Dalton McGuinty has rarely been one to take big risks. And the way things have gone with Greg Sorbara, the Ontario Premier will be all the less inclined to do so in the future.

For Mr. McGuinty, appointing Mr. Sorbara as his Finance Minister was the first big gamble of his premiership, and arguably still stands as the biggest. The safe choice would have been Gerry Phillips, the well-liked veteran MPP who had long served as the Liberals' finance critic in opposition and given the party a measure of fiscal credibility. Instead, apparently concerned that Mr. Phillips -- a roll-up-the-sleeves, stay-the-course sort -- would lack the fresh thinking to tackle the province's messy finances, he opted for a less conventional choice.

Mr. Sorbara's appointment was met with considerable eyebrow-raising among Queen's Park types, including many Liberals. There were concerns that despite cabinet experience under David Peterson, a highly lucrative private sector career and a successful tenure as provincial party president, he lacked the discipline to run the government's most demanding ministry.

There were questions as to whether he was a team player. And there were rumblings, albeit purely speculative ones, that the smooth operator's extensive business interests would eventually place him in a conflict.

In the early going, it wasn't Mr. Sorbara's ethics that gave fodder to critics of his appointment -- it was his competence. While those who worked with him tended to come away enthusing that he had the most dynamic mind in Mr. McGuinty's cabinet, they also acknowledged it was among the least focused. And that lack of discipline showed in a performance that inspired a tremendous degree of frustration among those within the premier's office and other ministries.

Charged with getting the province's finances under control after the previous government left what the Liberals said was a multi-billion-dollar deficit, Mr. Sorbara took on a wild-eyed look that befitted his erratic method of tackling the problem. Less than a month into government, he had already helped ensure an abrupt end to the fledgling government's honeymoon with some atrocious messaging on the deficit. Every day seemed to bring a different account of the province's financial outlook, Mr. Sorbara alternately suggesting that the deficit would be slashed in the government's first budget and that it might actually grow. When he faced reporters following a December, 2003, economic update that made clear he still lacked any concrete plan, he seemed on the verge of a meltdown.

It was in May, 2004, that, in the eyes of many other Liberals, Mr. Sorbara really bottomed out. Although it's debatable how much blame rested with him and how much with the premier's office, his unveiling of his first budget's health care "premium" was such a complete disaster that there were calls for his head behind the scenes.

For Mr. McGuinty, it would have been easy to end the Sorbara experiment then and there -- or perhaps even before. In February, 2004, it had been revealed that the Royal Group, of which he was a former director, was being investigated by the Ontario Securities Commission, Revenue Canada and the RCMP -- and that he had received advance warning about the OSC investigation, but apparently declined to inform anyone.

It was not necessarily a firing offence, despite opposition attempts to paint it as such. But it gave the Premier a potential out. Rather than a public acknowledgement that his choice for Cabinet's top posting had been a bust, shuffling Mr. Sorbara out of Finance would have been seen as a laudable effort to maintain the government's squeaky clean image. And, of course, it would have precluded the possibility of being embarrassed down the road by whatever else came out of the investigations.

Instead, Mr. Sorbara surrendered only his oversight of the OSC. Perhaps motivated by the closeness of a relationship that had seen Mr. Sorbara help him keep his job after the Liberals' 1999 election defeat, or else just by a sense of fairness later extended to ministers Harinder Takhar and Joe Cordiano when they were accused of relatively minor transgressions, Mr. McGuinty stuck with his beleaguered treasurer.

In some ways, his faith was rewarded. Last month, Mr. Sorbara was able to announce that the deficit was shrinking much quicker than expected; behind the scenes, Liberals expressed relief that he had finally settled into his job.

And then yesterday, all hell broke loose.

There are crises that politicians can soldier through. But even if accusations against him are unproven, the release of an RCMP search warrant placing him directly in a group alleged to have "by deceit, falsehood, or other fraudulent means, defraud(ed) [Royal Group], its shareholders and/or creditors," following a raid on his family's company as part of its broader investigation, is not one of them. Not when, the same day, Mr. Sorbara had insisted that he was neither the target of the investigation nor involved in it. And certainly not when, the previous year, Mr. McGuinty told reporters that his Finance Minister would step down if he became "the subject of an investigation."

Mr. McGuinty's gamble could not have blown up in his face at a worse moment. Today, with polls showing his party running neck and neck with John Tory's Conservatives, the Lieutenant-Governor will read a Throne Speech the Liberals had hoped would set the tone for an activist, upbeat second half of their mandate. Instead, all anyone will want to talk about will be the snake eyes that the Premier wound up with the first time he rolled the dice.