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Leadership candidate ''This is a
profile of a recent
leadership candidate for a
political party. Please relate factual material with citations from external sources or name the source clearly so others can do that.
was Premier of Ontario
? from 1990 to 1995, and NDP-ON leader
?. He joined the
Liberal Party of Canada in 2006 to pursue the job of
LPC leader at the
Liberal Party of Canada leadership convention, 2006.
Rae had not been involved in the NDP in some years. In a November 2006 CBC interview with Carol McNeil he referred to that party, at least in Ontario, as having made a choice not to govern or be a viable choice to govern, but instead to remain an ideological movement that declares the "public sector good, private sector bad
?" and thus implied it was simply a lobby group
? for
public sector workers.
[+] criticized by former NDP allies
Source: www.uncharted.ca
Rae's critique of the NDP is not one-way. He has many enemies in that party.
NDP-friendly sources claim that "his disastrous administration continues to haunt the Ontario NDP. In the decade following his booting by the electorate, the NDP has virtually disappeared from the public consciousness in Ontario, winning only a handful of the 103 seats in Queen's Park (the Ontario legislature) in subsequent elections.
In a recent article in the Toronto Sun, former colleagues lined up to criticize him.
Former Rae cabinet minister? Peter Kormos?:
"His left wing stances were ones of opportunism. He enjoyed the trappings of the office of premier more than the responsibilities," he said, adding that he doesn't consider Rae to be someone who relates well to the average union worker.
"Have no fear, Mr. Rae is no socialist?. He is very much to the manor born," said Kormos, adding that Rae often appeared uncomfortable greeting workers at plant gates.
Timmins-James Bay? MPP Gilles Bisson?, a backbencher? in the Rae administration:
"Our party was fiercely loyal to Bob when he was premier of Ontario. Through the worst times, our party supported Bob Rae to the nth degree, and to be in a position where he has basically turned on all of us and said,'I don't care about that,' I have a hard time trying to say anything nice about him," Bisson said.
Current Ontario NDP leader? Howard Hampton?:
"Look, Bob Rae is interested in what's good for Bob Rae and I don't think at the end of the day that will provide very good leadership in terms of the issues that we need to address and that was his history in the NDP," Hampton said last week.
"Bob Rae was always interested in promoting Bob Rae, sometimes at the expense of his cabinet colleagues; sometimes at the expense of the whole government; sometimes at the expense of the NDP," Hampton said.
[+] history 1995-2006
After his defeat at the polls in 1995, Rae practiced corporate law and was friendly to business unionists rather than the public sector unions that he blames for his loss in 1995. Most observers blame them also for the subsequent Mike Harris
? administration.
Throughout his campaign for the Liberal leaderhship, Rae has implied that he
learned some unspecified thing from the misadventures of his Premiership and that he's
evolved in some unspecified way since then.
In a recent interview in the
Globe and Mail Rae smuggly pronounced, "I am what I am".
[+] backed by Sorbara
Their common involvement in Retrocom, a scandal involving union pension fund
? money, tied Rae to
Gregory Sorbara in the 1990s. Sorbara is a major backer of Rae's leadership bid.
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