PING!
Posted on 02/16/2006 6:27:44 AM PST by GMMAC
Wilson career makes him perfect fit
as Tory ambassador
Jim Brown
Canadian Press
Thursday, February 16, 2006
OTTAWA -- The book on Michael Wilson is pretty straightforward - and it reads like a perfect resume for a Conservative government's ambassador to Washington.
The 68-year-old Wilson grew up in the well-heeled Rosedale section of Toronto, went to all the right schools, including Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto, and became a Bay Street stock broker.
He followed that with 14 years in Parliament, nine of them a minister under Brian Mulroney where he held the trade, industry and finance portfolios.
He was a key player in the 1987 free-trade deal with the United States but is better remembered - and not necessarily fondly - as the finance minister who brought in the GST in 1989.
"No taxes are popular," Wilson gloomily observed at the time.
But he persevered in the face of ferocious opposition, insisting the hated GST was an improvement on the previous manufacturer's sales tax - which never upset consumers because it wasn't imposed at the point of sale and was thus hidden from public view.
Wilson weathered another storm that same year, when his budget was leaked a day before its intended delivery - forcing him to read it out to journalists at a hastily called late-night news conference.
Opposition MPs howled for his resignation, but Mulroney stood behind him and he soldiered on.
As usual, however, the official record doesn't tell everything there is to know.
Wilson has also hung out with Mick Jagger, whom he met on vacation in the Caribbean in 1989. The two found that, coincidentally, both had attended the London School of Economics in the 1960s.
The chance meeting two decades later led Wilson to throw a party for Jagger and the Rolling Stones the next time they came through Toronto on tour.
With typically sly humour, Wilson admitted at the time that the rock'n'roll life didn't quite fit the grey and plodding image he had as a cabinet minister.
"That's why I try and keep this under wraps," he deadpanned.
Wilson left politics in 1993 to return to Bay Street, eventually becoming chairman of UBS Canada, a subsidiary of Swiss-based UBS GA, an international investment banking and asset management group.
Along the way, however, a tragic personal loss thrust him back into the public eye.
In 1995, his 29-year-old son Cameron, who had battled depression for years, took his own life. The suicide turned the grief-stricken father into a tireless campaigner for better treatment programs for the mentally ill.
He headed a task force on mental health in the Toronto-Peel region and wasn't shy about criticizing the Ontario government when it was slow to respond to demands for bigger budgets and better treatment.
Wilson also wasn't shy about taking his campaign to the CEO's of major corporations, personally lobbying them on the need to recognize the symptoms of stress in the workplace and to get help for their employees.
In part, he was driven by the memory of his son's worry that he might lose his job if anybody found out he was being treated for depression.
"We've got to get over that fear," said Wilson.
© The Canadian Press 2006
PING!
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Happy to have the recommendation, but I'll take a "good & decent man" who is also good friend enough to honestly discuss any differences. Mister Wilson sounds like exactly that sort.
(Guess I've been hit over the head with that pro/anti stick so many times I just move out of range as soon as it comes out of the bag..........)
"Canada's Trade delegation"
"Official Signing of the Treaty"
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