Paul Hellyer

Paul Hellyer was Canada's youngest Member of Parliament when he was first elected in 1949 and the youngest cabinet minister appointed to Louis S. St. Laurent's government eight years later. He subsequently held senior posts in the governments of Lester B. Pearson and Pierre E. Trudeau, who defeated him for the Liberal Party leadership in 1968. The following year, after achieving the rank of senior minister, later designated Deputy Prime Minister, Hellyer resigned from the Trudeau cabinet on a question of principle related to housing. Although Hellyer is best known for the unification of the Canadian Armed Forces and his 1968 chairmanship of the Task Force on Housing and Urban Development, he has maintained a lifelong interest in macroeconomics. This led him to form Action Canada, a populist movement dedicated to the concepts of full employment and low inflation with an emphasis on quality of life issues. A man of many interests, Hellyer's ideas are not classroom abstractions. He was born and raised on a farm and his business experience includes manufacturing, retailing, construction, land development, tourism and publishing. He has also been active in community affairs including the arts and studied voice at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In his senior years Hellyer has become intrigued by the potential of new technology and the hope it brings for a smooth and rapid transition from an oil economy to one of more exotic fuels that he believes already exist. In order to finance the transition within a short time frame of, say, ten years, however, Hellyer claims it is essential to make the revolutionary changes in the banking system that he is proposing. He is devoting his entire energies in an all-out effort to help make the miracle happen. Paul lives in Toronto with his wife, Sandra.