Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

'All these things come home'

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 11:57am - 0 Comments

Bob Rae reflects on his time in power in Ontario.

Tags: Bob Rae, NDP, ontario, Steve Paikin, The Agenda

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Emily

Oh happy, happy, charming, charming.

Didn't vote for him then, and wouldn't vote for him now.
Mike T.

If he had run Ontario the exact same way as he did but as the leader of the Ontario Liberal Party instead of the NDP, he'd be Prime Minister today.

Emily

He ran the province on NDP ideology…it had no chance of being anything but a disaster.

Dave

Whatever ideology he ran it on, the practice is awfully similar, in many particulars, to that of on Stephen Harper, nominal Conservative.

Emily

Yes, the left wing and the right wing are almost identical. It's like the political spectrum is a circle ….where both ends meet.

tobyornotoby

No he didn't. He refused to implement no fault single payer auto insurance to the criticism of many NDP'ers and he implemented Rae Days over the objections of unions who later contributed to his defeat. Speaking of Rae Days, those were largely inspired by Chretien-Martin cuts in transfer payments, and similar measures were in place elsewhere (ie. Filmon Fridays in Manitoba).

Ontarians go on about Rae as if he was the inventor of the recession, but that's only because they largely ignored what was happening in the other provinces at the time.

If you're going to honestly rate Rae as a provincial leader, you have to compare him to the other premiers of the day,

Emily

Okay….he sucked.
hosertohoosier

Rae days came about in 1993. The Chretien-Martin cuts to transfer payments didn't come in until the 1995 budget. So your point about transfer payments is a bit off.

tobyornotoby

My mistake. The transfer payment cuts that started under Mulroney- Wilson and continued under Chretien-Martin.

Garnet

As that wouldn't have involved disappointing legions of his supporters with Rae Days etc., you might well be right. Given that, in the end, he handled neither the politics nor the economics well, though, I'm not so sure.

Mike T.

I'm saying he could have done the exact same thing but under a differnet label and people would have bought it. He might be unpopular in some circles but so is Mike Harris and he was once touted as possible leader for the CPC.

MostlyCivil

Ah. The "Ed Broadbent" Effect.

Oft heard in the 80's: "He's a great guy, just with the wrong party."

brooster

Rae's NDP came to power in Ontario just at the onset of a severe economic downturn. His government initially tried to deal with it by committing to deficit budgets as a stimulus measure. When they were vilified by the media and opposition for running up public debt, they did a 180 and cut back on expenditures through measures such as the now-infamous Rae Days (time off without pay for public sector workers).

Ironically, their first response became conventional wisdom among most governments in the industrialized world when the global economy tanked in '08.

As William Shatner says: Is that weird or what?

Emily

That is Keynesian theory, not original to Bob Rae.

brooster

I don't believe I claimed it was original to Rae…merely pointed out that he tried an approach that later gained wide acceptance and that he applied it inconsistently.

Emily

Stimulus works….but only in the short term. The G20 had no other option when they voted for it at their meeting in DC chaired by Bush in 2008.

It bought them time. It kept the wheels turning while they were supposed to go 'into the basement' and solve the underlying problems.

But as they saw the first 'green shoots', they all relaxed, forgot about the basement, and went back to business as usual.

So now they're in a currency war, and cranking up the printing machines.

Amateur Hour

The nearly-always cheerless Nouriel Roubini was roundly heckled when he predicted as much last year. In effect, he said 2008 was the year of capital destruction (markets crash); 2009 is the year of income destruction (job losses/pensions tanking); and 2010 would be the year of the inevitable currency crisis as Quantitative Easing drained the coffers and begat "printing more money".
Emily

Yeah, he's pretty much been right on all of it….even though nobody wants to listen to him.

Seems short-sighted to me….you can't fix anything if you refuse to even look at it…or you just nibble around the edges which is about all we're doing.

But we're a long way from doing anything substantial. It'll take another crash….and this is Oct.

hosertohoosier

A little context would be nice here. Rae Days didn't come close to plugging the hole Rae created. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/paccts/1999/im…
Style

You can use fiscal stimulus in a liquidity trap – when interest rates are pushing the zero bound. You can't use stimulus to offset a policy recession – where the Bank is hiking interest rates to wipe out inflation. I like that Rae doesn't agree with Paiken on this – just points out that he was trying to invest for future growth. Also, a subway to Pearson would be excellent.

Stewart_Smith

I would be interested in what the card-carrying NDPers think about Rae's time in office.

tobyornotoby

Cards are so heavy to carry around …
hosertohoosier

I'm not a Dipper but I know plenty of them. I think it is a divisive issue (though possibly less divisive now that Rae is a turncoat). Version 1 paints Rae as a sellout on auto insurance and the social contract particularly. I've met Howard Hampton before and kind of got the impression that this was his view. Version 2 argues suggests that he did the best he could, and was at least, a more compassionate premier than Peterson or Harris. Of course NDP'ers are constantly engaged in a debate about the importance of winning versus the importance of sticking to principles.

This is different from the cross-party debate on Rae, which tends to turn on the degree to which one blames him for the severity of Ontario's recession. Rae himself is rather self-critical on this point. I remember going to an event where he and Preston Manning talked about a number of issues. Manning discussed a goal of the Reform party as being to bring together fiscally responsible Canadians. Rae joked that he, on the other hand, had sought to bring together fiscally irresponsible Ontarians as premier.

My own (non-NDP) view is that while he was a lousy* premier, he is a very smart man. I think he learned from his tenure as premier, and has largely embraced third way ideas. This is partly because he now has a sense of the political resistance to a radical economic program in Canada, and because he is less inured to socialism. If the Liberal party had made him leader in 2007, he would be the Prime Minister of Canada today.

*The 1990 recession was not his fault, but he bungled the response. He raised welfare payments substantially (33%), which generated dependency and rising welfare rolls. This slowed the recovery and amplified Ontario's budget deficit, rather than stimulating the economy.

Emily

Unless all of Ontario develops Alzheimers, Bob Rae will never be PM.

http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

Why do I get the feeling that your position would change the second he became leader of your party?

Emily

Because you're an idiot.
http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

Always a pleasure, "Emily".

Bryan

While admittedly a lot different in scope, I would've thought Mike Harris cabinet ministers would be unelectable post-2003, and look how many of them are the backbone of the current government.

http://secondthots.blogspot.com Dennis_F

Political leaders live or die by their own record. The latter obviously applies to Rae.

CAPS

I remember those jokes. Here's onw:

Two guys from one of the big banks are talking about how they don't know anybody in the new NDP government.

"I just don't know who to call now." says one.

"Well" says the other, "I know a guy and he has a this maid."

"And she knows somebody in the cabinet?" says the first guy.

"Know somebody? She is in the cabinet." says the second guy.