples across Canada.
When the Harper government tore up the deal in 2006, Martin was appalled, but more committed than ever to do what he could — in or out of office — to help improve the lives of aboriginal people.
Today, Martin refuses to be drawn into debates about past political battles. But he does take the Harper government to task for chronically under-funding on-reserve education, which he called “discriminatory, immoral and economically dumb.’’
At the age of 76, Martin continues to be a powerful force for aboriginal education, which he sees as “the foundation that is going to essentially enable the First Nations to turn this around,’’ he told the StarPhoenix recently.
While other retired politicians and business executives spend their retirement years raking in millions from directorships with big companies or plumb jobs with international agencies, Martin is using his good offices to improve the lives of our First Canadians.
While no spring chicken, Martin is a mere stripling compared with Pattison, who’s still going strong at 86. The octogenarian entrepreneur was in Regina Thursday to announce that his grocery store chain — SaveOn-Foods — was opening four new stores in Saskatchewan in 2016, starting with a store in the former Canadian Tire location on south Albert next spring.
In fact, Save-On-Foods plans to build 40 stores in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in the next five years. Talk about making up for lost time!
While Pattison has the reputation of being a hardnosed businessman ( he reportedly used to fire the worst-performing salesman on his car lot every month), the native of Luseland, Sask., made a point of donating $10,000 to the Regina Food Bank. But this isn’t just a public relations stunt.
He’s made a habit of donating 10 per cent of his income to charity. He’s donated millions to hospitals in B.C. He worked without a nickel of compensation as president and CEO of Expo 86 and he served on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics committee.
Like Martin, Pattison is still working well into his retirement years. And like Martin, Pattison believes it’s not how much you achieve, but how much good you achieve, that matters.