Bob Rae

Based on Wikipedia: Bob Rae

The Paper Boy Who Tipped Nixon

Before Bob Rae became one of Canada's most consequential politicians—serving as both a socialist premier and a Liberal diplomat—he was a paperboy in Washington, D.C., delivering copies of the Evening Star to the neighborhood's well-heeled residents. Among his customers were Richard Nixon and Estes Kefauver, a Democratic senator from Tennessee.

Years later, Rae would joke that Kefauver gave him a twenty-dollar tip one Christmas, while Pat Nixon handed him a quarter. "It made me more sympathetic to Democrats from that moment," he quipped. Whether or not that twenty-dollar bill actually set the course of Canadian political history, it makes for a fitting origin story for a man whose career would be defined by crossing ideological boundaries—sometimes to the fury of people on both sides.

A Diplomat's Son Discovers His Hidden Heritage

Robert Keith Rae was born in Ottawa in 1948 to Saul and Lois Rae. His father was a prominent Canadian diplomat whose postings took the family to Washington, Geneva, New York, Mexico, and The Hague. Young Bob attended schools on three continents: public school in Ottawa, junior high in Washington, and the International School of Geneva in Switzerland. It was an upbringing designed to produce a cosmopolitan worldview, and it worked.

But there was something the family didn't talk about.

In 1968, when Rae was twenty years old, he learned that his paternal grandfather was Jewish—a member of a family that had immigrated from Lithuania to Scotland. His grandparents had kept this heritage hidden, a not-uncommon response to the antisemitism of their era. The revelation hit Rae hard. He began exploring Jewish culture with unexpected intensity, dated Jewish women exclusively, and eventually married Arlene Perly, agreeing to raise their three daughters in the Jewish faith. Today, the man who was raised Anglican is a member of Holy Blossom Temple, a Reform Jewish congregation in Toronto.

This personal journey from concealment to embrace mirrors something in Rae's political life as well: a willingness to reconsider received wisdom, to change course when the evidence demands it, even when it makes for uncomfortable explanations.

From Liberal Volunteer to Socialist MP

Rae's first taste of politics came in 1968, when he volunteered on Pierre Trudeau's campaign for the Liberal Party leadership. That same year, he worked on the federal election campaign of Liberal candidate Charles Caccia, beginning a friendship that would outlast their shared party affiliation. At the University of Toronto, where Rae studied alongside future rival Michael Ignatieff (they were roommates for a time), he was known as a bright and engaged student.

A Rhodes Scholarship took him to Oxford, where he studied under the legendary philosopher Isaiah Berlin at Balliol College. His thesis was a critique of the cultural imperialism embedded in early British socialism—specifically the condescending attitudes of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, founders of the Fabian Society who believed that socialist ideals should be exported to "less developed" peoples whether they wanted them or not. The topic foreshadowed Rae's lifelong discomfort with ideological rigidity.

In Britain, Rae also did social work, helping squatters find legal rental housing in London. This hands-on exposure to poverty and housing insecurity deepened his commitment to social justice. When he returned to Canada in 1974, he joined not the Liberals of his university days but the New Democratic Party (NDP), the social democratic party that represented organized labor and the Canadian left.

By 1978, Rae had won a seat in Parliament, defeating Progressive Conservative Tom Clifford by just 420 votes in the Toronto riding of Broadview. He was thirty years old.

The Motion That Brought Down a Government

Rae quickly made a name for himself as the NDP's finance critic—the party's designated skeptic of government economic policy. In December 1979, he got his chance to make history.

Joe Clark's Progressive Conservative government had been in power for only eight months when it introduced a budget that included an eighteen-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline. The budget was unpopular, but Clark's minority government expected to survive because the Liberals, still recovering from Pierre Trudeau's temporary retirement, seemed unlikely to force an election.

Rae introduced a subamendment to the budget motion, declaring that the House of Commons did not approve of the government's fiscal policy. It was a parliamentary maneuver—a way of framing the vote as a direct repudiation of Clark's leadership. When the motion passed, Clark's government fell. The ensuing election returned Trudeau to power and left Clark as a footnote in Canadian history: the youngest prime minister, and one of the shortest-serving.

It was Rae's first experience with the power of a well-timed procedural move. It would not be his last.

The Long Road to Premier

In 1982, Rae made a fateful decision. The Ontario NDP was in disarray after a poor showing in the 1981 provincial election, and party leader Michael Cassidy had resigned. A delegation of provincial legislators came to Ottawa to recruit Rae as Cassidy's replacement. He initially declined.

Then came the phone calls. Stephen Lewis, a former Ontario NDP leader and one of the party's most respected figures, urged him to reconsider. Eleven of the party's twenty-one legislators endorsed his candidacy. The labor movement threw its weight behind him. Rae relented.

