Hon. Bob Rae, Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy | Policy: Canadian Politics and Public Policy
SPS Matthews Fellow, the Honourable Bob Rae, reflects on Trump’s new National Security Strategy in the latest issue of Policy: Canadian Politics and Public Policy.
Date
Thursday January 8, 2026Location
Robert Sutherland Hall Room 202Once heralded – and criticized – as a uniquely Canadian way of defining racial categories, the visible minority concept is being retired from government terminology. This presentation details the rise and fall of “visible minority,” highlighting the unresolved tension between racial classification systems that simultaneously acknowledge racial difference while obscuring structural racial inequality.
Debra Thompson is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. She is the author of The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (2016) and The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging (2022) and is a contributing columnist for the Globe and Mail.
Eugene Lang, Interim Director of the School of Policy Studies, joined Ian Brodie, former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and professor of political studies at the University of Calgary, on John Ivison's National Post podcast to comment on the Carney government and its progress on its agenda at the end of 2025.
Listen to "Ivison: Carney's quandary--political will blocked by bureaucratic won't" here.
SPS Interim Director Eugene Lang spoke with Shaye Ganam of Global News (Edmonton) about the ways that Canada's defence spending will shift federal priorities.
SPS Interim Director Eugene Lang and RA Brigid Waddingham are in the Globe and Mail that the federal government's defence funding commitments—to reach the NATO 3.5% of GDP benchmark by 2035—will force significant fiscal and policy tradeoffs leading to a re-defined role for the federal government in general.
Read the full Globe and Mail article here (subscription required).
Originally published in the Queen's Gazette. Read the article here.
Bob Rae's lecture was also covered by the Kingston Whig Standard and the Queen's University Journal.
Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy
PC, CC, O.Ont, KC
School of Policy Studies
Hon Bob Rae, PC, CC, O.Ont, KC
Bob Rae has been deeply engaged in a full range of public policy issues at the international, national, and provincial levels of government throughout a career that stretches for more than half a century.
Most recently he served as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York from 2020-2025, including a term as President of the Economic and Social Council, one of only three Canadians elected in their personal capacity to preside over UN Charter bodies since 1945.
Mr. Rae served as Premier of Ontario from 1990-1995, and interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 2011-2013. He was elected to federal and provincial parliaments 11 times between 1978 and 2013. He has been honoured by the alumni of both bodies for his distinguished service.
Mr. Rae was educated in Ottawa, Washington DC, and at the International School of Geneva. and received his Honours B.A. in Modern History from the University of Toronto, an M.Phil in Politics as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College in Oxford University, and graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1977.
He led the restructuring of the Canadian Red Cross, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and chaired the board of the Royal Conservatory of Music. He also wrote “Lessons to be Learned” on the Air India bombing, and “Ontario a Leader in Learning” - a study of the Ontario higher education system. He was named to the Security and Intelligence Review Committee by then Prime Minister Chrétien.
Mr. Rae’s return to Parliament for the constituency of Toronto Centre in 2008 led to his appointment as Foreign Affairs spokesman for his party, and to his election as interim Leader in 2011. In 1996-99 and between 2013 and 2020 he taught law, politics, public policy at the University of Toronto. He was the Wilson Professor of Public Policy at Victoria University in the University of Toronto from 2016 to 2020. He is the author of nine books and reports on politics and public policy.
Bob Rae is a Privy Councillor, a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, and has numerous awards and honorary degrees from around the world. He is married to Arlene Perly Rae, a writer and public advocate on issues affecting women and children. They have three daughters and six grandchildren.
On November 20th, the School of Policy Studies appointed the Honourable Bob Rae, 25th Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, 21st Premier of Ontario, and Former Member of Parliament, as the Matthews Faculty Fellow in Global Public Policy.
This obituary was originally published by Queen's University Office of Advancement.
Dr. Courchene's obituary was also published in the Globe and Mail on 25 November 2025. See "Economist Tom Courchene had an 'uncanny ability' to anticipate public policy needs."
Budget 2025 was a missed opportunity to impose change on a complacent, top-heavy public service. Cuts are coming to the public service, 40,000 in total,1000 of which are to be executive positions. The result is a worsening of the ratio of executives to non-executives.
In a publication with the C.D Howe Institute, SPS's Brigid Waddingham and Eugene Lang examine the net impacts of budget commitments on the size and structure of the public service.
