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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Canada has new supreme boss, or elected monarch, or friendly dictator as the Prime Minister in Ottawa is called colloquially. His name is Paul Martin, former finance minister and multimillionaire businessman. He already has been "crowned" as leader of the ruling Liberal party so taking the office of the Prime Minister is just a matter of time. Martin became famous as finance minister for solving the problem with the huge Canadian deficit of the early 90's. This deficit has made the country look like an "honorable guest" on the Third World table. He turned this deficit into a significant federal surplus. For many Canadians he's still Mr. Enigma. One thing at least is certain: he can play both the good and the bad cop, to give and to take back, to cut taxes and to cut spending. For Martin there are no political and economic taboos as far as the goal is maintained. So far his goal was to become the boss. What will his next priorities look like after his "coronation"? It's too early to say but some general framework can be already designed.

First, Martin has made good name among the business circles for his sound financial policy. Given an equal amount of budget surplus to redistribute with all the rest being equal, he will be more inclined to give this surplus to some tax cuts than to increase the social spending. Second, the social policy is also among the Martin's priorities but there are no guarantees that his social priorities will be the same as those of his predecessor Jean Chretien. For example and not to be considered as policy prediction, the child tax benefits can be lowered or kept where they are now and some other programs such as post-secondary education could receive more from the federal pie. Third, Martin won't put in jeopardy the sacred-saint principles of universal health care but within this domain his priorities may differ too from those of Chretien.

There are strong suggestions that Martin will follow his own experience as former finance minister, allowing the market whenever it's possible and restricting the state interventionism to the fields it's badly needed. He was the architect of the New Public Management concept (very similar to that used later by the US President Bill Clinton), which looks at the state spending from purely financial point of view.

In brief, there are 6 questions to be answered before any spending is approved:

1. Does some programs constitute a public interest?
2. Can the government play any role in these programs?
3. Should the government change its priorities within these programs?
5. Which parts of the programs should be transferred to the private and voluntary sector?
6. How the efficiency of these programs may be improved?
7. Are these programs affordable or should they be abandoned?

On the international arena he is decidedly more pro-American than his predecessor. In his "coronation" at the Liberal convention he pointed out that the United States have become the world's lone superpower and that everyone should take this into account. Bandwagoning Canada with its southern neighbor is expected to push further the nigh-tech sectors of the Canadian economy and make it more competitive on the world's markets.

Almost all political analysts in Ottawa are waiting for new parliament elections to be called soon after Martin formally becomes Prime Minister, expected shortly after the Christmas vacation. There are enormous chances that Martin and his liberals could win fourth election in a row and that he would have an opportunity to push ahead with his agenda. And 5 years from now we'll all have the opportunity to judge on his results.

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