Finance Minister Greg Sorbara announces he won’t stay in McGuinty cabinet

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This article was published 26/10/2007 (6880 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – Greg Sorbara, Ontario’s long-serving finance minister and a key architect in the provincial Liberals’ back-to-back majorities, made the stunning revelation Friday that he does not want to be part of the new cabinet that will be sworn in next week.

Just two weeks after the Liberals were re-elected, Sorbara – who got more votes than any politician in the province in the Oct. 10 vote – said he wanted out of cabinet to spend more time with his family.

“There just comes a time when one hears the clock ticking a little bit, and I have realized over the course of these past seven years how much of my energy, how much of my spirit, has been devoted to this enterprise,” an emotional Sorbara said, his voice cracking.

“I was less willing to acknowledge how the other part of my life, and in a sense the most important part of my life, was not receiving that kind of attention.”

With his wife Kate at his side, Sorbara, 61, explained that he hasn’t been able to spend enough time with his six grown children and 10 grandchildren, joking that some of the younger ones need to learn how to throw a baseball as only he can show them.

“My wife and I have massaged this decision since the polls closed on Oct. 10,” Sorbara told a hastily arranged news conference at the legislature.

“I have six kids and each of them have partners, and their lives are so interesting and so attractive to me, and, yet, I can only get little snippets of them.”

Sorbara said the couple agonized over the decision in the weeks that followed the Liberal party’s first back-to-back majority in 70 years.

“That decision has been the most difficult of my political life,” he said, adding that he might not have chosen to leave cabinet had the party been reduced to minority government status.

Sorbara was on the verge of tears as he said it had been an honour to serve as finance minister, and assured his constituents in the suburban Vaughan riding that he would continue to represent their interests.

“This decision will not compromise my commitment to the people of Vaughan,” he said. “But it will give me time to look to those people who have looked to me for so many years.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty, who was informed of Sorbara’s decision on Thursday, issued a release praising his friend and confidant, and saying he accepted the resignation with regret.

“Greg has been a driving force within our government and has done a tremendous job as minister of finance,” McGuinty wrote.

Conservative Leader John Tory put his own unique take on Sorbara’s departure, and insulted other Liberals in the process.

“I think the average IQ around that cabinet table just crashed with his departure, and I’m concerned about that for the sake of the province,” Tory said.

“I just wish he’d announced he was leaving before the election. I think people would have taken a different look at the McGuinty government without the brains of the operation being there.”

Sorbara was considered to be McGuinty’s right-hand man and he has been credited with steering the party to victory in the 2003 and 2007 campaigns.

New Democrat Rosario Marchese believes the resignation will be “a huge blow to the Liberal party,” and said Sorbara should also resign his seat if he really wants to spend more time with his family.

“If he wants to be a full-time granddad, then I think the riding deserves a full-time member,” Marchese said.

Sorbara was Ontario finance minister from 2003 to 2005 before he was briefly replaced by Dwight Duncan amid a potential scandal that threatened to torpedo Sorbara’s rising political career.

He was named in search warrants issued in a fraud investigation into Royal Group Technologies (TSX: RYG) and its executives, but in the end a judge ruled the RCMP acted hastily and lacked evidence to include Sorbara’s name on the warrants.

Sorbara, who had always maintained the RCMP made a “terrible mistake,” said he felt vindicated and returned to cabinet.

Sorbara wouldn’t say if he plans to run again in the 2011 election, saying that’s just too far off.

He said he feels confident he is leaving the province’s finances in better shape than he found them in.

“I am leaving a job that I have truly loved,” he said, “and one where we have had a significant measure of success.”

Sorbara practised law before his first election to the Ontario legislature in’85 under then-premier David Peterson.

He held a succession of cabinet posts and in’92 ran for the Liberal leadership and lost, and did not seek re-election in’95.

From’95 to 2003 until he was sworn in as finance minister under McGuinty, Sorbara was a partner in the family’s land-development company, the Sorbara Group.

When Sorbara took office, he inherited a $5.6-billion deficit from the former Conservative government. The deficit was cited as the reason the government imposed an unpopular health-care tax and broke a key campaign promise against raising taxes.

During his time in control of the province’s books, Ontario’s finances were returned to the black, and this summer the government announced it ended the last fiscal year with a surplus of $2.3 billion.

The province’s economy has suffered the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector during his term, as the Canadian dollar surged in value against the U.S. greenback.

Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, said dealing with the high dollar was Sorbara’s biggest challenge.

“He came in at a time when the Ontario government was in a deficit position and had to deal with a period of relatively slow growth in the provincial economy, and yet the government did manage to turn finances from red into black,” Porter said.

He said Sorbara faced one of the more challenging economic realities an Ontario finance minister has had to deal with.

“I think that’s fair to say, and the new finance minister will have every bit as tough a challenge as well because none of those big headwinds in Ontario have receded at all – if anything, they have picked up speed.”

Global News reported Friday evening that Sorbara is at the centre of a legal dispute between a developer and York Central Hospital in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto, even though Sorbara himself is not being sued.

A spokesman for McGuinty said the court case had nothing to do with Sorbara’s sudden resignation from cabinet.

“Absolutely not,” said press secretary Chris Morley.