Was Santa good to you last month? He sure was to the Ontario Liberals.
At a time of year when people have already been digging deep into their pockets to purchase gifts for family and friends, the Ontario Liberals have announced some unprecedentedly good fundraising numbers.
After Bonnie Crombie won the party leadership last month, she minced no words about the challenge ahead. The candidate who, as mayor of Mississauga, was already heavily criticized by her rivals for what they viewed as an overly cozy relationship with homebuilders, didn’t hesitate to throw down the gauntlet.
She pointed out that the Progressive Conservatives had a 10-to-one advantage in fundraising. Left unsaid was the notion that, if the Liberals were unable to be more competitive, their prospects for knocking off the Tories in the 2026 election were … well, forget it. Crombie told her squad that she was setting what seemed like an impossibly high target so that the Liberals could get back in the game.
So how did Ontarians respond? Bigly, as another well-known politician might have said.
The Liberals announced Tuesday that they not only hit their million-dollar fundraising target but actually blew past it. The party took in more than $1.2 million from more than 7,600 donors in its year-end blitz. That works out, on average, to about $160 per donor.
“Ontario Liberals are back,” Crombie said in a news release, echoing a line she’d used numerous times while campaigning for the leadership. She acknowledged the party is still well back of what the governing Tories have taken in but said she liked her party’s “strong start.”
Since the previous Liberal government under Kathleen Wynne changed the fundraising laws in 2017, this is the most successful run the current Ontario Liberals have enjoyed when it comes to fundraising.
As much as people can legitimately criticize the potentially noxious influence of money in politics, the reality is it has become a reliable barometer of how political parties are doing. The Liberals have had very little to cheer about for more than half a decade now. But they’ve accomplished three significant things over the past many months: They retired their 2022 campaign debt. They raised more money than all the other parties at Queen’s Park combined in the third quarter of last year (beginning of July to end of September). And now they’ve hit their leader’s million-dollar target to close out 2023.
Not bad for a party with only nine seats that just experienced its worst losing streak in a century and a half of Ontario political history.
To be sure, the Liberals still have a hugely challenging row to hoe. As a group without official-party status in the legislature, they’ll continue find it difficult to get attention, as the rival New Democratic Party remains the official opposition and will get the lion’s share of “ice time” during question period, once that returns next month.
Crombie will no doubt be using this time to travel the province to raise more money, find new candidates for the 2026 election, and raise her profile outside the Greater Toronto Area, where she’s less well known.
There’s a good debate among her advisers as to how important it is to get her a seat in the legislature. Given the Liberals’ lack of official-party status, many argue it’s not urgent at all, since the third-place party gets so little camera time. Others say she should pounce on the opportunity to run in a byelection if a winnable seat presents itself.
That could happen in the soon-to-be former mayor’s own backyard, as rumours persist that Kaleed Rasheed, the MPP for Mississauga East–Cooksville and formerly the minister of public and business service delivery, may leave politics altogether. Rasheed resigned from cabinet last September after admitting to having presented Ontario’s integrity commissioner with incorrect information about a trip he took to Las Vegas with a Greenbelt developer.
While Liberals insist there’s no rush to getting Crombie into the house, she surely couldn’t turn down a chance to contest a seat in Mississauga, which has given every provincial seat to the Tories in two straight elections.
All of which means 2024 is shaping up to be a much more competitive year in Ontario politics, which is all to the good.
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