He won the leadership easily, defeating two rivals at the party convention. But Ontario was what Rae would call "Toryland"—the Progressive Conservative Party had governed the province continuously since 1943, an astonishing forty-two-year dynasty. In his acceptance speech, Rae described the Tory party's Ontario as "essentially a country club in which women and people of colour were not welcome." The media criticized him for the remark. Rae later wrote that it "certainly aroused an angry response which often means a target has been hit."

Before he could even take his seat in the provincial legislature, Rae needed to win a by-election. Three sitting NDP legislators declined to give up their seats for him before former party leader Donald MacDonald finally agreed to step down in the York South constituency. On November 4, 1982, Rae won the by-election against Liberal candidate John Nunziata. It was his fifth election victory in just over four years.

Beating the Liberals to Become Kingmaker

For the next several years, Rae found himself in a three-way struggle for Ontario's political soul. The governing Progressive Conservatives were weakening, but it wasn't clear who would benefit: Rae's NDP or the Liberals under their young leader David Peterson.

The 1985 election produced a remarkable result. The Progressive Conservatives won the most seats—but not a majority. The Liberals came second, just four seats behind. Rae's NDP finished third with twenty-five seats. No one could govern alone.

What happened next would define Rae's reputation as a dealmaker. He entered negotiations with both Premier Frank Miller and opposition leader Peterson. Then, in a move that surprised many in his own party, Rae signed the "Liberal-NDP Accord"—a formal agreement in which the NDP would support a Liberal government for two years in exchange for the implementation of certain progressive policies.

Rae had personally favored a full coalition, with NDP members serving in cabinet. But he didn't push the case, and Peterson later said he wouldn't have accepted a coalition anyway. Instead, the arrangement gave the NDP influence without responsibility—and gave Peterson the chance to become premier.

On June 18, 1985, Rae moved a motion of non-confidence against the Miller government. For the second time in his career, a government fell on his motion. Lieutenant-Governor John Black Aird asked Peterson to form a new government, ending the Progressive Conservative dynasty that had lasted longer than most Canadians could remember.

The Peterson minority government proved popular. With NDP support, it implemented pay equity legislation, ended the controversial practice of "extra-billing" by doctors, and established campaign spending limits. Rae criticized specific policies but never moved to bring down the government he had helped create.

Taking On Conrad Black

In early 1986, Rae found a target that would crystallize his political persona: Conrad Black, then one of Canada's most powerful businessmen.

Black held a controlling interest in Dominion Stores, a major grocery chain. When the company went through a restructuring, Black withdrew sixty-two million dollars from the employee pension fund—at a time when many laid-off workers couldn't receive their severance pay. The provincial government had quietly granted permission for the withdrawal.

Rae was incandescent. In a legislative debate, he called Black "that most symbolic representative of bloated capitalism at its worst." The Liberal government declined to act. But Rae had established himself as someone willing to name names and take on the powerful.

The Election No One Expected

By 1990, the political landscape had shifted again. Peterson's Liberals had won a massive majority in 1987, reducing the NDP to nineteen seats. Rae himself had barely held on, defeating a high-profile Liberal challenger by only 333 votes. The Progressive Conservatives, who had dominated Ontario for four decades, were reduced to a rump of sixteen seats.

Then Peterson made a miscalculation. With two years remaining in his mandate, and with strong approval ratings, he called an early election for September 1990. He expected to cruise to another victory.

He was wrong.

Something had changed in Ontario. A recession was beginning. Voters resented Peterson's decision to call an unnecessary election. And for reasons that surprised even the NDP itself, the party's message suddenly resonated. On election night, Rae's NDP won seventy-four seats—a majority government. Bob Rae, the former socialist MP who had toppled two governments with procedural motions, was now Premier of Ontario.

He was the first person ever to lead a provincial NDP government east of Manitoba.

Governing in a Storm

The timing could hardly have been worse. Rae took office just as Ontario plunged into its worst recession since the 1930s. Revenues collapsed. The deficit exploded. And Rae found himself caught between the expectations of his base and the constraints of economic reality.

His response was the Social Contract—a policy that would define his legacy and ultimately destroy his relationship with the labor movement that had propelled him to power.

The Social Contract was an attempt to reduce government spending without mass layoffs. Instead of firing public sector workers, the government would mandate unpaid leave days—what became known as "Rae Days." The policy saved money and preserved jobs, but it infuriated the unions. They had supported the NDP expecting a government that would expand public sector compensation, not impose pay cuts. The fact that Rae had little choice given the fiscal situation mattered less than the sense of betrayal.

Other initiatives also alienated traditional NDP supporters. The government imposed spending cuts that hit social programs. It introduced policies that business groups had long sought. To labor activists, it looked like Rae had abandoned socialism the moment he achieved power.

