When Bonnie Crombie walked out onto the stage at the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto on Saturday to speak to Ontario Liberals, her walk-on music was “Golden” by Huntrix — the fictional band from the Netflix animated feature K-Pop Demon Hunters. If the movie’s soundtrack hasn’t consumed your summer, you’re missing out. “Golden” is a bop on a soundtrack of bops, but any parent who’s listened closely to the lyrics might have raised an eyebrow at the choice.
“Given the throne, I didn't know how to believe,” the main character sings, “I was the queen that I'm meant to be.” Crombie was handed the throne to the Liberal party just under two years ago, and she never quite convinced Ontario voters or, in the end, a commanding majority of Liberals, that she was the leader they needed.
She received the endorsement of 57 per cent of Liberal delegates to stay on as leader — enough to pass the technical threshold to stay atop the party, but hardly a display of unconditional confidence. The New Leaf Liberals, a party faction dedicated to replacing Crombie, had said anything short of a two-thirds majority vote should be insufficient; Crombie’s team pulled out all the stops but couldn’t clear that bar. Hours after the results were announced, Crombie released a statement saying she would step down after a new leadership contest.
So, for the third time since their catastrophic showing in 2018, the Liberals are left asking: what now?
Crombie’s legacy won’t be remembered as a disaster for the Liberals, at least not to anyone interested in a fair assessment. The party regained recognized party status in the most recent election, which has already elevated both its visibility and resources in the legislature. It also grew both its absolute number of votes and its share of the total vote.
And there were a lot of young faces in the halls at the Sheraton this weekend, many of them wearing pins advertising their first time attending the party’s annual general meeting. You can’t dismiss the significance of a party being able to attract new members willing to spend their weekend in windowless rooms discussing party policy.
Crombie’s successor, then, will eventually take the helm of a party that has more money, more prominence, and a more energized membership; she left it better than she found it. That is going to mean that the coming contest is likely to be the most fiercely fought since Kathleen Wynne won in 2013: the prize is actually worth winning.
Already there’s a shortlist of plausible contenders — Beaches—East York MP Nate Erskine-Smith, who came in second to Crombie in 2023, is an obvious candidate, but the list must also include Burlington MP Karina Gould (who recently ran a spirited but doomed federal leadership bid against Mark Carney) and former Mississauga—Malton MP Navdeep Bains, whose allies were among those opposing Crombie this weekend. Some people raised the prospect of former Barrie mayor Jeff Lehman earlier this summer. But any of those would face the same problem that hurt Crombie: none of them has a seat in the legislature.
(The entry of the other two MPs in the race would blunt one of the criticisms Erskine-Smith has faced this year: that he’s a federal politico on the outs with Mark Carney’s leadership looking to use provincial politics as a “backup plan,” as MPP Stephen Blais alleged earlier this year.)
Some Liberals, then, will undoubtedly want to see at least one of the 14 current MPPs in the party’s roster also mount a serious leadership bid. Adil Shamji and Ted Hsu did in 2023, though Shamji withdrew before balloting began. Stephanie Bowman has been the party’s finance critic under Crombie and would be a natural candidate to parlay that role into a leadership bid.
There are real risks with either choice. Picking the leader from the too-small caucus of Liberals at Queen’s Park means giving up an opportunity to grow the party in regions where it currently lacks representation. But then, one of the promises Bonnie Crombie made in her leadership bid was that she would put Peel Region in contention for the Liberals as well as the rest of the western GTA; none of that materialized.
If the delegates at the Sheraton this weekend were going to let risk-aversion win the day, Crombie would have won a much larger majority. Indeed, one Liberal told me in the halls that they welcomed a leadership race precisely because of the change it would bring, alluding to the recent federal race won by Mark Carney — the Liberal Party of Canada went from left for dead to a renewed sense of energy and purpose precisely because of the willingness to ditch a leader who couldn’t deliver.
Liberals made their choice this weekend, and Crombie has made hers in turn. Bigger choices now lie ahead: who will be next to lead the party, and where will they take it from here?
Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Navdeep Bains as the MP for Mississauga—Malton. In fact, he is the former MP for Mississauga—Malton. TVO Today regrets the error.
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