Tellier, Paul M.

CONVOCATION, OCTOBER, 2004
PAUL TELLIER
to be Doctor of Science

According to an opinion survey of Canada's top business leaders and CEOs, the person among them that they most admire and respect is Paul Tellier. They thought so when he was president and CEO of CN; they continued to think so after he had taken over as president and CEO of Bombardier, where he is today. In fact, judged by any peer group at any time in his long and remarkable career as a businessman and public servant, Paul Tellier has won accolades for his work ethic, self-discipline, clarity of purpose, and his uncanny ability to uncomplicate the complex. His approach is simple and direct. He can be impatient with the fuzzifiers and the rule-bound, whether of the individual or institutional kind.

All of these traits showed themselves early in his life. He hated high school. "It had too many rules, some not logical." When he failed a year, his father sent him to boarding school. When Christmas break came, he went skiing at Mont Tremblant, joined the ski patrol instead of returning to school, and didn't bother to tell his father. Needless to say, when his father eventually found out, the two had what Mr. Tellier calls "a conversation." He admits it was also a defining moment in his life.

To his credit, Paul Tellier did not let his early education get in the way of his natural brilliance. He eventually studied arts, law, and public administration at the University of Ottawa and at Oxford in the U.K., learning as much from the people he encountered as from the books and the classes. As a student in Ottawa, he loved slipping away to spend an afternoon in the gallery of the House of Commons, the Senate, or the Supreme Court, nurturing his interest in Canada and public policy. At Oxford, he was struck by the varied backgrounds of his fellow students, who came from all over the world and lent to every discussion an international flavour. Both experiences left a deep impression, shaping both the business leader and the person that Paul Tellier is today.

He might have become an international journalist, one of his dreams when he was a law student at the University of Ottawa. Instead, in another of those life-defining moments, he took the advice of his favorite teacher and mentor, Jean-Luc Pepin, and became a public servant. For 25 years, under both Liberal and Conservative governments, he rose steadily to become Deputy Minister of two government departments and eventually Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet, the top civil servant in the country.
What is remarkable about Paul Tellier is that he allowed none of the positions he held to box him in. Like the high school student who bridled under illogical rules, he has seen his training and his positions as opportunities to bring about change, to get rid of bad laws and illogical rules, to streamline and simplify in the pursuit of clear goals. His distinguished public service attests to his passionate love of Canada, but it has never been a narrow nationalism. Like the Oxford student who reveled in contact with students from around the world, and the law student who dreamed of becoming an international journalist, the mature Paul Tellier became an internationalist, a person who saw Canada's future as a leader in a global setting.

These were the views he brought to CN when, in 1992, in a daring switch from public service to business, he accepted the challenge of heading up the newly privatized company. To some the challenge of turning around a struggling railroad company looked impossible. To Paul Tellier, it was an opportunity to put into action his conception of Canada in the new world economy. Rather than an East-West system, confined to Canada itself, he imagined a North-South rail network, attaching Canada to the United States and Mexico, positioned to benefit from Free Trade and the exploitation of the largest market in the world. In 10 years, he transformed a struggling CN into the most profitable railroad in North America. By moving to Bombardier in 2002, a leading player in the international market for regional aircraft and railroad equipment, he carried forward his vision of Canada as a leader in defined niches of the world economy, accepting the challenge, as he had with CN, of redefining goals at a difficult time in the industry.

Paul Tellier has won the respect of his peers and the honours of universities and other institutions. Behind his accomplishments they see a visionary with the self-discipline it takes to make dreams reality. They see a life that balances work, community service, and family. They see a CEO sensitive to the value of labour unions, because he can remember his first job on the production line of a brewery, where the work was unremitting and hot, with no air-conditioning. They see a rare individual who has achieved the highest levels in both public service and business by relying on a sense of what is practical.

The University of New Brunswick shares Paul Tellier's vision of international cooperation and integration. We have research and teaching initiatives that span the globe and the percentage of international students in our student body is among the highest in the country. In welcoming Paul Tellier to the circle of our graduates, we look forward to a continuing friendship built on our shared interests.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4