Former Mulroney minister to "servant lead" prayer breakfast

Lloyd Mackey
Special to ChristianWeek

OTTAWA, ON-Mulroney era cabinet minister Jack Murta, 61, returns to Ottawa this fall to provide "servant leadership" for the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, attended weekly by up to 25 MPs and senators. The cross-party group meets each Wednesday to talk about faith, prayer, God, relationships-anything but politics.

"They can do that soon enough when they go to their party caucuses-which start as soon as the breakfast finishes," says Murta, who was the Tory MP in the 1970s and '80s.

The public face of the Ottawa group is the annual National Prayer Breakfast that attracts 500 politicians and diplomats. Past speakers have included people such as hockey great Paul Henderson. The movement spans 160 nations: its "flagship" is the 5,000 attendee annual presidential breakfast in Washington.

Murta represented a Manitoba riding in parliament from 1970 until the mid-'80s. The weekly breakfast meant more to his well-being, he recalls, than even his stints as multiculturalism minister and tourism minister.

The Ottawa breakfast needed someone to pick up the leadership torch after its "icon," Bill Bussiere, died eight years ago.

Bussiere's widow, Sandra, who carried the breakfast initiative following her husband's death, believes Murta has the right ingredients for the task. She says his appointment followed an April leadership consultation. That session involved breakfast stalwart and Liberal MP David Kilgour and its current chair, Bev Dejarlais, NDP MP for Churchill, Manitoba.

"Servant leader" is the appropriate term to describe his role, Murta says. It befits the prayer breakfast's quiet and loosely-structured way of organizing itself.

After leaving politics, Murta served on the Canadian Grain Commission and later, took on a string of short term "executive contracts" for organizations undergoing restructuring. That led to a move from Manitoba to Kincardine, northwest of Toronto.