Paul Mathias Tellier, (born 1939) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

businessman and former public servant and lawyer.

Biography

Born in

Joliette Joliette is a city in southwest Quebec, Canada. It is approximately northeast of Montreal, on the L'Assomption River and is the seat of the Regional County Municipality of Joliette. It is considered to be a part of the North Shore of Gr ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirte ...

, Tellier earned his undergraduate degree from the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (french: Université d'Ottawa), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ottaw ...

and his law degree from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He entered Canada's civil service in the 1970s and rose through the ranks of the federal bureaucracy through several high-profile deputy minister portfolios, culminating as the nation's top civil servant from August 12, 1985 to June 30, 1992, when he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council, in the Privy Council Office of Canada, during Brian Mulroney's ministry. Mulroney reduced Tellier's role as Clerk between 1986 and 1989, when he appointed Dalton Camp as his personal Deputy Minister. In 1992, he left the civil service and was appointed by Mulroney as President and Chief Executive Officer of the

Crown corporation A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the government ...

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN i ...

(CN). Tellier was a driving force behind the successful

privatization Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...

of the company in 1995 and was widely seen as being the principal instigator behind CN's purchase of

Illinois Central The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also c ...

, which saw the company expand its focus from an exclusively east-west orientation into a north-south one. As such it was one of the first companies to reap the benefits of the

North American Free Trade Agreement The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA ; es, Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, TLCAN; french: Accord de libre-échange nord-américain, ALÉNA) was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States that crea ...

(NAFTA). Following a failed bid to merge CN with

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

in 2000, Tellier oversaw the purchase and integration of Wisconsin Central. He also was responsible for hiring a management team that focused on making CN a "scheduled" freight railway, largely by promoting former Illinois Central president Hunter Harrison to a vice-president position at CN. In January 2003, Tellier stepped down from CN, (Harrison assumed the presidency of the company) to take a three-year posting as the President and CEO of Bombardier. This was largely seen in the Canadian business community as an attempt by Bombardier to turn itself around following several lacklustre years of growth in the aerospace and passenger rail vehicle markets. Tellier oversaw Bombardier and sold its recreational vehicle production to the Beaudoin family, Bombardier's majority shareholders. Tellier also made several major cuts in the workforce and attempted to adjust and refocus the company on its core business activities. On December 13, 2004, it was announced that Tellier was leaving Bombardier, after he told the company that he did not want to stay for the full three years of his contract. Tellier also serves as an executive on the

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit orga ...

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in ...

and

Rio Tinto Alcan Rio Tinto Alcan is a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, based in Montreal. It was created on 15 November 2007 as the result of the merger between Rio Tinto's Canadian subsidiary and Canadian company Alcan. It is the global leader of aluminium mining and ...

. In 1992, he was made a Companion of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the cen ...

. In 2004, the second St. Clair Tunnel was named in his honor. Since November 2006, Paul Tellier has served as joint chairman on the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service of Canada. This committee gives advice to the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council on the renewal of the Public Service, with the objective of shaping it into an institution geared to excellence, distinguished by highly engaged and highly skilled people performing critical tasks with professionalism and efficiency. In October 2007, he was appointed by Prime Minister Harper to a panel responsible for reviewing Canada's military mission in the War in Afghanistan. Paul Tellier is the son of Maurice Tellier, and the grandson of Sir Joseph-Mathias Tellier, who was the brother of

Louis Tellier Louis Tellier (December 24, 1842 – June 17, 1935) was a Canadian lawyer, politician, and judge. Biography Born in Berthier-en-Haut, Canada East, the son of Zephirin and Luce (Ferland) Tellier, Tellier completed his classical education at ...

. He is also a third cousin of Luc-Normand Tellier.Jean Hétu, "La famille Tellier: une grande famille de juristes", ''Droit Montréal'', automne 2014, no 19, p. 22-23.

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External links

Order of Canada Citation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tellier, Paul 1939 births People of Bell Canada Canadian National Railway executives Companions of the Order of Canada Lawyers in Quebec Members of the King's Privy Council for Canada Living people Clerks of the Privy Council (Canada) People from Joliette Alumni of Linacre College, Oxford Université Laval alumni

Biography

See also

Notes

External links