The 1995 election was a disaster. The NDP was reduced to seventeen seats. The victors were the Progressive Conservatives under Mike Harris, who promised a "Common Sense Revolution" of tax cuts and smaller government. Ontario had swung from its first-ever NDP government to one of its most aggressively right-wing governments in a single election.

The Break with the Left

Rae remained NDP leader until 1996, but his relationship with the party was broken. As the NDP moved leftward in reaction to its defeat, Rae found himself increasingly out of step. He had come to believe that ideological purity was a luxury opposition parties could afford but governments could not. The party, in his view, had learned the wrong lessons from their time in power.

He resigned his membership and spent the next decade practicing law, mediating disputes, and writing about his experience. His memoir of the premier years became required reading for anyone trying to understand how a left-wing government confronts fiscal crisis.

Then, in 2006, he rejoined the Liberals—the party he had briefly belonged to in his youth, before Oxford, before the NDP, before all of it. He ran for the Liberal leadership that year, finishing third behind Michael Ignatieff (his old college roommate) and eventual winner Stéphane Dion.

The Return to Parliament

Rae wasn't finished. In March 2008, he won a by-election in the Toronto Centre riding, returning to the House of Commons as a Liberal MP. He ran again for the party leadership later that year but withdrew before the vote. In 2011, after the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in history under Ignatieff's leadership, Rae was named interim leader.

It was a peculiar position. As interim leader, he was explicitly barred from seeking the permanent leadership. His job was to hold the party together while it chose a new direction. That direction turned out to be Justin Trudeau, Pierre Trudeau's son, who won the leadership in 2013 and would go on to become prime minister two years later.

Rae announced his retirement from Parliament in June 2013. He was sixty-four years old and had been elected to federal and provincial legislatures eleven times. But his public career wasn't over.

From Politician to Diplomat

In retirement, Rae reinvented himself as a specialist in Indigenous rights and international human rights. He joined a law firm focused on representing Aboriginal clients and became the chief negotiator for James Bay area First Nations in their dealings with the provincial government. He advised Canada's Ecofiscal Commission on environmental policy.

In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—the man whose father's campaign Rae had volunteered on nearly fifty years earlier—appointed him as Canada's special envoy to Myanmar. The assignment was grim: Rae was tasked with advising the government on its response to the Rohingya crisis, in which Myanmar's military was conducting what the United Nations would later call a genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Rae's report was unsparing. He recommended that Canada recognize the atrocities as genocide and take concrete action to support the Rohingya refugees who had fled to Bangladesh. The government accepted his recommendations.

In July 2020, Trudeau announced that Rae would become Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations. At seventy-one, the former paperboy, former socialist, former premier, and former Liberal interim leader was taking on one of the most prominent diplomatic roles his country could offer.

He served in that position until 2025, representing Canada on the Security Council and advocating for human rights, climate action, and international cooperation during a period when all three were under strain.

A Family of Public Servants

Rae's career cannot be fully understood without acknowledging his family. His father, Saul Rae, was a distinguished diplomat. His elder brother John became an executive at Power Corporation and a key adviser to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. His uncle Jackie Rae was a television entertainer who hosted shows on both the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and British television.

Tragedy also marked the family. Rae's younger brother David was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1987. Bob donated bone marrow for a transplant, but David died of leukemia in 1989 at the age of thirty-two.

Throughout his public life, Rae's wife Arlene has been a constant presence—a writer and advocate in her own right who has been his partner through electoral triumphs, crushing defeats, and the long process of political reinvention.

The Art of Changing Your Mind

What should we make of Bob Rae's career? He has been accused of betrayal by the left for his actions as premier, and of opportunism by conservatives who saw his switch to the Liberals as proof that he never really believed in anything. Neither accusation quite captures the man.

Rae's career suggests something more interesting: that he has always been willing to update his views when reality demanded it, even when the political cost was severe. As a young Oxford student, he criticized the arrogance of socialists who thought they knew what was best for everyone. As premier, he discovered that governing through a recession required choices that no ideology could simplify. As a diplomat, he found a role where his skills at negotiation and his genuine commitment to human rights could operate without the constraints of party politics.

Whether this represents wisdom or inconsistency depends on your perspective. But in an era when politicians are often rewarded for never admitting doubt, Rae's willingness to change course—and to pay the price for it—seems almost quaint.

In December 2025, at the age of seventy-seven, Rae took on a new role: Visitor of Massey College, a graduate residential community at the University of Toronto. It's a ceremonial position, but a fitting one for a man who has spent his life moving between worlds—between parties, between levels of government, between the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics and the quieter work of diplomacy and negotiation.

The paperboy from Washington has come a long way. And if his career teaches anything, it's that the journey isn't always a straight line.