Barbara Patrocinio

Reporter

Albert Einstein probably never said it, but he’s often credited with the idea that doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If that’s true, Ontario’s opposition parties could be accused of exactly that.

For years, both the Liberals and the NDP have recycled the same political playbook, convinced that the formulas which failed them before will somehow succeed next time.

As former Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy has observed, the problem lies in the assumption that strategies crafted for previous elections can still resonate in a rapidly changing province.

The 44th Ontario general election has left the province with a familiar legislative landscape: a nearly unchanged Progressive Conservative majority and a fractured opposition.

Both the Liberal Party and the NDP face structural challenges, leadership questions, and the strategic difficulties of competing against a premier who remains consistently popular.

After this last election, there is a lingering question on the Ontario political landscape: What is happening with the opposition parties in Ontario, and why are they struggling to position themselves as credible alternatives to the Ford government?

Political observers note that both main opposition parties have failed to learn from past defeats or articulate messages that align with what voters actually care about.

Before we dig into that, first let’s do a brief recap:

Ford’s latest majority, secured on February 28, offered the government what it wanted most: time. After consecutive victories in 2018 and 2022, the PCs entered another mandate with breathing room to implement promises without fear of legislative obstruction.

But for Ontario’s opposition, the election results revealed the depth of their challenges.

The results made clear some structural challenges for opposition parties, particularly the Liberals and the NDP, whose internal divisions, leadership questions, and declining voter bases complicate efforts to present themselves as viable alternatives to voters.

The Liberals faced perhaps the hardest blow.

Its leader Bonnie Crombie, who is also the former mayor of Mississauga, failed to win her own seat in Mississauga–East–Cooksville, a riding once viewed as fertile ground.

With just 14 seats captured out of 1.5 million votes, the Liberals secured official party status, but not the official opposition. While this grants them parliamentary resources and funding, it does little to project the image of a government-in-waiting.

And after months of speculation, Crombie announced her intention to resign as leader after an underwhelming review by party members in September.

The NDP’s situation was not much brighter. Although they retained official opposition status, their share of the popular vote collapsed to about 900,000, less than half of what Andrea Horwath achieved in 2018 and roughly 200,000 fewer than their total just two and a half years ago. In six years, nearly a million New Democrat voters had drifted away, particularly in the party’s traditional strongholds of Hamilton, Windsor, and Sudbury.

Ontario uses a “first-past-the-post “ voting system, which means that the candidate with the most votes in each electoral district wins, even if they don't have a majority. For the Liberals, this meant that even a respectable vote count could not overcome the disadvantage of being spread too thin across too many ridings.

But why do Doug Ford’s PCs seem to be so unbeatable in Ontario?

Political analysts pointed to several problems the Ontario opposition has recurrently fallen into, but there is one topic where both the PCs strength and their opponents weaknesses converge: their core identity and message to voters.

Doug Ford: the good, the bad and the sauce

Doug Ford’s appeal remains one of the most decisive forces in Ontario politics. His plainspoken, populist style has consistently connected with voters who see him as someone who “gets” their daily frustrations. During the pandemic, Ford’s visibility and his message to working Ontarians and commuters solidified that connection.

McMaster University political science professor Peter Graefe said that Ford’s persona can be very appealing to the public, but one point that could be better explored by opposition parties is that sometimes his messaging can be too targeted to a specific group of voters.

“What you see is pretty much who he is, but I'm not sure people really buy that when he tells young people, for example, that they need to try harder to find jobs. So although sometimes he makes mistakes, he's also communicating about things that people actually go through during their daily lives, like being stuck in traffic,” he said.

Graefe added that people also notice that opposition parties have been silent about these daily issues, which is also well played by Doug Ford.

Even when the premier’s decisions occasionally stray offside with public sentiment, the capacity to apologize and pivot has shielded him from long-term political damage, a skill many politicians simply lack.

Conservative strategist Dan Mader says this skill is a rare trumf and an essential part of Ford’s sauce. “People buy it from him. They think he’s sincere, and they accept that.” This capacity to apologize and pivot politically allows the premier to avoid long-term damage from occasional miscalculations.

This combination of resilience and responsiveness forms the core of Ford’s political “sauce.” He has built an image of a premier who not only governs but listens, who positions himself as being on the side of the ordinary Ontarian.

Also, Ford understands his base, mostly composed of urban commuters in the GTA, and speaks to them about issues he knows they care about, such as traffic. ”Ford has positioned himself as being on their side and standing up for them, taking away speed cameras, for example, building roads, removing bike lanes… the list goes on,” says Graefe.

Yet, popularity is not the same thing as invulnerability. Strategists warn that Canadians tend to tire of leaders after eight to ten years in power. Ford, now past his seventh year as premier, is approaching that threshold.

For the opposition, this window represents both a challenge and an opportunity: any credible alternative must be ready when the electorate begins to reconsider its options.

But although Ford has the strange (but powerful) ability to pull voters from different political stripes, not every Conservative loves him. Project Ontario, a small but vocal conservative group, has been advocating for a more traditional right-leaning posture on key issues.

“ Ironically, for a Conservative, he has been very loose with money,” said Geneviève Tellier, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa.

But as Mader explains, the Ontario PC Party differs culturally from its federal counterpart: “There isn’t as much of a tradition in this party of party membership really putting pressure on leadership, particularly when the party is in power. Most party members are happy to be in government and believe the premier’s doing a good job.”

