The federal Liberals are breaking Greg Sorbara’s heart

Greg Sorbara has been at the centre of Liberal politics in the Greater Toronto Area for more than four decades. He was in Premier David Peterson’s cabinet from 1985 to 1990, and then again in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s from 2003 to 2007, rising to become minister of finance. When he heard about the current premier of Ontario Doug Ford’s plans to expand Toronto Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto’s waterfront, he was furious enough to write Canada’s environment minister Julie Dabrusin, a Toronto MP, in hopes of enlisting her support to stop those plans. He’s still waiting to hear back, which isn’t doing much for his mood these days.

Steve Paikin: When you heard that the premier wanted to make some significant alterations to the Billy Bishop Airport, what first went through your mind?

Greg Sorbara: First of all, that jets at the Toronto Island Airport would be a very bad idea, because it would degrade the waterfront amongst the tens of thousands of people who use the park, the people that boat in the waters, and in particular, the hundreds of thousands of people who now live or might soon live close to the water. Just by way of comparison, how many condos do we build right next to Pearson Airport? We don’t do it. People don’t want to live close to the noise of jet aircraft. So I thought it was a very bad idea.

SP: Were you not persuaded by the arguments he’s advanced that this could be a massive shot in the arm economically for the city and the province?

GS: No, and that is absolutely not the case. There’s a lot of things that we could do to strengthen the GTA economy and the Ontario economy. Expanding the island airport is not one of them. What it would mean would be some more plane traffic to the island, and more congestion around that part of the city. But no other economic benefits. Economic benefits come when you invest in infrastructure, then there’s a whole lot of things that happen around that infrastructure. For example, when we built the extension to the subway up to York University and York Region, the result of that was literally hundreds of millions of dollars of residential construction all along the route, including in York Region. That can’t happen around Billy Bishop. We’re pretty much built out around that area.

SP: So, what have you done?

GS: I was in a real quandary because none of the political players have adjudicated themselves properly in this area. Olivia Chow has been rather silent. Doug Ford had no business initiating this. And the sad news with Olivia Chow is, she has let him do that.

SP: Should I infer that, because you are a lifelong member of the Liberal Party of Canada | Parti libéral du Canada, you thought you might have some persuasive powers with your federal cousins?

GS: That was the third element of the disappointment. I thought that the 23 Liberal MPs from the city of Toronto would stand up and say, “This is not going to happen.” I can’t tell you my level of disappointment, talking with good, close friends of mine who are now MPs, saying things like, “Well, we’ll have to wait and see what the analysis says,” which really means we’ll have to wait and see what Mark Carney decides to do on this. And Mark Carney, as good a prime minister as he has been, has really fallen short on this, including the fact that he has the responsibility to appoint seven members of the Toronto Port Authority. It’s the Toronto Port Authority that is responsible for determining the future of Billy Bishop Airport. Why is it that Mark Carney has left five of those seven seats vacant?

SP: Well, you know that the polling shows that the closer you live to the waterfront, the more you care about this. But the further away you get, the less of an issue it is for you.

GS: Well, the further away you get from the waterfront, the closer you get to Pearson Airport. And it’s an easy flight out of Pearson to anywhere in the world. The fact that Ford said he wanted to create a “special economic zone” — it was just hooey. It was just a way of saying, I want to do this, and I don’t want to have any of the normal regulatory authorities and review processes undertaken in order to get it done. And the idea that somehow this is so important that you wouldn’t do the proper economic or environmental assessment, all of that is just untenable. Here’s the other thing: believe it or not, the federal Minister of the Environment (Julie Dabrusin) is a city of Toronto member. Her riding is next to the waterfront, and she has been totally silent on this issue.

SP: Has she responded to your letter yet?

GS: I wrote her a letter, saying, “You really need to act on this. This is very serious for the people of Toronto and beyond.” And I got a nice letter back from her constituency office saying, “Thank you very much for your letter. The minister will be back to you within 10 days.” That was about 40 days ago.

SP: Have you seen Minister Dabrusin at any political events or anything?

GS: No, I haven’t seen any of them, and I must say, Steve, that my disappointment in Doug Ford is well founded. I don’t think he’s a good premier. My disappointment in Olivia Chow is well founded, because I don’t think she’s a good mayor. My disappointment in the federal Liberal caucus in Toronto is heartbreaking, because when this first came up, I had looked to them to raise their voices in the way in which federal MPs from Toronto used to do it. I mean, a whole host of them — Maria Minna, Art Eggleton, Dennis Mills, Sergio Marchi — if there was shit going on in Toronto, the prime minister in Ottawa knew about it, and he knew about it quickly.

SP: What does it say about how responsive you think this federal government will be on this issue, if a former Ontario Liberal Minister of Finance can’t get a response to his query from the Minister of the Environment?

GS: My fear is that it’s a done deal, and they’re afraid to step on the toes of the prime minister.

SP: Mark Carney is not from Toronto. He doesn’t really have any Toronto presence in his immediate inner circle. How much of an impact do you think all that’s having?

GS: I think it’s important. If Mark Carney were a Toronto member, if Mark Carney had a close association or advisers who were close to the Toronto scene, he would know about the negative reaction to this proposal. So, notwithstanding that he has 23 MPs from Toronto, the prime minister has does not have any confidants from Toronto to advise him about the political situation in this great city.

SP: Do you know the prime minister well enough to be able to get a direct message to him on this?

GS: No. During his campaign to become the leader, we had several chats. But I’m not that close. He doesn’t take my calls because I don’t have his phone number!

SP: So, what now?

GS: It’s such a bad idea, it has such negative impact on the waterfront that I think, in the end, it won’t happen. My hope is that Carney will do the right thing and appoint the people that need to be on the Port Authority board, and that the Port Authority can take it from there. Because I believe that any effective analysis of the proposal will be the material that is needed to defeat the proposal.

SP: If he called you one day and said, “Greg, I’ve got some vacancies on this Toronto Port Authority, do you want one of those seats?” What would you tell him?

GS: I would say yes, notwithstanding that I’m too old, I’m too tired, and I’m too f**king blind! (A quote from Al Pacino in the movie “Scent of a Woman”).