Harper should make Rae ambassador
If Bob Rae had entered political life as a Liberal instead of a New Democrat, he would have been a slam dunk to become prime minister.
That’s because he would have hit his political prime back when the Liberals were the natural governing party of Canada, not the third party in Parliament.
Instead, Rae’s legacy — having announced his retirement Wednesday as the Liberal MP for Toronto Centre — will always be defined by his five controversial years as the first and only NDP premier of Ontario, from 1990-95. To be blunt, they were a train wreck. Rae tripled the province’s deficit to a record $9 billion in his first budget in 1991, just as the economy was going into a deep recession.
A natural fiscal conservative on the right wing of the NDP, Rae then reversed course and spent the next four years unsuccessfully trying to control government spending.
Rae cancelled the NDP’s signature election promise of publicly run auto insurance, tore up negotiated public-sector labour agreements with his “social contract” and introduced unpaid “Rae days” for civil servants.
That enraged those on the left who had previously been his allies, while those on the right blamed him for hiking Ontario’s debt to record levels.
As a result, Rae was swept from power in 1995 by the Mike Harris Conservatives, who cut taxes and welfare and dismantled Rae’s legacy, save for his odd implementation of casino gambling as a way to boost government revenues.
The NDP has never fully recovered in Ontario — something many New Democrats still blame Rae for — their resentment heightened by the fact he subsequently re-entered federal politics as a Liberal, despite having started out his political career as a New Democrat MP.
Rae, who has already ruled out a run for Toronto mayor, said he wants to devote more time to his role as chief negotiator for Aboriginal Canadians regarding the future development of Ontario’s mineral-rich Ring of Fire.
But he’s also aware the opportunity to become Liberal leader and prime minister has passed him by.
His best shot was in 2006, when the party chose Stephane Dion instead.
While Rae subsequently became interim Liberal leader, he was no match for the wave of euphoria that swept Justin Trudeau into the leadership earlier this year.
Since Trudeau is a youthful 41, Rae, who will turn 65 on Aug. 2, knows that becoming PM simply isn’t in the cards.
I’ve always thought of Rae as the Liberal/NDP version of Joe Clark — an intelligent, decent man who wasn’t cut out to be Ontario’s NDP premier, just as Clark wasn’t cut out to be a Tory prime minister.
An interesting footnote to Rae’s career is that he moved the non-confidence motions which brought down two Conservative governments.
As an NDP MP in 1979, Rae moved the motion to defeat Joe Clark’s minority government after just nine months in office.
In 1985, as Ontario’s NDP leader, Rae did the same to bring down Frank Miller’s Conservative government.
Like Clark, Rae has rehabilitated his political reputation by demonstrating skill in foreign affairs and diplomacy, both in Canada and abroad.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be smart to offer Rae — whose father was an accomplished diplomat — a significant ambassadorship.
Not only is Rae well-suited to the job, it would be an example of non-partisan statesmanship, which is virtually non-existent on Parliament Hill these days.