With 11 contenders now running for the Liberal Party of Canada's leadership, or as it's more commonly known, the freak show, Bob Rae stands out as the most dubious of the bunch. Currently acknowledged as being in second place behind Michael Ignatieff, Rae has garnered the support of former Liberal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanj and former Justice Minister Irwin Cutler. One wonders what Rae had to promise these two guys to get their support.
If ever there was a leadership candidate that should be dismissed out of hand, it's Bob Rae. His running for the leadership is even more bizarre than that of Hedy Fry, who you may recall fabricated stories about the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses in BC. Rae is as lacking in principles as he is in the qualities of leadership or ideas for that matter. all one need to do to see how Rae might perform as Prime Minister is to look at his tenure as Premier of Ontario.
Elected in 1990 in a landslide in reaction to what voters perceived to the arrogance of Liberal Premier David Peterson's call for a snap election, Bob Rae and the NDP, his party at that time, arguably did more to damage the Province of Ontario than any other party before or since. The worst recession to hit Ontario since the Great Depression of the 1930s unfortunately also brought about some of the most ill advised government policies since Neville Chamberlain pronounced "peace in our time". For openers, Bob Rae, who had won a Rhodes scholarship during his student days, believed that it was possible for governments to spend their way to prosperity and consequently introduced a budget heavy on public sector spending and carried a deficit of $10 billion.
as the deficits grew from year to year, Rae changed his tune with the introduction of the ‘Social Contract' that brought about ‘Rae Days' (which gave all civil servants 10 days a year unpaid leave) and alienated the NDP's base of public sector unions.
In addition, Rae balked at delivering several campaign promises including the introduction of public auto insurance as well as passing a law that would grant insurance and survivor benefits to same-sex couples.
Perhaps, Rae's biggest blunder was engineering a decline in enrollment in Ontario's medical schools in the mistaken belief that fewer doctors would translate to lowered health care costs. Ruth Greer, who was Bob Rae's Minister Health, launched an active campaign to vilify doctors in the eyes of the public, so that the government would gain sympathy in the government's reducing doctors' salaries. Of course, we now know that the only thing fewer doctors have achieved is an increase in the number of people without doctors and an increase in waiting times between diagnosis and treatment.
It is said that the more things change the more they stay the same. So it is with Bob Rae's attempt to gain the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. It's another one of those quaint truisms about Canadian politics that parties do not matter, since they all serve up the same or similar fare. Hence Scott Brison and Belinda Stronach can go from Conservative to Liberal and David Emerson can go from Liberal to Conservative and Bob Rae can go from NDP to Liberal.
Personally, I think it would be great if Rae won the Liberal leadership, as he might be the final nail in that tired and over-entitled party's coffin. Having fewer parties in parliament might do a lot to alleviate the democratic deficit.
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