Paul Tellier

Paul Mathias Tellier, PC CC (born 1939) is a Canadian businessman and former public servant and lawyer.

His son Marc P. Tellier has been the President and CEO of Yellow Media.

Biography

Born in Joliette, Quebec, Tellier earned his undergraduate degree from Laval University and his law degree from the University of Oxford. He entered Canada's civil service in the 1970s and rose through the ranks of the federal bureaucracy through several high-profile deputy minister portfolios, culminating as the nation's top civil servant from August 12, 1985 to June 30, 1992, when he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council, in the Privy Council Office of Canada, during Brian Mulroney's ministry. Mulroney reduced Tellier's role as Clerk between 1986 and 1989, when he appointed Dalton Camp as his personal Deputy Minister.

In 1992, he left the civil service and was appointed by Mulroney as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Crown corporation Canadian National Railway (CN). Tellier was a driving force behind the successful privatization of the company in 1995 and was widely seen as being the principal instigator behind CN's purchase of Illinois Central, which saw the company expand its focus from an exclusively east-west orientation into a north-south one. As such it was one of the first companies to reap the benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Following a failed bid to merge CN with BNSF Railway in 2000, Tellier oversaw the purchase and integration of Wisconsin Central. He also was responsible for hiring a management team that focused on making CN a "scheduled" freight railway, largely by promoting former Illinois Central president Hunter Harrison to a vice-president position at CN.