Liberal Finance Minister Greg Sorbara has
revealed he thought of running for party leader when Dalton
McGuinty, now premier, won in 1996, but friends and advisers warned
him the province was not ready for an Italian-Canadian
premier.
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| name="valign" top > ERIC DOWD |
Ontario premiers tend to be from British
stock.
Sorbara is McGuinty’s undisputed number two. But
he still is not premier.
Sorbara had run for leader in 1992 and finished
third to Lyn McLeod, who had one of those solid Scots names. She
was the choice of Liberal brass for reasons including being a
woman.
Sorbara says some Liberals said then they would
not risk choosing a leader of Italian origin whose family was in
the property development business, like Sorbara’s, particularly at
a time when there was distrust of another developer of Italian
heritage.
Another Italian-Ontarian, Joe Cordiano, ran
against McGuinty, and came third. Italians are the fourth biggest
ethnic group in the province, after the British, French and
Germans, and more politically active than most. They have protested
before they do not get the public posts their numbers
warrant.
Sorbara complained a year ago Progressive
Conservative premier Ernie Eves, whom McGuinty later defeated, was
not appointing enough Italian-
Ontarians to his cabinet, because he had only
one, Tina Molinari, in a junior post.
Eves’s Tory predecessor, Mike Harris, had the
better-known former car dealer, Al Palladini, in a senior cabinet
role.
A decade ago New Democrat premier Bob Rae stormed
out of an Italian-Canadian business association’s dinner after
listening to complaints he was not appointing enough
Italian-Ontarians to public posts of various sorts, muttering he
would not take any more of “this crap.”
McGuinty has satisfied the Italian constituency
more by having four ministers of Italian ancestry, Sorbara,
Cordiano, who is in economic development and trade, Sandra
Pupatello in community and social services and Sudbury’s Rick
Bartolucci in northern development and mines.
But no Italian-Ontarian has been premier or even
led an opposition party. The list of premiers since Confederation
is a long recital of names as British as sausage and mash, starting
with John S. Macdonald and including Blake, Hardy, Ross, Drew,
Frost, Davis, Miller, Peterson, Rae, Harris and now McGuinty.
Eves’s mother’s parents however were hard-working
Ukrainian immigrants and he liked to mention it because it helped
soften his image as a slickly dressed lawyer and financial manager.
Rae had a Jewish grandfather who immigrated from eastern
Europe.
The vast majority of opposition party leaders
also have been of British ancestry. NDP leaders also have been
overwhelmingly of British origin, including the current leader,
Howard Hampton, Michael Cassidy and Donald C. MacDonald.
Parties once were reluctant to choose Jews but
this barrier was broken in 1970, when the New Democrats picked
Stephen Lewis, whose Jewish father emigrated from eastern
Europe.
The Liberals in opposition chose Stuart Smith,
also descended from immigrant Jews from that area, in 1976 and the
Tories followed with Larry Grossman, in 1985.
All three were above the average of party leaders
in sheer intellect and none became premier, but this was due more
to the fact they led in tough times for their parties than
antipathy toward Jews.
Other provinces also have elected premiers with
names like Romanow, Klein, Schreyer and Ghiz.
Ontario may be missing something when it gives
its top post only to those with names that sound like they came out
of Coronation Street.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s
Park press gallery.
