Days before the provincial legislature returns for what could be the last lengthy stretch of sitting before an election, Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie hinted at her party's plans to ramp up toward a potential early campaign.
The Ontario Liberals' “vision” for the province will be shown through its platform, “which will come in the coming months,” Crombie said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We will remain focused on fixing health care, making life more affordable for all Ontarians, and kicking the cronies to the curb and out of Queen’s Park,” she added, echoing similar themes as in a campaign-style speech at her party’s convention in September.
Later in the afternoon, Crombie announced her platform will include a middle-class tax cut.
She was responding to a Toronto Star story saying that the Ford government is planning to send out "rebate cheques" to every adult and child in the province, possibly of $200 or more in January or February.
"This is another one-time gimmick from a Premier who has promised and failed to cut taxes for more than six years," she wrote on X. "Rather than try to buy your vote in an election year, Ontario’s Liberals will cut taxes for all middle-class families — permanently. More to come."
The fixed date of the next Ontario election is in June 2026. Even with his majority government, Premier Doug Ford could call it early — as he’s suggested several times publicly over the last few months that he's considering. Factors including the possibility of a change in the federal government and the RCMP’s ongoing Greenbelt investigation scandal could shape Ford’s decision, numerous Progressive Conservative sources have believed for months.
All the major provincial parties have recently turned their attentions toward election readiness, including by steadily nominating candidates.
Liberal MPPs hold nine seats at Queen's Park, none of which belong to Crombie. She was Mississauga's mayor until shortly after she won the Ontario Liberal leadership late last year and hasn't yet run for a provincial seat.
She plans to run in a Mississauga riding but hasn't said yet which it'll be.
“I’m going to keep you off guard for a little while longer … It’s down to two or three ridings,” Crombie said on Wednesday.
The Ontario Liberal Party has nominated, or is set to nominate, candidates in four of Mississauga’s six ridings, including Mississauga—Streetsville, which Crombie represented as a federal MP from 2008 to 2011.
The party hasn’t indicated when it’ll nominate candidates in the city’s other two ridings: Mississauga Centre and Mississauga East—Cooksville.
Natalia Kusendova-Bashta, who Ford appointed long-term care minister in June, has held Mississauga Centre for the PCs since the first of her two election victories in 2018.
Kaleed Rasheed, the Independent MPP for Mississauga East—Cooksville, announced he won’t be seeking re-election just before the Thanksgiving long weekend. Rasheed was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022 with the PCs, but left Ford’s cabinet and the party last year after admitting to providing Ontario’s integrity commissioner with wrong information about a 2020 trip with a would-be Greenbelt developer, each of which was first reported by The Trillium.
In a statement on Friday, Rasheed said he plans to remain an MPP until the next election.
Three provincial byelections have been held since Crombie was elected Ontario Liberal Party leader last December, including one in Milton, near Mississauga. Crombie has chosen not to run in any of them, unlike some past newly elected seatless party leaders.
Crombie said on Wednesday that if a Mississauga-area byelection was held, she would run in it. To date, it’s been “on the direction of our (party) president and our party executive” that she hasn’t contested a provincial seat, instead prioritizing “work … to rebuild our party from the grassroots.”
“I will be more available here at Queen’s Park but it does give me the flexibility to stay on the road and continue to meet candidates, stakeholders, raise money, etc., which is what we’ve been doing,” the Ontario Liberal leader added.
Crombie also on Wednesday brushed off recently released polling results, based on a survey by Abacus, suggesting she’s viewed the least favourably overall by Ontarians of the four major provincial party leaders — Ford included.
Earlier this year, the PC Party paid major broadcasters to run weeks-long advertising campaigns portraying Crombie as an out-of-touch elitist.
“They’ve spent millions talking about me,” Crombie said in her speech at her party’s convention last month. “But here’s the truth: I wasn’t born into a big political dynasty; I wasn’t handed a multimillion-dollar family company; I did not grow up in a mansion in Etobicoke."
"My home was a rooming house near High Park in Toronto. My mother and my grandparents came here after World War Two from Poland, with little more than what they carried with them. They worked hard," she continued.
Asked about the recent Abacus-polled data on Wednesday, Crombie responded, "We haven’t begun to run our ads yet, which we will."
The news conference Crombie spoke to reporters at was held to discuss “another billion-dollar Doug Ford boondoggle” — referring to the Ford government’s Ontario Place redevelopment plans.
She argued that the return on investment the province will receive by leasing Ontario Place's west island for up to 95 years to Therme, builder of a spa and waterpark there, amounts to a “mega scam” of taxpayers. Crombie promised that if the Liberals are re-elected they'll renegotiate the province's lease agreement with the company, using a threat of cancelling the deal as leverage.
The party calculated the "boondoggle" at an estimated cost to taxpayers of over $2 million, including $1.1 billion in lower-than-market rate rent for the site, a $800 million to build a parking garage, plus the cost of site preparation and flood mitigation. Crombie acknowledged that these estimates do not take into account what the government would spend on an alternative use for the site.
A few months ago, the Liberals labelled the PCs’ move to spend at least hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars expanding sales of beer, wine, and other low-alcohol-content beverages to thousands of more grocery, big box, and convenience stores as another “billion-dollar boondoggle.”
Two provincial oversight offices are currently working on separate analyses expected to provide greater clarity into how much each of the PCs’ plans will cost Ontario taxpayers.
This story was updated after publication to include the news report on the government's planned cheques and Crombie's announcement of a middle-class tax cut in the Liberal platform.
