Why Bob Rae is perfect for the UN
Bob Rae isn’t the first former NDP leader to become UN ambassador — Stephen Lewis paved the way in 1984.
Nor is he the first premier to become a Canadian envoy — Manitoba’s Gary Doer, New Brunswick’s Frank McKenna and B.C.’s Gordon Campbell led the way.
But unlike any who came before him, it can truly be said that Rae has spent a lifetime preparing for his new assignment.
Son of the fabled Saul Rae, who served as our UN envoy when another Trudeau was PM in the 1970s, he is now, at age 71, following in his footsteps. Rae fils learned the art of diplomacy at his father’s knee.
But he also mastered the political science of power relationships while heading Canada’s second-biggest government from his perch in the premier’s office. There is no better preparation for the pinstripes brigade in the puffed-up diplomatic corps than to run a province.
It has the effect of grinding you down daily, but also grounding you in the day-today domestic realities that underpin foreign affairs. It is the best training ground for the ephemeral playground of international relations, thanks to Canada’s eternal minefield of federal-provincial relations.
I’ve long believed that another former Ontario premier, Dalton McGuinty — notwithstanding his fall from popularity at home — would have made a superb ambassador to China given his affection for and connection to that country.
McGuinty’s late father hosted Chinese students in their basement for months at a time in the 1970s, and with bilateral relations now at their lowest point the ex-premier would have been well placed to deliver pointed messages that penetrate.
The pantheon of retired premiers represents a talent pool that shouldn’t be relegated to corporate directorships or partisan purgatory when a post-political afterlife beckons. Why not a role for Ontario’s most recent ex-premier, Kathleen Wynne, who once lived abroad and proved her mettle in overseas and U.S. trade missions?
I say that as someone who, like Rae, has spent time at Queen’s Park, on Parliament Hill, and overseas, only to conclude that there is no level of government controlling more levers of power more relevant to voters than a province — even if few realize it. From local policing to public health, global warming, international trade and investment, provinces reign supreme even if they command little respect.
Which is why Rae felt emboldened to roam the world, from Sri Lanka to Myanmar, without forgetting his roots in Ontario.
Decades ago, I travelled with the future premier on a chartered DC-3 to some of Ontario’s most remote and impoverished northern Indigenous communities. Just a few years ago, I interviewed him again when he represented Indigenous bands negotiating with the Liberal government of the day about access to the Ring of Fire in the far north.
Weeks ago, he wrote to me about the plight of older Ontarians dying in nursing homes across the province. Rae had first addressed the issue in the early 1980s while in opposition, and again in the 1990s as premier, which is why I wrote he would have been an inspired choice to head the independent commission on long-term care planned by Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government.
Career diplomats don’t typically get that kind of on-thejob training in the gritty reality of daily life — and death. Which is precisely what made Rae so effective overseas.
His previous prime ministerial assignment — investigating the plight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar — gets most of the attention, but it is Rae’s immersion in federalism that is instructive. Among his past roles — looking into the Air India bombing and suggesting reforms to post-secondary education in Ontario — his leadership of the fledgling Forum of Federations showed him how easily countries can unravel.
In Sri Lanka, riven by civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, pitting the armed forces against the now-defeated Tamil Tigers, Rae tried without success to introduce the power of compromise. But federalism is deemed the “Fword” in Sri Lanka, just as it remains a hard sell in other conflict-afflicted countries like Iraq and Afghanistan where minorities have long been given short shrift.
On a return visit to Sri Lanka a decade ago, Rae was detained at the airport by security officials and put on the next plane to London, despite — or perhaps because of — having been so even-handed in his criticism of both sides. One imagines the Sri Lankans will deal with him more diplomatically in his new role.
All of which makes Rae eminently qualified to represent Canada at the UN, just as other provincial leaders were before him. There’s room for more.
There is no better preparation for the pinstripes brigade in the puffed-up diplomatic corps than to run a province