Blaming Bob Rae is still in fashion

Everyone else does, Left, Right and Centre, regardless of justification

Commentary from Larry Solway

  One of my bitterest memories from the weeks I knocked on doors during the 1999 Provincial Election in Ontario was a remark by an elderly woman in a Senior's Home in a workingman's part of my riding.
  "Ma'am," I said respectfully, "This building was built by Bob Rae and the NDP."
  "I couldn't care less," she huffed and walked briskly by me.
  The other sad memory is seeing a TV news clip with an Algoma worker in Sault St. Marie who said "I'm voting for Mike Harris. He has the right idea." Did he care that his job still existed only because Rae and the government of the day made a deal with Dofasco to put the company into new worker ownership. He did the same thing when he saved Spruce Falls Pulp and Power - and the city of Kapuskasing.

Bob Rae spoiled it for me
  Friends who ran and people who canvassed during the Federal Election kept meeting the same response at the door: "Bob Rae spoiled it for me forever."
  I'm not ready to take up the cause of the man who is, more than anyone else, individually responsible for the decline of the NDP. I say "individually" because the malaise runs deeper than what one man did or didn't do. That he seems today to be less of a Social Democrat and more of a booster of alliance with the Liberals doesn't really matter. How long can we make him a scapegoat? Even more, how long can Ontario and the rest of Canada, heap blame on one man who took power (and even he was surprised) in the depths of a recession.
  But his name is anathema to many of the party faithful. He managed to not only make no inroads into the halls of influence where Tories and Bay Street Liberals reign supreme, but he alienated huge segments of our historic following. His Rae Days, his Social Contract, his arbitrary compromise of collective bargaining among teachers, health care workers and civil servants, created a rift that may never heal.
  But what is worse is "We have come to truly bury Rae and not to praise him," to bowdlerize Shakespeare. He is such a pariah that, to paraphrase again "We are ready to inter the good he has done." Suggest for example, that Toronto area gridlock might have been much less if we had continued with the plan to build new subways, regardless of the cost. The Harris government, with its cost-cutting zeal stopped all the subway except for Shepherd Avenue. (What is still wrong with this picture? That somehow Mayor Mel Lastman got what he wanted and Liberal Frances Nunziata of York was denied the Eglinton subway.) What the government of the day did was what government are supposed to do in times of economic peril: public works.
  Do we recall with any sense of loss that it was that government that built thousands of units of affordable housing, encouraged and simulated financing for thousands of co-op residences, built homes for seniors, and in fact, was the only employer of any size in the recession-stricken construction industry? Do the civil servants who were either fired or retired by the Tories think it was better to lose their jobs than to reduce their hours so everyone could continue to work?

Revisiting the Social Contract
  I have this truly crazy idea. Instead of spending millions on Employment Insurance for the suddenly unemployed, would Ottawa resurrect the idea of paying workers the money they lose by working fewer hours? Silly me - I still think government is our last and best hope.
  Back to Bad Old Bob. Do we remember that he was the only government that mounted a real attack on pollution from cars? Not the half-hearted, insignificant emissions-testing of the Harris government. Remember the "carbon tax" that made gas guzzlers pay more for licences. (Do you also remember that the leader of the Rae-haters Buzz Hargrove, was incensed that a pro-union government would do anything to impede the production of cars?)
  I have beefs, but they are not associated with what his opponents, led by the "How do you like Socialism so far" Citizen's Coalition billboards, attacked him for. They hate spending unless it is on "good" causes like tax breaks for millionaires. My irritation comes from the creation of a gambling industry and as I remember, Floyd Laughren's comment that the casinos were a better idea because of all the money leaving Ontario to go to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Which is a variation on "If I don't give it to people, they'll go elsewhere." That's what drug dealers say.
  More disappointment that he backed away under pressure from Insurance Companies, from his promise of state-run car insurance.
  But, and this may be my last gasp in my private "rebuild the Left" crusade, we will not distinguish ourselves by making a pariah of one man. Yes, his name plays like a vulgar noise at the door. Yes, he spent money he didn't have. Yes, he - by his own admission - did not control the zeal of many of his members for radical and instant change. Maybe finally all we can blame him for is that he did not expect to win and he did. Like the dog that chases a car and you ask: "What will he do with it if he catches it?"

Posted: February 19, 2001

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