Robert M. Laxer (1915-1998) was a Canadian psychologist, professor, author, and political activist.

Laxer was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1915 and graduated from McGill University with a B.A. in 1936 and an M.A. in 1939. Laxer joined the Communist Party of Canada during the Great Depression and worked as a freelance journalist until 1941 when he joined the Canadian Army and served druing World War II. Upon returning to Canada in 1947 he became a paid organizer for the Communist Party's successor, the Labour-Progressive Party. Following the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the accusations by Nikita Khrushchev of crimes by Stalin as well as the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, Laxer joined many other disillusioned Communists in resigning from the party. He returned to school and ultimately obtained a doctorate in clinical and learning psychology from the University of Toronto. From 1960 to 1964 he was a lecturer in the University of Toronto's department of psychology and a clinical psychologist at Toronto General Hosptial . He then taught at York University before becoming an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (he became a full professor in 1968).

In 1969 he joined his son, James Laxer as well as Mel Watkins to form the Waffle, a socialist group within the New Democratic Party of Canada. Through the seventies he wrote numerous articles and books advocating Canadian economic independence from the United States and, in particular, Canadian ownership of the oil industry and was appointed by Pierre Trudeau to the board of directors of Petro-Canada which had been created as a state owned crown corporation, in part, due to Laxer's arguments.

In the 1980s, Laxer was active in the Council of Canadians, the peace movement and as an opponent of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement.