The Current - Bob Rae: "The world is turning upside down"

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

The veteran politician says we are living through a time of upheaval, but he still has hope, as he leaves his post at the United Nations. "If I fall into pessimism or cynicism, then all I'm doing is basically giving up the space to the people who I know would like to do bad things."

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Bob Ray is leaving the political arena once again. It is not his first departure. He left Ontario politics in 1996, after serving as that province's first NDP premier. He left Parliament Hill in 2013, after 15 years as a liberal MP. And now he has left his post as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations. He may not be gone for good, but he is leaving the hub of global diplomacy at a time of great upheaval.

Nationalism and populism are on the rise. The United States is pulling back from international alliances and trade. New technologies are creating disruption. Wars are taking the lives of many and deepening fissures in our world. And so where does Bob Ray see that world headed? And what is Canada's place in that world? Bob Ray is with me in studio. Good morning.

Morning, Matt? Usually I introduce you as ambassador. Ray. I've introduced you as premier, Ray. What does it like to just be Citizen Bob? It's good. The thing is, I've done this before, and I think of my dad had a career in diplomacy that went for 40 years and then he retired. And my life has been completely, it's been quite different in some ways, similar in other ways. But I've had to learn how to deal with change. Sometimes my own choice, sometimes people's choice. And that's actually helped me to deal with this moment because it's really one of a series of, as Shakespeare says, exits and entrances. And you just have to learn how to turn the page.

And that's really what I'm starting to do now and taking some time to do that. But looking forward to what's next because you've got to keep looking forward as well as backwards. I want to talk about what that change might mean for you. But change is a word that could be applied to the world that we're in right now. Absolutely. It feels really unsettling to a lot of people. And I wonder, how would you describe the world that we're in right now? Well, there was a week at the UN at the end of February when there was a vote in the General Assembly on Ukraine.

And, you know, on the big screen in the General Assembly, when the votes are announced, you can see who's voting where and his little lights go on. And the U.S. was voting with Russia and with Belarus and with, Belarus. North Korea and rejecting the idea that the General Assembly would criticize the Russians for their aggression in Ukraine. And I turned to my team and I said, take note of that screen. Take note of this moment and this screen because it's a real signal that the world is turning upside down.

And I feel that very strongly. I feel that with the election of President Trump, but not just the election of President to Trump, a number of other things that you describe in your introduction, it is a world turned upside down. And of course, it's unsettling. It's completely unsettling. How else could you describe it? How do you understand that?

I mean, what has led us, the populism part, but also just the sense that alliances are fraying, the institutions that perhaps people thought were much more durable than they are now, are crumbling? How do you understand how we got here? Well, it's a long story. I'm going to, one of my projects coming up is I'm going to write a book about it. I'm going to write a book about not only my own experience at the UN, but more broadly about what's happened. And I think in many ways, you've got to appreciate the dilemma that we have in life is that we, as McLuhan put it this way, which I think is so correct. He said, you know, we go through life looking at the rearview mirror.

We look at what's been and we think that that's it. And I'm older than you, so I'm part of a baby boom generation that we just thought it's all going to get better. It's just all going to move forward. The world is going to become more democratic. The world's going to become more like us. And life will go on and everything will improve. And, you know, if ever we continued in that sort of naive fantasy, it should surely come to an end now. And we do have to understand better what are the trends.

and you describe them. Some of it is technology, which is we're in the middle of this digital revolution, and we don't fully know and understand exactly all the elements of it, but it's transformative. We've also seen a real shift in the patterns of economic growth and the distribution of wealth, which has really meant that for a whole lot of people in our society, life is not affordable and it's not secure. And they think the system is rigged against them. Yes, and they'll, and they fall prey to. part of what's coming out of this technology and social media

with stuff which is giving them all kinds of theories and ideas that are just also lies and various ways of manipulating people. But we're looking at a generation of voters now, not only in Canada but around the world, and not just voters, but people who are participating in political life in some way, they don't trust institutions and they don't trust what they're hearing. When they hear me on the radio, they don't trust me.

When they respond to my social media comments, they just tell me to get lost. You don't know what you're talking about. And that's what gives rise to these flips. You don't quite know which direction they're going to go in. But we are in this world now. This is the world we're in. It is a deeply unsettling place.