At the end of the day, Ford is a premier who is constantly in touch with his voters, and shows to care about values that resonate with the majority of Ontarians.

The Liberals: A party still searching for itself

To put it simply, they need to understand, once and for all, who they are as a party, said Former Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy.

The party continues to wrestle with a deeper existential question: what does it mean to be an Ontario Liberal in the 2020s?

Former Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy argues that the party has yet to define its purpose in a post-McGuinty, post-Wynne era. While resources and organization remain issues, the lack of a coherent identity is a more fundamental obstacle. Voters still struggle to understand what makes the Liberals distinct from either Ford’s pragmatic populism or the NDP’s activist-progressive base.

There was also just a wave of bad luck and stubbornness playing a role in this last election, some say.

In the last election, the Liberals campaigned heavily on healthcare, a policy area that, while crucial, failed to energize voters preoccupied with inflation, housing, and affordability. Even if the issue had resonated more strongly, the party never succeeded in branding itself as the clear defender of Ontario’s health system, Milloy said.

“There’s definitely some soul-searching to do,” he added.

The Liberals’ modest success (14 seats and 1.5 million votes) restored their official party status but not their credibility as an alternative government.

And Bonnie Crombie’s inability to win her seat, followed by her resignation after receiving only 57 per cent support from party delegates at the September AGM, left the party once again in a state of transition.

To rebuild, the Liberals will need both a compelling leader and a resonant narrative. Milloy points to the example of Dalton McGuinty, who framed himself in 2003 as “the education premier,” a simple, defining message that connected with voters.

“ I'm always wary of healthcare, because I don't believe voters think anyone can fix it, you know? What about things like artificial intelligence taking our jobs? What about youth unemployment, or the post-secondary education crisis that we have?” Milloy wonders.

But the challenge goes beyond messaging. The Liberals’ voter base overlaps heavily with that of the NDP, particularly among urban progressives. Until the party can articulate a vision distinct from both its left-wing rival and the pragmatic conservatism of Ford’s PCs, it risks remaining a perennial third-place finisher.

The Ontario NDP faces a similar identity crisis, though with different roots. Historically seen as the party of labour, it has watched that traditional base drift toward the PCs in recent years, as Ford’s government has courted unions with pro-labour measures and economic measures.

Within the NDP, there is a persistent internal debate about whether the party should be a pragmatic, election-focused organization like its counterparts in British Columbia or Alberta, or whether it should embrace a more activist role, akin to the federal NDP. This unresolved tension continues to shape, and often undermine, its strategy.

This identity question has practical implications for electoral strategy. The NDP’s decline in vote totals suggests that voters do not yet perceive the party as a credible alternative to Ford or, to a lesser extent, the Liberals as well; and it might be that the party is not even perceived as the working-class party anymore.

After the last election results, that left the NDP with less than 19 per cent of the popular vote, and 27 seats, Leader Marit Stiles also got a lukewarm support from delegates at her party's convention: a humble 68 per cent.

But veteran NDP strategist Erin Morrison said that there is hope for the party if they want to be a serious alternative to Ford's Progressive Conservatives, as long as they do the work they need.

"What Marit has to do to ease the mind of critics is fight to win," Morrison said. "It's absolutely critical that the NDP changes what it does, so that in the next election, people have a real choice."

Milloy says they need to talk about the issues voters care about the most, and to do so, it is necessary to stop being seen as a party that “seems to promise everything to everyone” and that has a focus on a lot of social justice issues that may not be top of mind for Ontarians.

As leader, Marit Stiles faces the task of balancing activist energy with electoral realism. Insiders argue that the party’s best path forward would be to sharpen its economic message and position itself more squarely as a defender of working Ontarians, the very constituency Ford has been encroaching upon.

But that’s a tough job. Former NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, for example, faced criticism for taking NDPers too far to the centre-right side of the political spectrum.

If there’s one thing Ontario’s opposition parties must do now, it’s pause and take stock of who they are, what they stand for, and how they want to be perceived.

Simply reacting to Ford, or opposing his government issue by issue, is not a strategy.

Without a clear identity and a forward-looking agenda, they risk reinforcing the perception that they exist only as critics, not contenders.

The next step would be actually having proposals and ideas to present and solidify their brands to the public.

For now, the weakness of Ontario’s opposition works entirely to Doug Ford’s advantage.

“(...)A real problem the opposition seem to have right now is to believe that the same formula they used in this last election it’s going to win an election that's three or four years away,” said Milloy. "If they don't learn from past mistakes, nothing changes."

The lack of a unified, credible alternative allows Ford to govern without having to significantly recalibrate his political strategy, even as controversies emerge.

But governing without a strong opposition comes with its own risks.

Political history in Ontario suggests that majorities are rarely lost because of a single scandal or policy failure; they are lost gradually, as governments begin to appear out of touch or unaccountable.

And there is a ceiling to political durability in Ontario. Mader observes that “Canadians tend to get tired of politicians eventually,” adding that Ford’s longevity, now stretching beyond seven years in power, is approaching the period where voter fatigue typically sets in.

His challenge over the next few years will be to keep the populist authenticity that has defined his political persona while avoiding the fatigue that comes with being in the office for too long.

The question is whether a credible alternative will exist when that moment comes.

For years, both the Liberals and the NDP have recycled the same political playbook, convinced that the formulas which failed them before will somehow succeed next time. 

How the opposition parties in Ontario lost the plot (and another election) to Doug Ford's PCs

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