Liberal cabinet minister John McCallum often found himself engulfed in controversy

As the 2000 federal election loomed, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien recruited a star candidate to bolster his effort to win a third Liberal majority, a McGill University economist-turned-banker named John McCallum.“In many ways, Mr. McCallum comes out of central casting, a rumpled … academic who is fluently bilingual but with an easy media presence in both official languages,” enthused Globe and Mail columnist Hugh Winsor. There was talk that Mr. McCallum, seen as an articulate, sought-after expert as chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada, could end up as finance minister if Paul Martin decided to step down.