And globally, what you see is more conflict, more resentment among and between countries about their relative position in the world and how some are doing and some are not doing. It's complicated. But we do have to try to understand it and then try to see what are the things we can do and how do we, what does Canada have to do? But more importantly, what do we all have to do together to get us through this? You have a speech at Queen's University recently.

Yes. And the speech was 1984 was a warning, not a signpost. Right. What should we take from Orwell's 1984? Well, first of all, the point of the speech was to say, you know, a lot of people sort of talk about Orwell and what's happening in the world. And then they sort of say, so this is why we're doing. what we're doing as some kind of justification. And I get quite annoyed about that because I think it's just so wrong.

But if you think about it, you know, he described three continents that were the geopolitics between three powers and the way in which disinformation worked, the way in which lying worked and propaganda worked, and the way in which governments would manipulate people. And also, he talked a lot about the nature of a surveillance society, which is, is something we now live in. We didn't necessarily live in it in 1949 or 1950 when Orwell wrote the book, but we certainly live in it today. And Orwell is probably one of the few writers from the 20th century

who was writing in the mid-century that has something to say directly to us that is not outdated. You mentioned being in the General Assembly. What is it that is acting as a restraint? to any country that wants to throw its weight around right now? Well, I think the only thing that's a real restraint is fear of consequences. And are there any consequences? Well, there are consequences in terms of failure, loss of life, economic disruption,

other things that happen when you get things wrong and when you guess wrong about what will happen if we do this. But in terms of organized international consequences, Those are difficult to do, and we're finding out just how difficult it is to do them. I mean, you ask in part because you have a war in Ukraine that continues. Yeah. Russia continues unavated. You have a war in Gaza that has left Gaza in rubble.

You have a civil war in Sudan with tens of millions displaced and 150,000 people killed. Where are the mechanisms to stop that from happening? Where are the mechanisms to rein people in? Are there? Well, the foundational principle of the charter is that the mechanism is the Security Council, which is supposed to be the steward of peace and security. And the reality is the Security Council can't function that way because five countries have a veto. And unless those five countries agree on what will be done and then can convince other nation states

to take the steps necessary to intervene, intervention does not happen. or if it happens, it's extremely ineffective. And so that, I think, is one of the central, the real central weakness of the current system that I often quote this line, Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher, said, you know, if you have justice, but you have no enforcement,

then justice is impotent. It's powerless. But on the other hand, if you have power, without any justice, you have tyranny. Now, he was writing that line about four or five hundred years ago, and it's very true today. That's exactly the situation in which the world finds itself. So the question for us is, how do we make the instruments of justice, if you like, the consequences of crime? How do we make those more real at the international level? And that's a huge challenge, but you've got to define the problem before you can figure out, well, what are we going to do about that?

And the answer is, as long as you've got three of the great powers who are absolutely not interested in using multilateralism as a real instrument of engagement, we're in deep trouble. And that's the trouble we're in right now. And it's not good trouble. It's bad trouble. But I refuse to be pessimistic. I refuse to say, well, that's the end of this. It's not good enough to do that. We have to figure out, well, then what is it that we need to do?

to make things better. But you know, a lot of people will do that. Yes. Well, a lot of people are doing that. Yeah, and long before you were at the UN, and you mentioned your father, he, Saul Ray, held the post that you just left as ambassador to the United Nations 50 years before you did. In 1973, your father spoke with CBC host Harry Elton. Have a listen to this.

Mr. Ray, does Canada still care as much about the United Nations as it did when Lester Pearson was at the head of external affairs, and then subsequently the Prime Minister of Canada? I think the answer to your question is definitely, yes, that our interest in the United Nations has been a consistent one from its founding and from our very first period of membership. The problems have changed. The United Nations itself have changed, but our interest has been a sustained and a continuing one. You believe in the United Nations. Yes. I do. In fact, I hadn't heard that interview before, so thank you for giving that to me.

and listeners may notice a certain similarity in the voice that my father and I have, although his was a little faster in that interview than it often is. But he, yes, I do. I still believe in, well, I believe in the idea of the UN. Hi, I'm Sarah Nicole Landry, and I'm the host of the Papaya podcast where each week I ask curious questions to people with incredible stories or expertise in their fields. I'm somebody who has found so much inspiration in storytelling and learning from them, and I wanted to bring that to a podcast where each week we walk away learning something

that might just change our lives for the better. Check us out every Monday on the Papaya podcast. See you there. What would you say to somebody who doesn't? And in part because they have heard never again and we see never again in some context happening again. Do you know what I mean? I would say to them and I would say to you,

that Richard Holbrook, who was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. 25 years ago, had a really good comment where he said, don't blame Madison Square Gardens every time the Knicks lose. And what did he mean by that? He meant understand something, and that is that it's the member states that determine what the U.N. does. It's the countries of the world that determine what the U.N. does. So I keep pushing back when people say the U.N. has failed.

