We've had enough Rae days | 27May2006

“I made mistakes before I was in politics, I made mistakes when I was in politics, I made mistakes as premier. I can only tell you I have learned from those mistakes and I am the wiser for them.”

Anyone who followed Bob Rae’s record of neo-liberalism both before, during and after his premiership isn’t surprised that he’s now emerging as a serious Liberal leadership contender with perhaps one of the largest political campaign machines replete with an array of ex-Chrétien and ex-Martin strategists.

After all, Rae has been doing the dirty work of the Liberals for some time.

His Review of Post-Secondary Education was a case in point. Just days after announcing the tuition fee freeze in Ontario, the McGuinty government announced that Bob Rae would be heading up a “review” of post-secondary education. And who better to pave the way to getting rid of the tuition fee freeze than Bob Rae, a former NDP Premier who led a party that, at least on paper, opposed tuition fees altogether.

Rae’s “Review” was little more than a replay of the battle fronts he opened up as NDP Premier between 1990 and 1995. Under Bob Rae, the province of Ontario eliminated up-front grants for students, tripling student debt with one blow.

At the same time, Rae was advocating an income-contingent loan-repayment schemes that would have allowed tuition fees to skyrocket.

Income-contingent loan-repayment schemes “allow” students full access to debt as a means of paying for rising tuition fees, then that growing debt is paid off after graduation in accordance with income. Those with low income pay forever because, of course, interest accumulates; those with high income can pay off their loans quickly. In every country in the world with tuition fees, ICLR schemes have also paved the way for massive tuition fee increases since students were at liberty to borrow large sums to pay for fees, and governments simply cut back the level of public funding invested in
education.

ICLR schemes were later nearly implemented federally by then-HRDC Minister Lloyd Axworthy, until a massive pan-Canadian protest by students in January, 1995, forced him not only to back down, but into another cabinet position.

Reducing public funding and charging user fees for higher education is the thin edge of the privatization wedge.

Increasing fees mean that greater portions of the cost are paid directly by those who use the system and all evidence shows that those with the least are hurt the most when user fees are applied. In addition, when public charges user fees for public institutions, it narrows the gap between private institutions who sell education for a profit. The higher tuition fees are at public institutions, the higher the fees at private institutions.

Unsurprisingly, Rae’s Review recommended the full-deregulation of tuition fees and ICLR schemes as part of his vision for funding colleges and universities in Ontario.

Rae’s premiership was notable for more than just his attacks on students. He was a premier which, in his first six months in office, enjoyed an unprecedented 70 per cent approval rating. But in the succeeding three years of broken promises and betrayals, Bob Rae’s support fell to an historic low of 6 per cent.

During the election, the NDP had promised public auto insurance that would, in effect, reign in the power of the private insurance industry and improve the lives of ordinary working people. But rather than standing up to the right wing business lobby, Bob Rae quickly capitulated. To this day, the failure of the NDP to deliver public auto insurance stands out as among the great betrayals of Bob Rae’s tenure.

And then he took actions that were a direct affront to his social-democratic base.

He launched a campaign to demonize the most vulnerable in society by hiring welfare cops to investigate so-called “welfare fraud.” He launched this attack by accusing the Somali community of stealing welfare money to fund “warlords” in Somalia. He also cut international students off OHIP and forced them to purchase private health insurance for basic healthcare.

The racism of this kind of scapegoating was appalling – playing into the racist climate of the early 1990s, whose most horrific manifestation was the Canadian Airborne Regiment’s torture and murder of Shidane Arone during a “peacekeeping” tour in Somalia.

And Rae was opening the door to a war on the poor. Mike Harris walked through that door, cutting social assistance benefits by a massive 21 per cent (eleven years later, this cut has never been restored).

It was also under Bob Rae that the party of labour opened up bona fide collective agreements with public sector workers and imposed wage freezes and the hated “Rae Days” – reducing the pay of public sector workers by 10 full days each year.

This “Social Contract” was a brazen assault on working people and helped build the confidence of Mike Harris who, once in office, promptly launched a nearly 10 year battle on working people and trade unionists (after quickly dispensing with the anti-scab legislation that Rae had implemented as an olive branch to labour for doing the dirty work of gutting collective agreements.)

Even on the issue of same sex benefits, despite introducing legislation to recognize such benefits, Rae allowed a free vote on the issue in the Ontario legislative assembly where the government’s own legislation was defeated when 12 NDP MPPs voted against the legislation. It should be noted that there was no free vote allowed when the Social Contract legislation was put to the Legislative Assembly.

But Bob Rae’s neo-Liberal tendencies did not simply manifest themselves in office. As early as 1985, when the Ontario Tories held only four more seats than the Liberals, Rae initiated the “Liberal-NDP Accord” in which the NDP agreed to support a Liberal government for two years, in exchange for the implementation of some progressive policies.

Within months, the Progressive Conservatives were defeated and the Liberals formed a government under David Peterson, backed by the NDP. Two years later, the New Democratic Party was rewarded with a massive Liberal victory (95 out of 130 seats) and the NDP was reduced from 25 to 19 seats.

Bob Rae cut his political teeth in the 1968 Liberal Leadership race when he, along with his roommate Michael Ignatieff, supported Pierre Trudeau.

By 2002 Bob Rae had publicly condemned then-NDP MP Svend Robinson for his visit to Palestine, chastised the federal NDP caucus for marching in Quebec City with the anti-globalization protests, and for failing to fully embrace the “Third Way” model of social democracy popularized by British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair. His views were summarised in his editorial in the National Post titled: Parting Company with the NDP.

Since 2000, when Bob Rae was given the “Order of Canada” he has become frontman of choice for the Liberals both federally and provincially. From “mediating” the federal government’s refusal to recognize first nations’ fishing rights in Burnt Church, NB to advising the federal Liberals on avoiding a public inquiry into the 1985 Air India explosion, to developing an exit strategy on the tuition fee freeze in Ontario, to “assisting” with constitution talks for the US-backed occupation government in Iraq, to mediating the struggle for self-determination for the Tamil population of Sri Lanka, Bob Rae has “been there, done that.”

And there is one more point to make. If Bob Rae does win the Liberal leadership, then the contractions of social democracy will be staring the federal NDP squarely in the face. Every critique of Bob Rae’s record, is, in effect, a critique of the NDP – like a gun that fires both forwards and backwards at the same time.

In Ontario, this contradiction has been paralyzing for the NDP. It is after all, difficult to condemn the Liberals for allowing tuition fees to rise after a two year freeze, when the NDP allowed it to increase by 57 per cent under their watch. And during the last Ontario election, the NDP did not campaign effectively on some of their best post-secondary education policy, namely, the promise to restore the grants eliminated by Bob Rae and reduce tuition fees by 10 per cent. This was tragic because they missed an opportunity to generate real support for an alternative vision, a vision that could have helped lay the groundwork for the fight against Bob Rae in his capacity as Advisory to Dalton McGuinty.

Pundits are speculating that if more Chrétien loyalists throw their weight toward Bob Rae as current leadership contenders drop out, then Rae may very well take the leadership. If that is the case, then the federal NDP may well be faced with its biggest challenge to date: its own record in provincial office.