Editor’s note: “The Desmarais family owns Canada” is a slogan, not a provable legal description. The documented record is more interesting: one family built and retained voting control of a major corporate group while developing unusually close ties to prime ministers, premiers, cabinet ministers and political families. This report follows those connections without pretending that every relationship proves corruption.
Power is not just a company name
Power Corporation of Canada is a publicly traded holding company, but the Desmarais family has retained control through its share structure and family trust. Power’s own corporate records identify Paul Desmarais Jr. as chairman and André Desmarais as deputy chairman. Public filings and company disclosures describe the Desmarais Family Residuary Trust as holding controlling voting power in Power Corporation.
That distinction matters. A family does not need to own every share to control a corporation. Dual-class voting structures and concentrated family holdings can give one dynasty decisive influence over directors, strategy and succession while ordinary shareholders own much of the economic interest.
The political network was built over generations
Paul Desmarais Sr. turned a regional transportation business into a financial and industrial empire. His influence extended beyond boardrooms. The Globe and Mail described him as a force in Canadian politics with access to prime ministers and Quebec premiers dating back decades. CBC’s account of his career documented his relationships with political leaders and the role of Power Corporation in the country’s governing class.
This is not a claim that every meeting was a bribe or every friendship was a conspiracy. It is a description of access. The family’s influence came from money, media, corporate employment, philanthropy, social relationships and the ability to remain relevant through changes in government.
Jean Chrétien’s daughter married into the Power family
In 1981, France Chrétien, daughter of Jean Chrétien, married André Desmarais, son of Paul Desmarais Sr. The marriage made a sitting and future prime minister’s family part of the ownership family of one of Canada’s most powerful corporate groups. André Desmarais later became president and co-chief executive officer of Power Corporation and is now its deputy chairman.
That is an extraordinary connection even when no improper conduct is alleged. Jean Chrétien was a senior Liberal cabinet minister, then prime minister from 1993 to 2003. His son-in-law was an heir and senior executive of Power Corporation. In Laurentian Canada, political and corporate power did not merely attend the same dinners. They became relatives.
Paul Martin: from Power executive to prime minister
Paul Martin worked at Power Corporation before entering federal politics and eventually becoming finance minister and prime minister. That career path is legal and publicly documented. It also illustrates the revolving door at the centre of the Laurentian establishment: the same networks that shaped corporate Canada supplied senior political leadership.
The issue is not that Martin was automatically controlled by the Desmarais family. The issue is whether Canadians should treat a system as neutral when major corporate families can employ future national leaders, maintain access to governments and then watch those leaders return to public office.
Brian Mulroney and the cross-party reach
The Desmarais network was not confined to the Liberal Party. Brian Mulroney and other Conservative figures also moved through the same corporate and social world. That cross-party reach is part of what made the family influential: Power did not need one party to win every election. It needed access to the people who might govern.
Influence that survives changes in government is more durable than ordinary lobbying. It becomes an informal institution—part business network, part political society, part family alliance.
Laurentian elite, Montreal capital
The phrase “Laurentian elite” is often used as an insult. The underlying phenomenon is measurable. A small circle of corporate families, senior civil servants, lawyers, media owners, university leaders and politicians repeatedly appear in the same institutions, boards, fundraisers, foundations and family events.
The Desmarais family is one of the clearest Canadian examples because the corporate control is visible, the political relationships are documented and the family connection to a former prime minister is public. The network does not need a secret meeting to matter. Repeated access, shared institutions and intermarriage can produce influence without a written conspiracy.
What “owns Canada” gets wrong—and what it gets right
The Desmarais family does not literally own Canada. It does not appoint Parliament, control every politician or direct every federal decision. Those claims would go beyond the evidence.
But the slogan points at a real democratic problem: concentrated private power can give one family a level of access and continuity ordinary Canadians will never have. Control of a major corporation, relationships with prime ministers, a family marriage into the Chrétien household and decades of cross-party influence are not trivial coincidences. They are the architecture of an elite system.
The questions reporters should keep asking
- Which politicians, ministers and senior officials have worked for, advised or sat on boards connected to Power Corporation and its subsidiaries?
- What government contracts, regulatory decisions, tax measures or policy changes affected Power-controlled companies during those officials’ careers?
- When did former executives, directors or advisers move into government, and when did former politicians move back into corporate roles?
- How does the Desmarais Family Residuary Trust exercise voting control, and what information do minority shareholders receive?
- Which foundations, think tanks, universities and media institutions receive support from the family or its companies?
- How often do corporate and political families overlap through marriage, employment and board appointments?
- What conflicts are disclosed, and which relationships remain informal and invisible in official records?
The real scandal is not a secret cabal
The real scandal would be easier to prove and harder to dismiss: Canada has allowed an unusually small social and corporate circle to reproduce influence across generations while calling the system meritocracy.
There is no need to invent a secret order. The public record already shows concentrated voting control, a corporate empire, access to national leaders, a prime minister’s daughter marrying into the ownership family and senior politicians moving between Power and public life. That is enough to justify scrutiny.
The question is not whether the Desmarais family controls every Canadian politician. It is whether any democracy should accept a system in which the people with the deepest access to government are also the people with the deepest private stake in the country’s economic decisions.
Sources
- Power Corporation 2025 annual report and corporate disclosures
- CBC: Paul Desmarais remembered as entrepreneur and political power broker
- The Globe and Mail: Paul Desmarais’s political influence
- UPI: France Chrétien and André Desmarais marriage, 1981
- Power Corporation investor and shareholder information
