Winning the leadership race has left her at the helm of a perpetually sinking ship
Bonnie Crombie became the new Ontario Liberal leader on Dec. 2. The mayor of Mississauga since 2014, who formerly served as a city councillor and Liberal MP, seems upbeat about this next stage of her career. It’s an opportunity for her to shine on the provincial scene, and potentially serve as a white knight if she can rebuild a party that’s been in complete tatters since losing power in 2018.
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With all due respect to Crombie, that’s a pretty tall order for any politician to achieve. She will soon regret her decision to lead Ontario’s perpetually sinking Liberal ship.
To begin with, the leadership race left her at the helm of a party that’s badly splintered.
An abysmal 22 per cent of the estimated 100,000 Ontario Liberal party members turned out to vote in Toronto. This meagre turnout was bad enough, but Crombie also faced additional hurdles. Her hopes for a first-ballot victory quickly dissipated, and it turned into an unexpectedly competitive race.
Crombie won only 42.96 per cent on the first ballot, followed by Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (25.66 per cent), Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi (21.33 per cent) and Liberal MPP Ted Hsu (10.05 per cent). The second ballot wasn’t much better. Crombie rose slightly to 46.73 per cent, followed by Erskine-Smith (29.3 per cent) and Naqvi (23.96 per cent).
Some political observers began to wonder if the Nov. 9 agreement between Erskine-Smith and Naqvi to select each other as second-choice candidates was going to cause a major upset. I wasn’t among them. The agreement was non-binding, and members of each candidate’s camp had suggested they were going to vote independently. My sense was a small chunk of Naqvi’s supporters would support Crombie and she would win with about 54 per cent.
It was a good prediction. Crombie beat Erskine-Smith on the final ballot by 53.4 per cent to 46.59 per cent.
Crombie put on a brave public face after the result, but she must have surely known in private that this was far from desirable. An arrangement between two federal Liberals nearly brought her down. The party faithful appear to have mixed emotions about her forthcoming leadership. Even though her first line of business is to bring provincial Liberals back together, the cracks seem more like craters at this point.
She has an additional problem: Ontario’s progressive vote is also becoming more splintered. The NDP have faced some recent hurdles, including the long, drawn-out controversy with Sarah Jama until they finally booted her out of caucus. Nevertheless, party leader Marit Stiles is media-savvy and knows how to astutely push left-leaning narratives back in her direction. Meanwhile, Mike Schreiner and the Greens just won their second legislative seat in the Kitchener Centre byelection. They have some additional wind in their political sails for the first time in a long time.
Maybe Crombie’s policies can help her succeed where former premier Kathleen Wynne and former party leader Steven Del Duca both failed. Then again, that’s never been one of her strong suits.
Crombie’s leadership website contains the same generic language that Ontario Liberals and other progressives love to churn out. She wants to “make life easier and more affordable for every person in Ontario” as leader, which is a promise no left-leaning politician has ever kept. She promises to “strengthen our universal, single-payer health-care system” and “build housing and infrastructure for a stronger future,” which are code words for higher taxes and more public spending. As well, she promises to “improve our publicly funded education system” — which her predecessors, Wynne and Dalton McGuinty, systematically destroyed over 15 years in power.
Her website doesn’t provide you with all of her leadership plans, either.
Crombie, like Del Duca, supports scrapping plans for King’s Highway 413. Plans call for an outer ring road to alleviate highway traffic and enhance bus rapid transit that would pass through protected farmland in the Greenbelt and the regions of Halton and Peel — the latter of which contains her city, Mississauga. It was a contentious issue during the 2022 provincial election that the Liberals, NDP and Greens all opposed. Voters pushed back mightily, including three NDP MPPs who lost their Brampton seats to the Progressive Conservatives. In spite of the fact it’s clearly a losing proposition that hurt Del Duca’s political fortunes, Crombie seems to believe her opposition to Premier Doug Ford’s support for the project will somehow be more successful.
Which brings us to their forthcoming battle. It’s been heightened by the facetious notion that Crombie apparently gets under Ford’s skin. This has been repeated so many times that it’s become a talking point for Liberal pundits.
Is there anything to this? Of course not. Why would Ford, who has led Ontario for five years, be concerned about a new Liberal leader with zero provincial experience? He also has many of her natural strengths, including retail politics, maintaining a folksy demeanour, and an ability to connect with average Ontarians with populist language and real-life examples. This won’t help her build new support, but will aid him in consolidating existing support and beyond. His lead in the polls won’t disappear anytime soon.
Yes, Crombie will work hard in her new role. She’s a real fighter and will give it her all. Don’t be surprised, however, if she starts looking longingly at the safe, cushy mayor’s chair she’s about to leave behind in Mississauga sooner rather than later.
National Post
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