Paul Martin has been named Canada's "Newsmaker of the Year" by Time Magazine. It calls him the most likely successor to Prime Minister Jean Chretien and "the new centre of gravity of Canada's future."

The former finance minister left the federal cabinet last June at the height of a Liberal leadership squabble. Martin claims he was dropped from cabinet but Chretien says he quit.

Time says Martin and his many supporters in the Liberal caucus were largely responsible for forcing Chretien to announce his retirement date.

"By year's end, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that through some mysterious alchemy, Martin had become the new centre of gravity of Canada's future before he had achieved the formal trappings of power," columnist Stephen Handelman writes in the issue which hits newsstands Monday.

From the back benches, Martin "inspired a rebellion at the party's annual parliamentary caucus meeting in Saguenay, Que., last August that led to the bombshell of Chretien's retirement announcement," the columnist writes.

Martin says there's a "democratic deficit" in Ottawa and has called for a reform of Parliament in his first major policy statement. He says too much power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office and he wants MPs to have more input into the decision-making process.

Chretien responded by saying Martin benefited over the years by his close proximity to power.

Martin is considered to be the front-runner to win the Liberal leadership at the party's convention next November in Toronto.

CTV's Ottawa bureau chief, Craig Oliver, says the Time honour makes sense.

"The media are hanging on everything he says, everything he does, almost as if he's a national leader -- which in some senses he already is," Oliver said.

"For a long time, Canadian politics had become pretty dull and uninteresting. And then intentionally or not, Martin led a challenge against a sitting prime minister -- an unprecedented challenge, by the way -- and it probably caused that prime minister to offer his resignation and give a date.

"So Martin is an agent of change. He is the focus of immense news coverage, and he's going to continue to be so for at least a year to come."