Some people would say that successfully lobbying the provincial government to dissolve Peel Region — a municipal arrangement a half-century old that not even Hazel McCallion had managed to break — would maybe be enough for the mayor of Mississauga for one week. And, technically, they’d be right: that was enough for last week. This week, Bonnie Crombie is announcing that she’s running for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, making her the second declared candidate after federal MP Nate Erskine-Smith.
Well, not quite: on Tuesday, Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu formally registered with Elections Ontario to begin his campaign for Liberal leader, albeit after Crombie’s campaign came out of stealth mode over the weekend. Technically, Crombie announced Tuesday morning only that she’s “exploring” a leadership bid, but anyone with eyes can see what map she’s using and where this particular trail will end. In one of the more than 20 interviews she booked for the start of her bid, Crombie told TVO Today that she’ll make a formal decision in “weeks more so than months.”
Given where the Ontario Liberals stand right now, there’s really only one question that matters: What does Crombie think went so wrong with a party that governed for 15 years only to be reduced to eight seats in the legislature not once but twice?
“I think the Liberal party moved much too far to the left. I think traditionally our roots are in the centre. I believe we govern from right of centre,” says Crombie, echoing a refrain common among those Liberals who see themselves as more business-aligned. “I would hope to attract Red Tories and Blue Liberals back to the party and let the opposition deal with the issues that are too far to the left.”
When asked to elaborate on what about Kathleen Wynne’s tenure had been too far left — what did the last Liberal premier do in power that Crombie would not have done? — she cited high spending, in particular on health and child-care programs.
“I think some of the decisions were too costly for Ontarians… the health care, the child care, the dental benefits: those are better delivered by other levels of government,” she said, noting that the federal government has indeed substantially expanded child-care and dental programs.
It’s one thing to dismiss the left when the Liberal party is ascendant or at the very least consistently winning official-party status. But the NDP, despite its stumbles in the last election (and despite winning marginally fewer votes than the Liberals overall), still holds the title of official Opposition and four seats for every one of the Liberals’. The debate the Liberals will have, now that there’s actually going to be a contested race, will in part be about whether the future of the party will involve fighting the NDP for votes on the left or fighting the Progressive Conservatives for the votes of disenchanted business liberals. Crombie makes no bones about where she sits.
“I think Liberals left the Liberal party because they were in competition with the NDP; I think the natural position for the party is in the centre,” she said. “I will see if that resonates with the people in Ontario as I speak with them.”
Crombie’s diagnosis may end up being wrong: there may actually be relatively little appetite for old-school centrism in the Liberal party. The people who make up its core in 2023 include, in substantial numbers, younger people who came into it or stuck with it in hard times specifically because of Wynne’s progressive turn while premier. But the nature of this race won’t be decided solely on a left/right political axis; the Liberal membership will be deciding on the person best able to reinvent the party and make it successful again as much as it’ll be endorsing a philosophy of government.
Just as neither Erskine-Smith nor Yasir Naqvi (another formally undeclared candidate) has given up his day job as federal MP to run for leader, Crombie doesn’t intend to resign as mayor of Mississauga unless she wins the contest on December 2. That means she’ll be involved in negotiations with the province for the rest of the year over the dissolution of Peel Region at the same time as she’s involved in a partisan contest that will necessarily involve her criticizing the premier who’s ultimately going to decide Mississauga’s fate.
Crombie says she’s not worried that her ambitions will inadvertently harm the city she leads.
“We need a strong advocate, and I will always be there,” she said. “Am I concerned about needing to be forthright with the premier? Well, the premier and I have been quite forthright with each other in the past. We’ve been down this road, and we both believe we’ve got the best interests of Ontarians at heart — we’ve just got different approaches with how we get there.”
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