To the Point: For the Week of February 23rd, 2025
To the Point for the Week of February 23rd,
ONTARIO ELECTION 2025
Another one in the books. Doug Ford and the Ontario PC Party gambled on an early election, and it paid off. With President Trump handing Ford a gift-wrapped package of threats of economic destruction, senior PC campaign officials made sure voters never once took their minds off the theatre of the orange man. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals tried (their best?) to draw voters’ attention towards healthcare but couldn’t dig themselves out of the third-place spot in the legislature. The Ontario NDP managed to hold on to official opposition, but it cost them five seats. Although the election outcome creates four years of political stability, critical to addressing US tariffs, and a contrast to the national political scene, each party and its leaders have major takeaways to consider over the next four years.
Ontario Liberal Party Leader Bonnie Crumbles
Anthony Koch, a popular online conservative personality, observed for his 22,000 followers on X if we were watching the death of the Ontario Liberal Party. If that’s the case, then Bonnie Crombie is the pallbearer. Marit Stiles was lucky because Crombie’s performance on the campaign trail felt laboured. Crombie rarely came across as a leader with an intense desire to want the job of Premier of Ontario. From her campaign launch to her very strange decision to endorse Mark Carney as the federal Liberal Party leader, Crombie cringe-stumbled through the campaign. Her heart just never looked like it was in it to win it, which could explain her losing her riding to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown’s mother-in-law, Sylvia Gualtieri. To Gualtieri’s credit, it is never easy to be put head-to-head with the opposing party’s leader, but she worked hard and secured a very symbolic victory for the Ontario PC Party. The outcome was reminiscent of former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff’s loss in the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore to Conservative candidate Bernard Trottier in the 2011 federal election.
Perhaps Crombie was just working with what was given to her. One headscratcher for the Ontario Liberals was their ham-fisted effort to make this election about anything other than tariffs and the economy. This isn’t to say that healthcare isn’t a critical issue that warranted a commitment to see every Ontarian have access to a family doctor, but allowing your opponent to dominate – nay, outright own – the entire election campaign narrative seems a bit insane to seasoned politicos. Surely, there are very smart business and economics minded people in the Liberals’ inner circle that could have come up with a coherent and palatable policy to respond to tariffs that was an appealing alternative to the Premier’s commitment to spend $40B in business supports. It would have allowed Crombie to open a line of attack against the Premier as a one-trick-policy-pony.
In her concession speech, Crombie committed to staying on as leader despite losing her riding. However, the Bonnie Crombie era will come to a quick end in the coming weeks as a leader without a seat in the legislature is an untenable scenario for a party that must once again go back to the drawing board to assess what happened and where they go from here. While hindsight is always 20/20, one question that may be lurking in the back of the minds of Liberal voters: did we chose the right leader? Looking back on the 2023 Liberal leadership race, one could make the case the Liberals missed an opportunity to elect a rising star as leader in Nathanial Erskine-Smith. Erskine-Smith was a former commercial litigation lawyer before entering politics and has held on to his federal seat convincingly over two election cycles. He’s intelligent, has a good handle on policy files, and is politically skilled. One wonders whether the debate may have moved the needle for the Liberals if he were squaring off against the Premier. Having decided not to run again in the next federal election, Erskine-Smith is now a free agent, so to speak, and may consider once again running for the leadership when the opportunity presents itself in the coming months.
Half Smiles for Stiles
As we emphasized throughout the writ period, the real battle in this election was for Official Opposition status, so you might think it was a good night for Marit Stiles and the Ontario NDP. Except it wasn’t. Losing seats to maintain the status quo is not something to cheer about. Like the Liberals, the NDP erred in not more seriously campaigning on tariffs. Her policy response was weak, mirroring much of what the Liberals were proposing, not that the Ontario NDP have bench strength of tariff policy wonks that can even think about economics without discussing climate change or wealth redistribution. Yes, affordability issues are very important, but did you hear Trump wants to annex Canada?
We can’t help but think the Ontario NDP, and federal NDP for that matter, has missed opportunity after opportunity to go back to its union, working class roots and become a left-wing populist party. Jack Layton set the stage for NDP parties across the country to adopt a more populist style approach, before it became an ugly word in political discourse thanks to Donald Trump. But few appreciate that Bernie Sanders, who shared much of Trump’s talking points (“open borders is a Koch brothers conspiracy”), was running a populist campaign for his 2016 Democratic presidential primary run. In fact, one accepted political reality from that 2016 primary is that the phenomenon known as the “Bernie Bros” (a large cohort of mostly young white males who leaned left) broke for Donald Trump in the general election over Hillary Clinton. A Bernie Sanders type of authentic populism, coupled with a repudiation of radical progressive policies, is exactly what the Ontario NDP needs to be competitive with the PCs who stacked dozens of union endorsements after six years of excellent labour relations and worker-focused policies. It would also put a death knell in the Ontario Liberal Party that will find itself in political purgatory as they do some soul searching of their own.
