Sorbara autobiography sure to hit home for many in Vaughan

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 4, 2014
By: Adam Martin-Robbins

Greg Sorbara spent close to 30 years in politics and was instrumental in securing the Liberal Party's reign in Ontario for the past decade. During that time, he was no stranger to controversy.

Now, two years after retiring from public life, the former finance minister and Vaughan MPP appears poised to stir things up again, this time with his candid autobiography.

The 222-page book, dubbed The Battlefield of Ontario Politics, focuses primarily on his years in office and touches on some key controversies during that time, including the Ontario Health Premium, the RCMP probe of Royal Group Technologies and the gas plants scandal.

But the final chapter is arguably the most explosive.

It's there that Sorbara, among other things, advocates for scrapping the Catholic school board.

"I have no illusions about how toxic a political issues this is. I grew up in the Catholic tradition. At 16, I was determined to become a Catholic priest," he writes. "Despite all that, I believe it is time now for Ontario to move to one public education system for all."

It's a shocking suggestion that could well garner some harsh reaction from many in the community he represented for decades.

After all, the separate school board enjoys widespread support in Vaughan.

But as a politician, Sorbara was well-known for his candour in a time when many people in public life are afraid to say anything beyond what is in their pre-approved speaking notes. And he stays true to that approach in his book.

"We are a jurisdiction where every religion in the world is practised, and represented, and I just don't think it's viable anymore to say that one of those religions should have their own publicly funded school system," the 68-year-old Richmond Hill resident said in an interview earlier this week. "It's looking to the future and creating systems that reflect who we are, not where we've come from."

Another proposal, perhaps slightly less controversial, but surprising given his role as chancellor of York University, is that undergraduate post-secondary education should be free.

"We are entering an era where a post-secondary education - at a university, at a college, at an apprenticeship program - is quickly becoming the price of admission for a successful life in the economy that is Ontario and Canada now," he said. "If that's the case, I think that tuition should no longer be a barrier for young people, and older people, acquiring a post-secondary degree. ...Down the road, I think we're going to realize that most everyone needs an education that takes them into their late teens and early 20s, if they're going to have any possibility of a real life in Canada. There's many jurisdictions, notably in Europe, that have already got to that conclusion."

Sorbara said there hasn't been any backlash to these proposals as of yet, but the book just hit store shelves Nov. 1.

"So far, nobody has threatened me, nobody has launched grenades at me, but I'm hoping that chapter gives rise to a little bit of a public debate on issues that I care about," he said.

Beyond the final chapter, perhaps the most interesting section, at least for those who follow Vaughan politics, are the pages concerning his former longtime friend and colleague Tony Genco.

Sorbara chronicles how they went from being close comrades to political rivals when Genco, a lifelong Liberal, decided to run for the Progressive Conservatives in 2011.

Many political watchers will remember Genco came within less than 1,000 votes of beating then-Conservative candidate Julian Fantino in a federal byelection in 2010.

Sorbara writes that, afterwards, the federal Liberal party "wasn't happy" with Genco and didn't want him to run as the local candidate in the general election that followed about six months later.

"Tony had what might be called a classic 'Italian' reaction," Sorbara writes. "He felt his honour had been impugned and he was offended at the way the federal party was treating him."

Sorbara goes on to write that Genco called him and said he was thinking of crossing the floor to join the Conservatives.

According to the book, this is how things unfolded from that point:

"'Tony, that would be a really, really, really crazy thing to do,' I told him. 'That's a very dangerous trick in politics that almost never works. You've been a Liberal since you were a teenager. Everything about you is affiliated with the Liberals. You shouldn't do this.'

Tony thanked me for the advice and said he'd get back to me with his decision.

As we ended the conversation, I couldn't help but feel he was now a lost soul, who was at the beginning of a downward spiral that would not end well.

Tony didn't call me back. Then I heard he was working for Julian Fantino.

But the story gets crazier. Next thing I knew, Tony decided to become a provincial Progressive Conservative candidate against me in the October 2011 election! I was absolutely dumbfounded. And heartbroken."

Sorbara notes that he easily defeated Genco, who went on to run again, and lose again, as a provincial Tory candidate against current Vaughan MPP and Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca.

Sorbara wraps up the section with these words:

"I don't see Tony Genco anymore. We don't speak. I inquire after him when I see mutual acquaintances. I think the Tories used and abused him. And I take no joy in saying I was right - the Tony Genco story in politics did not end well."

In an interview, Sorbara said he wrote that section for a couple of reasons.

"This is a personal history and it was something that I just found astonishing at the end of my political career, particularly because Tony and I had been so close. That was the personal reason," he said. "The more public reason is just to describe in political terms how terribly difficult and damaging a trick it is to try and cross the floor to play for the other team. I've seen a lot of examples of that in Canada's political history, mostly at the federal level and how damaging it can be to the players involved."

Sorbara also dedicates an entire chapter to the gas plant scandal that rocked the Liberals at the end of McGuinty's tenure as premier.

"I wanted to use it as an example of how mythologies and political attacks can develop a life of their own," he said.

"Notwithstanding that what really happened is so inconsistent with the mythologies that became part of retail politics."

There is ample ink dedicated to the RCMP investigation of Royal Group Technologies that forced him to step down as finance minister, for a short time, until he was cleared.

There's also a fair bit about his first foray into politics with the David Peterson-led Liberals back in 1985, his failed leadership bid and his subsequent return to politics in the late 1990s, after a short hiatus, when he would become rainmaker then finance minister, in Dalton McGuinty's government.

And Sorbara writes about his proudest achievements during his time in office - the Toronto-York Spadina Subway extension and establishing the Ontario Child Benefit.

Beyond politics, Sorbara shares some details about his early years as a pot-smoking university dropout (he eventually went back and earned a law degree) and his two-year stint as a volunteer with the Council of Young Canadians, during which time he worked with at-risk kids in Vancouver and met his wife of 45 years Kate Barlow.

But, ultimately, Sorbara says his motivation for writing the book was to fill a void on the bookshelves of the province's libraries.

"I just felt like there's so little documentation, so little written, about Ontario's political history and there are few historians that will want to take it on, so I thought, you know what, maybe I should take it on," he said. "Although I'm not a historian, I was a player and I thought I could add something to our collective understanding of our political system. ...It was not meant to be an apologia or an explanation."

 

 

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