By most yardsticks an effective finance minister for ten years under Jean Chretien, Paul Martin has been oddly disappointing since he stepped up to become Canada's prime minister last December. He came perilously close to losing an election in June that had been intended to give him a personal mandate and his Liberal Party a fourth term; the Liberals were reduced to a parliamentary minority, with just 135 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. Yet as political Canada stirs from its long summer break, Mr Martin has lost no time in starting to implement his new government's main obj ectives.
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