What about Bob? Rae likely to land key job
As Liberals across the country swigged champagne and gave triumphant speeches to screaming crowds, Bob Rae was hunkered down with the old- timers at a TV studio.
Just like Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark, the ex- Liberal leader was spending election night as a pundit, filling the airtime between real news.
“The last thing the leader wants is to have people going on television, campaigning for some job or other,” said Rae when asked if he might suddenly have a gig with any apparent Liberal government.
“I don’t need a title and I don’t need a job, the leader knows that I’m on his team and I’m happy to help him in any way he wants.”
Of course, it was the boilerplate statement of humility for an expolitician who insiders agree is almost guaranteed a role in a new government made possible in part by Rae’s time as interim leader after Michael Ignatieff’s historic loss.
“You could do a lot worse than Bob Rae,” said John McKay who, along with the former Ontario premier, was one of the 34 Liberal MPs who survived the thrashing of 2011.
As far back as 2010, when Rae was Liberal foreign affairs critic, there was an Ottawa rumour that the Tories were planning to put Bob Rae in Tel Aviv.
Rae, however, quickly put down the rumour as an example of dirty politics. “It’s not hard to see the underlying narrative: ‘ The only reason Rae is doing what he is doing on Afghanistan is because he’s getting a job from Harper,’” he said at the time.
The Israel job may be open again as the Liberals bring their own approach to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
And already, the new government is searching for a new ambassador to the United States. Incumbent Gary Doer picked the Liberal election victory as just the time to announce his long- rumoured departure.
Rae has the blessing of Frank McKenna, the former New Brunswick premier who served as U. S. envoy during Paul Martin’s government.
“The breadth of his public service and ‘ diplomatic’ assignments against a host of intractable problems is a matter of record and, quite frankly, unmatched,” wrote McKenna, now deputy chairman of the Toronto- Dominion Bank, in an email to the National Post.
The High Commissioner of Canada to the United Kingdom is also expected to soon be opening up. Since the 1960s, nobody has served in the role longer than five years, and the current High Commissioner, former B. C. premier Gordon Campbell, has been in London since 2011.
“Preferably, from my point of view he would be ambassador to the UN because he has experience dealing with international issues,” said Ujjal Dosanjh, the retired parliamentarian who, like Rae, is a member of Canada’s exclusive club of former NDP premiers who became highprofile Liberals after suffering staggering provincial defeats.
Rae is the son of a career diplomat. He’s bilingual. He is a member of the Tribunal on Internal Trade Disputes and the Security and Intelligence Review Committee. And, arguably, he carries some elder statesman sway with Canada’s 43- year- old incoming prime minister.
After all, it was only a few years ago that Rae was stoically trying to keep the Liberal ship afloat while Trudeau was taking boxing lessons and floating around the House of Commons in jeans and a goatee.
On election night, Jeremy Broadhurst, the Liberal party’s national director, credited the victory to “the leadership of Bob Rae in the Liberal party’s darkest hour.”
Rae has spent much of his postpolitics life on First Nations issues.
In 2013, his stated reason for stepping down as Toronto Centre MP was to become chief negotiator for Northern Ontario’s Matawa First Nations in regards to the proposed Ring of Fire mining project. Oddly, his 2015 citation as Companion of the Order of Canada completely neglects his time as Liberal leader, instead praising “his enduring commitment to strengthening ties between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in our country.”
That track record may put him in the running to head up the Liberals’ promised inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. He’s done similar work before, drafting a 2005 report on outstanding questions related to the bombing of Air India Flight 182.
Rae, for his part, has kept quiet about his ambitions; he did not respond to National Post requests for comment for this story.
“My sense is that he is content where he is, but given a call from the prime minister for an important position he is unlikely to say no,” said Dosanjh.