Criticism
The Desmarais family enjoys close connections to politicians worldwide. Critics charge that the family’s political connections provide it with unfair advantages in business. Desmarais' relative obscurity outside of Canada has been used to hide his family's countless political connections and influence in business as well as politics. Over the years political observers have pointed out the enormous and unusually powerful influence Desmarais has over Canadian federal politics. Desmarais, it has been observed by Canadian reporters, has a direct pipeline into every prime minister's office. A number of prime ministers and other influential Canadian elected officials are, or have been, financially dependent on Desmarais, including Jean Chrétien, who sat on the board of the Power Corporation of Canada.
Read more about this topic: Paul Desmarais
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)