Appointment To Harper Cabinet
Fortier was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Public Works on 6 February 2006, the day Stephen Harper's minority government took office. In a cabinet reshuffle in June 2008, he shifted to the International Trade portfolio.
A financier and lawyer from Montreal, he had not been elected as a member of the House of Commons at the time he was appointed, nor was he a member of the Senate. Harper announced that Fortier would be appointed to the Senate, but would be expected to step down and run for a seat in the House of Commons at the next election. On February 27, 2006, Fortier was formally summoned to the Senate. This practice is unusual in modern Canada, but there is precedent for such a practice: in 1979, former Prime Minister Joe Clark appointed Quebec Senator Jacques Flynn Minister of Justice because of his lack of representation in that province. In 1972, when Trudeau failed to win a single seat west of Manitoba, he appointed senators to cabinet as well. 19th century Prime Ministers John Abbott and Mackenzie Bowell served their entire terms in government as Senators.
Harper intended for Fortier to represent Montreal in Cabinet. No Montreal-area riding has elected a Conservative or any member of the party's predecessors—the Progressive Conservatives, the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party—since 1988. Since then, right-of-centre candidates have rarely even competed in Montreal except in landslides.
Before entering the Cabinet, Fortier was a partner at Ogilvy Renault, a leading Montreal law firm. One of his colleagues was Brian Mulroney. He specialized in securities, mergers and acquisitions. From 1992 to 1996, he managed Ogilvy Renault’s office in London, England. In 1999, he became the Managing Director and Senior Advisor (Eastern Canada) at Crédit Suisse First Boston. In 2004, Fortier became Corporate Financing Director (Quebec) for TD Securities. Two days after his appointment to Cabinet Montreal Gazette columnist Ian McDonald claimed that Fortier “was easily making $1 million a year running the Montreal office of TD Securities.”
He ran for the leadership of the party in 1998 but came in last with 4% of the vote. Fortier was a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Montreal-area riding of Laval West during the 2000 federal election placing fourth. In 2003, he was co-chair of Harper's campaign to lead the new Conservative Party. See Stephen Harper Leadership Team.
Fortier and veteran MP John Reynolds were the co-chairs of the 2006 Conservative campaign.
Read more about this topic: Michael Fortier
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