And I said, the UN has failed because member states have failed. And I've tried to describe the problem in the Security Council, but there's many other problems. The fundamental question for Canadians is, what are we prepared to have Canada do? When people say to me, why can't the UN do this? I said, well, do you want Canada to send troops? How many troops do you want them to send? Where do you want them to go? What do you want them to do?

And then people say, well, not exactly. Can't the UN do that? I said, well, the UN is us. The UN is not some sort of abstract body. The UN is made up of the member state. So every time you want the UN to do something, ask yourself the question, is that what I want my country to do? And how do I want my country to do that effectively? So I think my father was implying this when he says the UN has changed.

What he meant was the membership of the UN has changed and evolved. And the situations facing the UN have changed. But the idea of having a multilateral, universal agency that represents all the world in all of its aspirations, if we got rid of it, one day we'd have to figure out, well, what do we do to make it happen? You know, the UN is the climate treaty. The UN is hundreds of treaties and agreements around the world that have been signed by member states. Do they always live up to them? No.

Are we living up to our obligations under the Paris Treaty? Is Canada living up to our obligations under the Paris Treaty? The answer is, no, we're not. That's a real problem for Canada, but it's a problem for every country. One of the last times we spoke, you kind of poked away at what you said was my skepticism around some of the discussions that were happening in the United Nations as to whether they would lead to concrete change. I mean, I'm happy to admit to skepticism as a journalist, but I wonder how you keep that at bay. Or not even skepticism. Cynicism is much more dangerous than skepticism.

Given what you have seen, how do you keep that at bay? Well, the first thing I'd say is that, you know, my observation would be journalists are professionally skeptical. You're probing. You're looking at questions. You're wondering. You're looking at historical comparisons. My frame in life has been different than that. I mean, I've mainly been a political actor of some kind, but I've sort of been in the arena, one arena or another. and at every stage of my political progression or decline, however you describe it, it's been the same thing. It's been about how do we fix this problem and how do we engage with it?

How do we make it better? And if I fall into pessimism or cynicism, then all I'm doing is basically giving up the space to the people who I know would like to do bad things with global institutions and are doing bad things. in the world right now, in various degrees. And I'm not prepared to do that. Even after leaving the UN, I'm not,

this isn't an obituary interview. I mean, I'm going to carry on doing things and staying involved and engaged. But I think the more you come out of an institution as I've just come out of my job, you do start to reflect on things, and you do also start poking a bit of fun at the institution to say, come on,

Every time you hear a speech to say, you know, no one left behind. And I sort of say, what are you talking about? Billions are being left behind. How can you keep on mouthing these platitudes, which I do sometimes, and say, you know, this is really serious. But on the other hand, you know perfectly well that if the UN didn't exist, it would be reinvented very quickly. Really early on in your term, you were in the spotlight for challenging China and Syria on human rights.

Are you worried about Canada's approach to human rights now? You have under the Mark Carney government, a government that is reopening trade relations with China, scooped a couple of our citizens off the streets, with India, which has been accused of the assassination of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil, Saudi Arabia, who ran one of its critics through a bone saw. Is Canada still going to remain a strong voice on human rights if it comes at an economic cost? Well, I think we have to learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time. Can you do that?

I think you do. I think you have to. The fact is our trade with China and India has never stopped. It's important to remember countries don't trade, companies trade, and people have been trading and engaging in commerce in all these countries for a long time. Through all the political and other crises that go on in the world. I've always argued, and this has been a kind of theme of mine with governments in talking to my own government over the years, has been to say, look, we will engage commercially with countries and at the same time we need to find the ways and means to engage not only with them but with other institutions like the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and the Human Rights Council in Geneva to pursue a path where we consistently not only talk about but act on human rights issues. and you can do the two.

