Born in Montreal, Quebec, Spector received a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Political Science, from McGill University in 1970.
Awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Political Science from Columbia University in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1977.
The veteran public servant had been appointed president of the federal government's East Coast regional development body last year in order to clean up ACOA's operations and repair its shady reputation.
In the 1990s and 2000s, he appeared on numerous TV panels in English and French and wrote a column in The Globe and Mail and in Le Devoir.
"[3] The Globe and Mail removed the blog post from its website, saying that Spector fell short of its "editorial standards with respect to fairness, balance and accuracy.
Spector appeared as a witness in early 2008 at the House of Commons of Canada Ethics Committee's hearings on relations between Mulroney and German-Canadian lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, which is formally known as the review of the Airbus settlement.