He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 1987 as a Progressive Conservative, and was a cabinet minister in the government of Bill Davis.
[2] In 1968, McCaffrey attempted to win the Progressive Conservative nomination to run in the June federal election but lost to Kechin Wang.
[12][13] McCaffrey supported Larry Grossman at the Progressive Conservative Party's leadership convention of February 1985.
[7] Following the election, he publicly called on Miller to resign as party leader if the government is defeated on a confidence motion.
The Department of History at the University of Western Ontario now operates a Bruce McCaffrey Memorial Graduate Student Seminar Series named in his honour.