SUDBURY—Premier Kathleen W‎ynne says she was not convinced Andrew Olivier, the losing Liberal candidate in the 2014 election, would be the party’s best bet in a byelection early the following year.Testifying at the Election Act bribery trial of her former chief of staff Patricia Sorbara, the premier told Crown prosecutor Vern Brewer the party did not have a go-to candidate when the riding of Sudbury came up for grabs with the surprise resignation of New Democrat MPP Joe Cimino in November 2014. “Andrew Olivier had not been as strong a candidate as I had thought,” Wynne said, referring to the June 2014 province-wide election in which she won a narrow majority but the Liberals lost the riding of Sudbury, held since 1995 by veteran MPP and cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci.Read more: Wynne threatens Brown with libel action over his Sudbury commentsSorbara and local Liberal organizer Gerry Lougheed are accused of offering Olivier, a quadriplegic mortgage brokers, jobs or appointments to exit the party’s nomination race for a February 2015 byelection to make way for Wynne’s preferred candidate.That was defecting New Democrat MP Glenn Thibeault, now Wynne’s energy minister.Sorbara and Lougheed have pleaded not guilty. Olivier ended up running in the byelection as an independent, but placed third behind Thibeault and a New Democrat. While Olivier “seemed like a fine young man” during a 2014 provincial campaign stop in Sudbury, he placed second to Cimino in that race, Wynne said. “The campaign in Sudbury had not been as strong” because “he (Olivier) had not been able to pull the team together...there was some concern.”But the possibility of Thibeault as a candidate was “intriguing,” Wynne added in highly anticipated testimony mid-way through the second week of the case expected to continue into October. As for the merits of the party leader appointing a candida ...
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