The following is the text of a speech delivered by United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae to the Advocates Society in Toronto on June 26, 2024.

I am very grateful to the Advocate’s Society for the opportunity to say a few words to you tonight. I have spoken to this dinner before, in 2005, when Linda Rothstein was president. I was introduced by my dear friend Charles Scott, who, sadly, died a few years ago.  I am thinking of him tonight.

I was very glad that the Society recognized Doug Elliott’s contribution to the cause of justice tonight. Doug was at the forefront of the fight for the full recognition of gay rights at a time when the cause was deeply unpopular. He pushed the legal system in critical ways, and I join in the praise for his work.

I have not spent much time in court; in any event, less time than Donald Trump.  And I have a K.C. to prove it.

When I was called to the Bar in 1980, Bud Estey told a great story.  He was recounting that, in some old reports, they used to supply much more of a summary of the oral argument in a case.

Allegedly one report had a nervous counsel starting his argument with these words “My Lord…er my Lord…er…my Lord…my unfortunate client…” The Judge interrupted the lawyer with these words “Keep going counsel, so far I agree with you.”  I must confess I felt much more relaxed after that story.

My own journey to that moment was a circuitous one. I chose my parents wisely and grew up with their love, humour and guidance all around me. My older brother and sister, and then my younger brother David (whose son Chris is at the dinner tonight) put up with me, and I spent my school years in hardship places like Washington DC and Geneva Switzerland.

I came back to Canada and three years at U of T, which I loved, and then went off to Oxford University to pursue graduate work in what Oxford wonderfully called “Politics”.  No nonsense about “Political Science”, which they considered an American affectation.

I got my degree in Politics, and a year later, in the fall of 1972, hit a wall. Overwhelmed by a sudden onset of anxiety and depression, I lost any self-confidence about what could possibly come next.  Many people put it down to “just being upset” or “losing my way” but I knew it was more than that.

I got some help from the “talking cure”, wonderful support from friends and family but I knew that I had to do more than that, and so started working in a housing and legal aid centre in North London (by now the year is 1973), where I worked with a group of lawyers and community activists on a range of issues ranging from homelessness to tenants’ rights.

My therapist mostly listened, and didn’t say much, but one thing he said stayed with me. “You have to get used to failure”.  Ironically, that made me feel much better. He also told me that “your inner voice is a perfectionist bastard and you have to stop listening to him.”

Years later both ideas were confirmed for me. When I was in Israel visiting a high-tech entrepreneur, I asked him how did he decide who to hire? His answer was “I look for people who’ve failed at something. They’re much more likely to succeed because they know the old game of trial and error, that’s what life is about.” On the second point, a friend said that if Super-Ego was at a party he’d be the biggest pain in the ass in the room.

My grandmother, who was living in London at the time, put it another way. She had known a lot of loss and trouble in her life and said, “when you’re in trouble, count your blessings, and laugh and cry a lot, you need to feel these things” and then used a phrase I’ve used a lot since, “Take the human footsteps. One at a time.”

So, I did. I sat the LSAT’s, applied to law school, and kept working at the legal aid centre. My initial encounter with law school was difficult. I began doubting my decision, and I fell behind. The December exams were a sobering wake up call. My contracts prof, David Beattie, told me that I wanted to be a lawyer I needed to get with the program. “Make an effort”. So, perfectionism is not our best friend, but neither is doing a shoddy job.

I found my rhythm in law school thanks to wonderful friends like the late Jim McDonald (who was my colleague at Sack Charney, now Goldblatt Partners) and my legal aid work, teaching, and work at the United Steelworkers.

My first and only time sitting in the Supreme Court of Canada I had helped draft the brief of the United Steelworkers on the constitutionality of the Anti-Inflation Act of 1976. Listening to the counsel who were arguing against constitutionality, I was impressed by the elaborate arguments from lawyers across the country. When Lorne Ingle presented the arguments that I had helped to prepare I thought he was positively brilliant. We argued that the Act interfered with collective agreements, which were contracts under provincial jurisdiction. Property and civil rights, as we all know.

But then I listened to John Robinette, counsel to the federal government. This was the time before loonies and toonies. He pulled out a dollar bill from his pocket. He read out the name of the Governor of the Bank of Canada, showed his signature, and then read out the purposes of the legislation, the “pith and substance” as we say.  Let’s just say he didn’t get carried away by too many complicated arguments.  The law was about trying to protect the value of the dollar. He had some other supporting points and cases and met some of the arguments of other learned counsel. But you get my point. He won the argument.

My great friend Jack Rabinovitch, whose birthday was just a couple of days ago, was a developer and a great negotiator. He used to say that “It’s hard to be smart and angry at the same time”, which I think is one of the smartest things I ever heard. You can be impulsive and lucky but the odds usually go the other way.

When people do something out of character, we often ask “What was he thinking?” My answer is “He wasn’t”.  Thinking didn’t enter into the equation.

Rabinovitch’s wisdom extended to another simple lesson.  “Always leave something on the table. You’ll probably meet that person again, and pressing your advantage to the limit after banging on the table won’t help you the next time.

Which raises the question about what’s wrong with a healthy dose of humour, self-deprecation, and civility, qualities which have, unfortunately, gone out of style. But they are desperately needed in our courts, our parliaments, and even our international assemblies. Soon after my defeat as Premier of Ontario — a date I know is marked in many of your calendars — Arlene reminded me that the best definition of a defeated premier was someone who got into the backseat of a car and…nothing happens.

