Fundraiser at centre of major scandal
Former Ontario Place chair served two months in jail for fraud and breach of trust in 1991
The woman at the centre of one of the biggest political scandals in Ontario history is dead.
Patti Starr, a prominent Liberal party fundraiser and one-time Ontario Place chair who served two months in jail for fraud and breach of trust in 1991, has died.
Born in Toronto in 1942, Starr — a married mother of five and grandmother of nine — died on Wednesday.
The imbroglio that led to her imprisonment played a role in the surprise 1990 defeat of premier David Peterson’s Liberals to Bob Rae’s New Democrats. Peterson, who was never implicated in the Starr affair, is now chair of Torstar, parent company of the Toronto Star.
In 1989, the then-premier called a judicial inquiry into the allegations against Starr, which was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada the following year. Criminal charges were laid against her weeks later.
But because she had contributed funds to Liberal candidates in their 1987 landslide election victory, the debacle tainted Peterson’s government in the run-up to the 1990 vote.
While head of a charitable foundation of the National Council of Jewish Women (Toronto Section), Starr improperly used a $350,000 government grant and a $250,000 sales tax rebate to make the political donations. Charges against the charity were withdrawn before Starr was sent to jail.
Paroled after serving a third of her six-month sentence, she spent only 11 days in prison before being transferred to a minimum-security cottage outside the gates of the Vanier Centre for Women, then located in Brampton.
But Starr, who was also fined $3,500 for eight violations of the Election Finances Act, used her notoriety to fight for better conditions for incarcerated women.
“I made a promise to the women here that when I left I would not forget what I have seen and what I have learned, and I won’t,” she said upon her release.
“I lived through some of these conditions and know how frustrating and mind-numbing they become. I also know how disruptive and threatening the presence of male guards can be for women whose lives have been scarred by physical and sexual abuse, most often at the hands of men,” Starr wrote in the Star in 1993.
“The sight of muscle-bound guards wearing huge chains loaded with keys swaggering in front of the women would be comical if it weren’t so sad. Sexual activity between guards and inmates is not unheard of.”
Author of four books — including “Tempting Fate: A Cautionary Tale of Power and Politics,” about the scandal — she also served for a time as vice-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and was on several boards including the former O’Keefe Centre for the Performing Arts and the agency now known as the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.
In her blog, Starr gamely wrote of her health challenges such as a 2019 bout of cellulitis — a deep infection of the skin caused by bacteria — that landed her in intensive care at North York General Hospital after she collapsed for no apparent reason.
“I am alive — despite all the predictions — and I will survive. And that will let me still fool around politically,” she wrote after more than two months in hospital and a rehabilitation facility.
“Not sure if I will play golf again.” While she always admitted to the crimes that led to her conviction, Starr was never shy about insisting that her methods were long considered the norm by politicians and government officials.
“I did things wrong … but I was nothing more than a cog in the machinery that kept power in the hands of a select few.”