Last Monday evening, several female candidates who ran for the Ontario Liberals in the last provincial election (and an audience of about 150 interested observers) gathered virtually to compare notes about the campaign. Despite all the gains women have made in public life over the past many decades, does the playing field remain uneven?
The conversations were a revelation. The candidates were direct and profoundly thoughtful in sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of running for office. So much of politics these days is repetitive, message-track communications replete with towel-snapping insults; a genuinely honest conversation such as the one these women had truly stood out.
For example, several thoughtful and well-spoken candidates confessed to being deeply unsure about whether they were up to the task of running. “I suffered from such nerves and imposter syndrome,” admitted Julia Brown, who ran for the Liberals in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas. “I had to be asked many times to run until I decided I could.”
Brown was no rookie to politics. She’d worked in backrooms and provided debate training to other candidates, but when it came time for her to debate in her race, “I found myself on stage and was terrified!”
But she quickly got the hang of being a candidate. “Overthinking helps no one and doesn’t win campaigns,” she said.
Brown’s experience is something I’ve heard from myriad female candidates over the years. Even Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie, who was on the call, recalled being asked to run for provincial parliament two decades ago. She declined and then, in the next breath, assured the organizer she could recommend a good man for the task. It’s a familiar story: many female candidates question whether they can be good politicians, while still taking on the preponderance of the responsibilities of rearing children and tending to the needs of aging parents. (Crombie eventually overcame her reticence, ran for a federal nomination against seven other candidates, got 70 per cent of the vote on the one and only ballot, and became an MP from 2008 to 2011.)
Kristina Tesser Derkson served two terms on Milton town council before running for the Liberals in the February 2025 provincial election. She lost to the Progressive Conservative Zee Hamid. But she enjoyed the experience so much, she ran again for the federal Liberals in the April 2025 election — and won. She’s now the MP for Milton East-Halton Hills South, and yet confessed, “I still suffer from imposter syndrome.”
For what it’s worth, in my experience, men do too. They’re just not brave enough to admit it.
Dawn Danko, who ran for the provincial Liberals in Hamilton Mountain, also needed to be asked multiple times before agreeing to run, despite a decade of political experience at the school board level. Once in the race, she became increasingly frustrated at superficial media coverage of the campaign: “It wasn’t about the leaders, the issues, or the candidates,” she said. “Just polling data.” Nevertheless, she nearly tripled the Liberal vote relative to the previous two elections.
“It’s also a challenge to ask people to go out and campaign for you in negative 10-degree temperatures,” she added.
Many candidates had a weather story, given Premier Doug Ford’s snap election call in the middle of winter. Lynn Rigby, who ran in the rural riding of Hastings-Lennox and Addington, fell into a snowbank up to her shoulders and couldn’t get out, until some passersby helped extricate her. Then they promised to vote for her.
“It was an interesting strategy to get votes,” she joked.
She said she had “so much trepidation” about running. “But I said yes, and it was an amazing experience.”
Pam Jeffery, who ran in University-Rosedale, also fell into a snowbank — but preferred to remember the 18,000 steps per day she took while upright. She lost seven pounds while campaigning. “I was not new to politics,” she explained. “I’d done every job except be the candidate. But I was thrilled to be a candidate.”
One of the fascinating takeaways from these initially reluctant candidates was that every single one of them eventually seemed to relish the experience, even though they all lost. Andrea Grebenc had experience as a school board trustee, ran in Burlington (which has gone Liberal only once in the past seven decades), and came within 39 votes of winning.
“It was a huge step forward for us,” says Grebenc. “My loss was bittersweet, but we will do better next time.”
As much as they all loved the experience, some candidates were also blunt about their party’s shortcomings. Despite endless rumours of an early election call by Ford, the Liberals seemed to be caught flatfooted when the call finally came. Some complained of the party’s slow candidate approval process, which prevented them from raising money and delayed their ability to raise their profile at community events.
Crombie assured her audience that would change. She said the party will henceforth have two nomination commissioners and begin nominating candidates in January 2026, fully three years before the next scheduled election (if Ford lets this term run the full four years).
If all you knew about politics was what you read, saw, and heard in legacy and social media, you’d think anybody going into this game needed their head examined. What was, dare I say it, inspiring about this confab was how much even those who lost felt running for office was worth doing. Although bloody hard.
“I asked myself whether I’d be brave enough to run,” admitted April Engelberg, who ran in Spadina-Fort York. “But when you just decide to go for it, it’s a huge weight off your shoulders. And it’s incredibly rewarding.”
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