Norman William "Norm" Sterling (born February 19, 1942) is a Canadian politician, who served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 2011.
[2] He became parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General in 1978, but was not appointed to the cabinet of Bill Davis in his first term as a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP).
On this occasion, Sterling broke with Timbrell (describing the latter's post-election opposition to Catholic school funding as an opportunistic volte-face), and supported Larry Grossman.
[10] The Progressive Conservatives formed government under Mike Harris in 1995, and Sterling was appointed Minister of Small Business and Consumer Services on June 26 of that year.
[3] As Minister of the Environment, Sterling oversaw cuts of nearly 50% to the ministry's budget and privatized provincial water testing labs, which an inquiry found contributed to the Walkerton E. coli outbreak the year after he left the portfolio.
[16][17] In the 2004 leadership race, Sterling supported Jim Flaherty's unsuccessful bid to lead the Progressive Conservative Party.
In 2004, Sterling opposed parts of the legislation to create the GTA-area Greenbelt that did not allow easily removing protected status from designated land, and voted against the bill in 2005.
Sterling will be in charge of Ford's plan to expand the Greenbelt, which was announced after public blowback from Crombie's resignation.