It is the current mayor of Mississauga and former federal MP Bonnie Crombie who will have the task of leading the Ontario Liberal Party and facing Premier Doug Ford in the next provincial election. Mme Crombie was elected as the party’s new leader on Saturday, following the third round of the election.
After two defeats in recent elections, the Ontario Liberal Party is seeking to rebuild itself. During his victory speech, Mr.me Crombie acknowledged she will have a lot of work on her plate between now and the 2026 election.
“We have built this big, strong Liberal team and now, I hate to break it to you, but we are going to have to work even harder,” she said.
“You know why, because Doug Ford and his Conservatives are going to come after us any minute, so we have to be ready. We must be ready to work even harder, but together,” she explained.
During the third round of voting, Mme Crombie defeated Nate Erskine-Smith, while Yasir Naqvi and Ted Hsu were eliminated in previous rounds.
For the moment, Mme Crombie will have to decide whether she wants to run for a seat in the legislature or whether she would prefer to stay out of the arena to focus on rebuilding her party, which failed to win enough seats in of the last two elections to obtain official party status.
Mother of three children, Mme Crombie was elected mayor of Mississauga in 2014. Previously, she served as a city councilor and federal Liberal MP for the Mississauga region.
Fierce opponent of Doug Ford
During her campaign, she boasted of having “resisted Doug Ford and the Conservatives” during her years at the head of Mississauga, a city of 700,000 inhabitants which is a suburb of Toronto.
She also fiercely opposed changes proposed by Mr. Ford regarding the way municipalities collect certain fees from developers who help cities finance their infrastructure — the Association of Municipalities of Ontario indicated that this decision had cost municipalities $5 billion. She also positioned herself in favor of the dissolution of the Peel region, in which Mississauga is located.
The most recent polls suggested that among all the candidates for leadership, it is with Mme Crombie said the Liberals had the best chance of competing with the Progressive Conservatives in the upcoming election.
The Liberals boasted of having obtained a record number of members in good standing for this leadership race, while more than 100,000 people were eligible to vote for the new leader. There were 44,000 and 38,000 members in good standing, respectively, in the two previous leadership races.
However, only 22,827 members voted in last weekend’s poll. This figure was still higher than the 12,988 Ontario Liberals who voted in the 2020 leadership race and the 19,438 who participated in the 2013 vote, according to data provided by the party.