The gay community in Ontario held the Rae government's handling of the bill against the party for many years. In his book On the Fringe: Gays and Lesbians in Politics, the political scientist David Rayside argued that both Rae and Boyd mishandled the bill by miscalculating its ability to pass on a free vote, by failing to pair it with a comprehensive public relations campaign to properly educate voters on why it was needed, and by doing little to manage the misgivings of opposing MPPs until the last minute. Even as late as 2003, Chris Phibbs, a former assistant to Toronto city councillor Kyle Rae, cited the failure of Bill 167 as her primary reason for refusing to seek the NDP endorsement in her own campaign for a city council seat in the 2003 municipal election. The bill's defeat also led to the creation of the activist group Foundation for Equal Families.
