Thibeault’s winding journey

in Sudbury, Ont was then the NDP MP for Sudbury. And Giroux claims no partisan affiliation with any party.

But when Joe Cimino, who won Sudbury for the provincial NDP in 2014, suddenly announced his resignation later the same year, Giroux seems to have become the Thibeault Whisperer. According to emails entered into evidence Tuesday, Ontario Liberal Party headquarters first learned of Thibeault’s interest in the riding from Giroux, who had learned of Thibeault’s unhappiness in Ottawa over lunch in the nation’s capital some 18 months earlier.

“He confided to me that he was contemplating other opportunities,” Giroux told McKercher through a court translator. “He said he was interested in becoming a provincial politician, but that if he was going to be a candidate it would not be with the NDP, because he didn’t have a good relationship with the … provincial party.”

This seems like remarkably frank talk among casual acquaintances, considering Thibeault — who is last on the prosecution’s witness list — was at the time caucus chair for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. But perhaps they bonded over their mutual admiration for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who will take the stand Wednesday morning.

“(Thibeault) said that he was very impressed with (Wynne) as the new head of the provincial (Liberal) party,” Giroux told McKercher, referring to their lunch in Ottawa.

A week after Cimino’s resignation, on Nov. 28, 2014, Giroux wrote to Pat Sorbara, the Liberal campaign chair and Wynne’s deputy chief of staff, describing the latest in his campaign to woo Thibeault across the aisle and from Ottawa to Toronto. “I spoke about why I am such a big fan of the (premier), how she stayed true to herself after being elected leader.”

There certainly wasn’t any smoking gun in Giroux’s testimony. Sorbara, along with longtime Sudbury Liberal organizer and fundraiser Gerry Lougheed, are accused of trying to “induce” Andrew Olivier, who lost to Cimino in 2014, out of the running for the byelection nomination. Sorbara, separately, is accused of trying to induce Thibeault into the nomination with job offers for some of his constituency staffers.

Testimony thus far suggests Thibeault and Olivier were on very good terms; Giroux told the Premier’s Office that Thibeault would run only if Olivier stepped aside. And in a conversation taped by Olivier, he and Sorbara discussed the possibility he might even work in Thibeault’s constituency office (a public payroll position). But when Giroux suggested Thibeault would probably ask Wynne for a cabinet appointment as a condition of his defection, the premier’s office — in writing at least — was nonplussed.

“This is old-style politics and the premier does not work this way,” Sorbara wrote to her colleague Pierre Cyr. In writing, at least, there was no question of an immediate cabinet post. But if Giroux’s account is accurate, it seems that wasn’t a deal breaker for Thibeault.

“I personally would not (cross the floor without) a clear commitment to a meaningful role in Cabinet,” Giroux texted Sorbara during the negotiations.

If he has his own designs on politics, perhaps he might want to recalculate. In the end, Thibeault had to wait only 16 months before being appointed Minister of Energy. It’s not exactly guaranteed employment or a laugh a minute, but he probably has a better chance of representing Sudbury at a cabinet table at the end of 2019 than he did in his former life in Ottawa.