As for Marit Stiles’, her job will be safe, for now. Andrea Horwath had four election chances (2011, 2014, 2018 and 2022) to secure government but failed each time. Except the only difference was Horwath increased the NDP’s seat count in 2011, 2014 and 2018. Stiles’ first election as leader saw her party drop 5 seats to both the Liberals and PCs. Regardless, Stiles will get another shot in 2029. She is more likable than Bonnie and comes across as a competent campaigner, so she’ll probably get another shot in 2029. Stiles will, however, need to abandon her ambitions to becoming federal NDP leader as that job will need to be filled sometime in the Fall.
Ford’s Legacy
For the first time since 1959, a political party has secured a third consecutive majority government, and it wasn’t even close. Despite losing some loyal caucus members like Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Premier Doug Ford received the mandate upon which he based the entire election’s justification. Much like how the federal Liberals are referred to as Canada’s “natural governing party”, Doug Ford and the PC Party machine could well have laid the foundation for the Progressive Conservatives to be referred to as same. With three majority victories under his belt, political observers across the country are beginning to discuss Premier Ford’s political legacy, from Toronto City Hall to Queen’s Park.
One thing is certain: Premier Ford has proven that his unique brand of populism works. His street-smart, no-frills hustle—once painting himself as the scrappy champ of the “little guy” against the downtown elite. It’s less about ideology, more about gut punches: lower taxes, focus on the worker, and railing against congestion and bike lanes has ingratiated him with Ontarians. He skips the Trump playbook on culture wars, but leans hard into economic gripes—taxes, traffic, bills. He’s shown that pragmatism over fiery rants is more palatable to a public who sees Trumpism as extreme. He’s the guy shoveling your driveway, not preaching from the pulpit. It’s not Trumpism. It’s Fordism.
The Premier’s captaining of “team Canada” during these stormy seas will be a lasting memory for many. Premier Doug Ford stepped into the political leadership vacuum left by Justin Trudeau’s resignation and took a hardline stance against U.S. tariffs, although with mixed results. With President Trump pushing a 25% tariff on Canadian imports, Ford wasted no time positioning himself as Ontario’s economic defender, even threatening retaliatory measures like cutting off electricity exports, and for a short time banning American-made alcohol in LCBO stores. His vocal opposition has resonated beyond Ontario, filling a gap in federal leadership at a time when the Liberal Party is in transition. Ford’s push for a stronger U.S.-Canada economic partnership under the banner of “Fortress Am-Can” is a clear attempt to reframe Ontario as the economic backbone of the country. This bold, populist approach is cementing his legacy as a leader willing to take decisive action in times of economic uncertainty, reshaping Ontario’s role in the federation and setting the stage for a political brand that could endure well beyond his time in office. Whether this translates into long-term political dominance or simply a defining moment in his tenure, Ford’s ability to step into the national conversation is a reminder that provincial leadership can have federal-scale influence.
No doubt the Premier’s firmly cemented his legacy as a prolific campaigner and retail politician but his mixed policy imprints on the economy, housing and healthcare risk overshadowing his impressive political accomplishments. Ontario’s economy bounced back after the COVID-19 hit, with solid growth in 2021 and 2022, but momentum has since slowed. High interest rates, inflation and economic uncertainty put the brakes on growth in 2024, with forecasts pointing to a sluggish 2025. While Ontario has outperformed some provinces, economists are wary, especially with U.S. trade tensions looming as a potential threat to the province’s economic stability.
The Ford government has rolled out several initiatives to tackle Ontario's healthcare challenges, but have they turned things around? The Your Health Act, 2023, aimed to reduce surgical backlogs by allowing private clinics to perform more publicly funded procedures. Additionally, the province plans to invest $48 billion over the next decade in health infrastructure, including hospital expansions and long-term care facilities. However, Ontario still grapples with a low number of staffed hospital beds—34,931 in 2023, equating to 2.23 beds per 1,000 people, a figure virtually unchanged since 2018. The Ontario Medical Association highlights ongoing issues like access to family doctors, long wait times, and physician burnout.
The Ford government has thrown a lot at Ontario’s housing crisis but is way off pace to build 1.5M homes by 2031. The More Homes Built Faster Act was designed to cut red tape and speed up construction to hit the province’s target by 2031. Ontario also locked in $4.7 billion in federal funding to support housing and infrastructure projects. But here’s the problem, housing starts still aren’t keeping pace, municipalities argue that provincial planning lacks local nuance, and a 2023 report prepared for the Ontario Home Builders Association and the Building Industry and Land Development Association suggests Ontario may have overestimated available land for development by nearly a million units.
With Ontario facing economic uncertainty, ongoing healthcare challenges, and a housing market still struggling to keep pace with demand, Ford’s track record presents a mixed picture. The government’s efforts to boost housing construction haven’t yet translated into the level of new builds needed, healthcare wait times remain a major concern, and economic growth is feeling the strain of high interest rates and trade pressures. Ford has built his reputation as a leader who gets things done, but these growing challenges could test that image and shape how his tenure is ultimately remembered.
So, where does the Premier go from here? Momentum is key. Ford has a mandate to drive real progress on these critical issues, and this term will be defined by action, not hesitation. Healthcare, in particular, will require hands-on leadership—not just policy tweaks, but bold steps to improve access and outcomes. Governing by polling data won’t cut it; strong, decisive moves will. This is Ford’s moment to push forward and prove that his leadership isn’t just about winning elections—it’s about delivering results.
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