With his wife Kate by his side, Greg Sorbara announces his resignation as Ontario finance minister at Queen's Park on Oct. 26, 2007.
I try to avoid speculating on the specifics of cabinet shuffles ( as opposed to the big-picture issues around them). As a general rule, the very few people who know what's going to happen in a shuffle - a couple of very senior officials - don't tell anyone else about it until the hours before. So most of what you hear is idle chatter.
That said, the rumour of Greg Sorbara going back into the Ontario cabinet has gotten strong enough that it's probably worth putting it out of its misery.
Although he has his detractors, mostly those who found his management style too impulsive or thought he leaned too far to the left, Sorbara is a giant within his party. Partly it's because he's considered a big ideas guy and a real small-l liberal; it also has to do with the role he played between Dalton McGuinty's losing 1999 campaign and his winning one in 2003.
It's no secret that many senior Liberals, including McGuinty, would like him back in cabinet. It wouldn't be as finance minister, the position he held for most of McGuinty's first term, but he could certainly have his pick from a bunch of other postings.
The only problem is, he appears to have absolutely no interest in any of them.
That's not just what Sorbara is telling the media. Friends and associates in Toronto - where he has a rather large social circle - say he's been adamant that he's extremely happy with his life outside cabinet, and wants to keep it that way.
The latest rumour has Sorbara coming in as deputy premier, which would allow him to sit at the cabinet table and have a high public profile, but avoid having to actually run a ministry. The catch, one friend of his pointed out, is that he hates meetings and isn't particularly interested in having to stand up in the legislature every day that the Premier is away to defend the government's record.
Nor does Sorbara need to rejoin cabinet to have influence. He has an open line to McGuinty, and to many members of his cabinet. He still has a seat in the Legislature, when he wants an excuse to be there. But he basically gets to involve himself in what he finds interesting, and skip the dreary stuff.
Senior Liberals say it took some convincing just to get him to commit to co-chairing the party's 2011 campaign, which was just confirmed. Nobody seems to think they'll convince him to do much more.
Although Sorbara is a pretty open book as far as politicians go, it's conceivable that he's just keeping his cards extremely close to his chest. If so, I'll have learned my lesson not to speculate on even the most seemingly obvious cabinet developments - or non-developments, as the case may be. But I'm pretty confident that I'm safe on this one.
(Photo: With his wife Kate by his side, Greg Sorbara announces his resignation as Ontario finance minister in 2007. Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)
Adam Radwanski