John Snobelen (born ) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1995 to 2003, and served as a cabinet minister in the government of Mike Harris. Background Snobelen was raised in Meadowlark, Ontario, and dropped out of high school in Grade 11. He eventually became a successful businessman, making a fortune in the waste-haulage business. He served as President of Jarsno Environmental Inc., Mid-Ontario Equipment Limited and the Cameron Group. Snobelen was also president of the Hunger Project in Canada, and an associate of the Carter Center, a human-rights organization started by former United States President Jimmy Carter. Politics Snobelen ran for the Ontario legislature in the provincial election of 1990, placing third behind incumbent Liberal Steve Offer and a New Democrat in Mississauga North. In the provincial election of 1995, he ran in the same riding and defeated Offer by about 4,500 votes. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority government in the 1995 election, and Snobelen was appointed as Minister of Education and Training in Mike Harris's government on June 26, 1995. Shortly after his appointment, Snobelen was filmed arguing that the PC government needs to "bankrupt" and to create a "useful crisis" in the education system so as to initiate significant reforms. This controversy provoked several calls for his resignation, and further unsettled the relationship between the government and the teaching community, which were already tense after the previous NDP administration unilaterally imposed a Social Contract. In 1997, Snobelen introduced Bill 160, which gave the province control of municipal education taxes, introduced standardized testing, cut teaching preparation time, allowed the government to determine class sizes and granted early retirement initiatives to older, more experienced teachers. Critics argue that the purpose of this bill was to cut education spending, and reduce the power of the teachers' unions in order to privatize Ontario's public education system (Klein, N., The Shock Doctrine). The education restructuring, along with other cuts to government spending, was expected to significantly reduce the province's deficit. Community organizations, teachers and leaders of the provincial unions criticized the bill not only as an attack on local control of public schools and on union bargaining influence, but also as unnecessarily confrontational and as threatening the quality of Ontario's education system. Snobelen was moved to the Ministry of Natural Resources on October 10, 1997. Arguments with the