Ernie Eves was out of politics and working a great, high-paying job on Bay Street, having established his credentials as a successful finance minister during Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution.
But after Harris announced his retirement from politics in October of 2001, Eves’s phone started to ring. And ring. And ring. We need you back, said the voices on the phone. You’re the only one who can win the next election for us. You can put a kinder, gentler face on the revolution.
Eves had a decision to make and asked around for help. Perhaps the best advice he received came from a seemingly unlikely source: former NDP premier Bob Rae (now Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations). The two men were from different parties and often at each other’s throats in the legislature, but Rae and Eves were actually good friends: both were first elected in the early 1980s, and they shared a love of golf.
Rae’s advice: I’ve never regretted the times I chose to do something. My only regrets were the times I chose not to.
Eves decided to take the plunge. He won the Progressive Conservative leadership pretty easily, became Ontario’s 23rd premier, and pledged to finish out Harris’s second term before seeking his own mandate.
But the timing was lousy. The SARS outbreak, a massive hydro blackout, and a case of mad cow disease that wreaked havoc on Ontario’s beef industry all conspired to make his premiership difficult. And when Eves called the election in 2003, he lost to Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals. His time as premier: one year and 190 days.
Should Eves have resisted the call to become Tory leader? Should he have stayed in the private sector rather than return to public life? Of course not. He’s one of just 26 people to be called the premier of Ontario. Did it work out as well as he’d hoped? No. But he gave it a shot.
I raise this story because there is no one in Ontario politics today who feels worse than Bonnie Crombie. She had a great job as mayor of Mississauga, to which she was elected three times with big margins. When Steven Del Duca lost both the 2022 election and his own seat to Doug Ford and the PCs, Crombie’s phone started to ring. The easy thing would have been to reject the appeals from fellow Liberals and stay in a comfortable job she was good at — and likely could have had for as long as she wanted, like her predecessor Hazel McCallion.
But Crombie took a risk. She gave up the easier job to take on the Herculean task of trying to rebuild a party that had never been in worse shape. She won her convention on the third ballot — and then world events conspired to make her work even harder.
Crombie hoped to stay on as leader at the Liberal AGM. (Steve Paikin)
In Ottawa, Justin Trudeau’s popularity was at an all-time low. Asking people to vote Liberal, even provincially, was a bridge too far. In Toronto, Ford had two election victories under his belt and was looking increasingly comfortable in the premier’s chair. Not enough voters were looking for a change. When Donald Trump came back as the American president, Ford rebranded himself as the country’s best Trump tormentor: there just wasn’t any room for Crombie to win the snap election called earlier this year. The Liberals garnered 30 per cent of the vote and regained official party status with 14 seats, but it was an unprecedented third consecutive third-place finish. And once again, the leader was unable to win their own riding.
When Crombie put her fate to Liberal delegates at this past weekend’s annual general meeting, she got 57 per cent support — passing the technical threshold required to hang on to her job. But historical precedent suggests that if your support doesn’t start with the number seven, you won’t survive as leader. And Crombie hasn’t. A few hours after the party revealed the vote tally, she announced she’d step down as leader pending the election of her successor.
Crombie projected confidence heading into her leadership review. (Steve Paikin)
So, was it worth doing? Should Crombie have stayed on the safe turf of municipal politics and lived with the what-ifs for the rest of her life? Maybe. But knowing how competitive she’s been during her time as a Liberal volunteer, a member of parliament, a Mississauga city councillor, a mayor, and finally, a provincial party leader, I’m guessing she’s glad she tried. Maybe not today, when the sting of rejection is too fresh. I have no doubt she feels horrible and furious.
But down the road, she’ll be happy that she gave it a shot. Because in my experience, the best politicians only regret the chances they don’t take. Not the ones they did.
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