In addition to working with Goldblatt Partners, I’ve had the good fortune to join two wonderful partnerships — Goodmans LLP and OKT LLP. My big file at Goodmans was the restructuring of the Red Cross – whereas my counsel Ben Zarnett steered our way out of CCAA with brilliance.  At OKT I led the Marrawa negotation with the advice and assistance of a wonderful group of people dedicated to the rights of indigenous people. The firm’s leader is John Olthuis, a tower of integrity and humour who is my good friend and mentor. Very different firms but each with a passionate commitment to serving both their clients and the public good.

Edgar Pisani, a brilliant French politician who was also a frequent visitor to Canada towards the end of his life, has written some very wise words about the challenges of mediation and negotiation. He summed it up in three simple thoughts:  1.  Listen more than you speak (this even applies to advocates — listen to the arguments of your opponents, as well as any questions coming out of the judges; they’re human too).  But for the person in the middle, listening is critical to try and grasp the nuance in what is being said.  Listen for the sake of listening, and not for the sake of just waiting for your turn to speak, or even worse, for your turn to interrupt.  2. Accept the possibility that you might be wrong, and that your assumptions could be incorrect. We’re all fallible, and occasionally we’re all wrong. If you can’t accept that, you’ll probably end up in court and not in mediation.  3.  Use your conduct as a way of allowing the first two ideas to get the space they need.

I have spent much time in elected politics, two levels of parliament, two parties, more often in opposition than in government.  Now I’m representing my country in the United Nations.  The Pisani Protocol, as I call it, is almost never observed, in any of these places. This, in turn, means that many arguments and debate are futile, frustrating, and exasperating.

Rabbi Hillel put it a little differently in his famous three questions.  If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?  But if I am only for myself, then what am I? And, if not now, when?

Hillel’s first question reminds me of another story.  A man comes to church regularly and prays each time to win the lottery.  He is at the end of his rope, and it seems the only source of hope. After the third time making the plea a loud thunder clap a voice cries out from the heavens “Buy a ticket”.  We can’t be afraid to stand up for ourselves, but as we turn to Hillel’s second question, we realize this is not just an argument about brazen self-assertion.  It’s not enough to be for ourselves. We have to be for others as well.

The third question is the call to action. So often, I hear people say “not now, not the right moment”, as if delay by itself, what I once heard dressed up as “strategic patience”, would solve a problem. Don’t let sleeping dogs lie all the time. Wake them up. The walk is ultimately far more important than the talk.

You would expect me to say something more about my current job.

Global institutions are not too strong, they are too weak. We need more resilient governance, not less. The Other is not The Enemy.  There is much more to fear from the resurgence of the nationalism, isolationism, and “know-nothingism” that claims to be “good politics” in today’s world. Like Gulliver, we are tied down by the ropes of misinformation and lies, vetos and the deep hypocrisy of power politics. Setting ourselves free will not be easy.  The Lilliputians have powerful friends.

The great philosopher Blaise Pascal put it simply: “La justice sans la force est impuissante … la force sans la justice est tyrannique.” Justice without law is powerless. But force without justice is tyranny.

In the face of Pascal’s conundrum, the world has tried to make the force of international power subject to the rule of law, through the creation of any number of courts and tribunals around the world, but not enough countries have agreed to put all their shoulders behind this wheel, and as a result we pay a heavy price in the loss of life and wellbeing in too many places.  There are more conflicts today than at any time since the Second World War.

The means we use to communicate and share information are being flooded with lies and hate at a pace and level that is unprecedented. Conspiracy theories, anti-semitism, misogyny, phobias and hatreds of all kinds are spreading at the speed of sound, and being amplified and magnified in ways that Goebbels could only dream of.  The ugliness of political debate has never been greater, and the cowards of hate hide behind pseudonyms as they enter the brawl of social media.

Armed with guns as well as megaphones, the perpetrators of unrest and chaos take many different forms in many different societies.

But despair in the face of all this is not an option. The only path that will work is to commit ourselves to reason, law, civility, and, yes, enforcement. The remedy for disorder is order. Not an order based on repression or dictatorship, but on the rule of law itself, recognizing that the common good of humanity demands no less.

This is not a pipe dream, because it is based on the simple premise that our self-interest and our values align at this “sweet spot”, this place where our freedoms and our survival require us to dedicate ourselves to the rule of law, not just in our own cities and towns and countries, but in a world that cannot be alien or foreign to us because it touches us all so closely, and above all, because it reflects our common humanity.

For all its flaws as a political institution, the United Nations is at the heart of the extraordinary efforts being made every day to save lives, to build communities, and to assist in creating sustainable prosperity around the world. The global UN annual budget is about 75 billion dollars, in a global economy of 100 trillion a year.  Of that, about 10 billion goes to political and peacekeeping work.  The rest is directly helping people.

So, instead of the constant counsels of perfection, I much prefer Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem, where he reminds us…

You can add up the parts

But you won’t have the sum

You can strike up the march

There is no drum

Every heart, every heart

To love will come

But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

That’s how the light gets in

Your happiest and most productive hours should not always be billable. And your greatest triumphs may not be in the courtroom, or parliament, or the United Nations. They will be found in moments of service, in the company of friends and family, in the laughter that comes from great fellowship and invariably from being able to laugh hardest at ourselves. They will come from appreciating great art and music, and singing and dancing as if no one is watching.

Thank you for listening, and occasionally laughing. I remain deeply honoured to be Canada’s voice at the UN, and appreciate the welcome you have given me tonight.