You can do both. In fact, most countries in the world do. When we had our argument with Saudi Arabia, which was before the Gashaghi murder, the issue was a tweet that was issued out of the Canadian embassy in Riyadh. And then, you know, they withdrew their ambassador. We would through our ambassador, blah, blah, blah. And then you say, guys, at some point you're going to have to reestablish diplomatic relations

for a whole bunch of reasons, consular issues, trade issues, commercial issues, political issues. You've got to establish dialogue. I mean, I think the exceptional circumstances to say we're not going to engage with a whole bunch of countries politically. You know, we'll shake hands, but we won't do anything. We went through that a bit with Mr. Harper, and we did it a bit with Mr. Trudeau. And I think, frankly, that the steps that Mr. Carney is taking are the necessary steps. we need to take. We need to have stronger relationships with

countries like India and China. We do have to have those relationships. What do you think Canada's place in the world could be? I was going to say, what do you think our place in the world is now? But what do you think it could be? I constantly hear people saying Canada's got to lead on this and lead on that. And I say to people

it's not about leading as much as it is about being part of the project that we believe in. We believe in democracy. We believe in human rights. rights. We believe in peace and security. We believe in international institutions. We also believe in our own economic self-interest. This is not new. People say, oh, that's all new. I said, that's not new. When did we ever stop being interested in what was going on in our economy

in terms of trade and everything else? But one of the exciting things that's happening at the UN is it more and more countries who are middle powers who have the most at stake in the building stronger internet multilateral institutions and there are a lot of those institutions in the world not just the UN but a lot of them is are we going to be a reliable steady effective member of that group ready to do what we need to do which is why I think our defense has to be more robust I think our development policies have to be more robust, and I think our diplomacy has to be more robust. I don't think you abandon one in favor of the other. I think you do all three, and that's the kind of engagement that I think is happening, and I think it needs to happen

more and more. But Canadians themselves need to understand that it's not about the rhetoric of what we say. It's also about what we do. What do we actually do? And if the gap between what you say and what you do gets too big, then you lose credibility. I see us being a steady, reliable, persistent, constant partner across the waterfront of issues. And the issues, as I said in my last speech at the UN, is not just about peace and security. And I said that partly because the U.S. has made a point in the U.N. of saying, let's get back to the basics of the U.S., which is peace and security. I said, if you actually look at the origin of the U.N., it was created by people who had come out of the Second World War, but they also had come out of 20 years of absolutely self-destructive

economic and political behavior. Economic and political. The economic behavior of all of the world between 1920 and 1940 was atrocious and drove us into a deep recession. And a depression. And a depression. And to, you know, the dark valley that created the conditions that led to fascism and Nazism and all of that. And we need to look back at that era and understand better that what happened in that era is as much a lightstone for us as the Second World War itself. What are you going to do? You said that this is not an obituary interview.

What are you going to do next? An exit, the final accident interview. What are you going to do next? Well, I'm obviously reflecting a lot about what's going on. I'm going to write about that. I'm going to do some teaching. I've had some talks with Queen's University where I, you know, I gave a lecture last week.

They want me to come back and continue to work with them. I'll do some work at UFT with Victoria College and the Monk School where I'm still a distinguished, distinguished, not ex-stinguished fellow. So I'll be busy and I'll be doing some public speaking as well. When you have done this before, when you have left public office, you read this sonnet by Shakespeare. Yes. Sonnet 25.

Yes. Why that? Well, because it's, to me, it is. such a wonderful reminder to myself and to everybody else that you can have all the success you want in battle and yet at the end

that's never going to those things come and go. Do you want to read it? I don't know it off by heart, but I don't know it off by heart but I'll read it I'll read it with pleasure. I was hoping you would have it for me. So let those in favor with their stars of public honor

and proud titles boast whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars, and look for joy in that I honor most. Great princes' favorites, their fair leaves spread, but as the marigold at the sun's eye, and in themselves their pride lies buried, for at a frown, they in their glory die. The painful warrior, famous for worth, after a thousand victories once foiled, is from the Book of Honor raised quite, and all the rest forgot for which he toiled. then happy I, that love and am beloved, where I may not remove nor be removed.

So much of what goes on in life is up and down, and there are failures and disasters, and you can't let yourself be judged by that because these things come and go. Your job will come and go, my job comes and goes, all these things come and go. what lasts and what's permanent is love. Bob Bray, we'll talk again. In the meantime, thank you for being here. Bob Bray, Canada's now former ambassador to the United Nations. He was with me here in our Toronto studio.

You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.