Bonnie Crombie’s first year as Ontario Liberal leader looks simple at a glance.
She didn’t beat Doug Ford and she failed at securing her own seat: she lost. The reality is more complicated — and more flattering.
Crombie raised money, recruited credible candidates, and pulled the party back from the brink. On election night, the Liberals climbed into official party status and were within striking distance of the NDP for second place.
That is not nothing.
Still, it’s not a win and the lasting image was Crombie conceding in Mississauga East–Cooksville, beaten by Silvia Gualtieri, after a ferocious local campaign.
Losing like that did two things: It obscured the Liberals’ incremental progress and cemented a “loser’s frame” around the leader. You can gain ground provincially and still be tagged a loser if you personally come up short. That’s unfair — but it’s also politics.
Crombie’s subsequent leadership-review drama only reinforced the frame: she survived the test with 57 per cent, signalled she’d stay, then resigned hours later — more fuel for the story that the Liberals can’t settle on a plan, a message or even a messenger.
But here’s the bigger truth Liberals (and much of the activist left) still haven’t absorbed: voters like Doug Ford. Not “hold-their-nose” tolerate — I mean actually like. The more Ford’s opponents paint him as a bully, the more he shows up as the opposite: approachable, plain-spoken, and feels like the guy you want to live next door to.
You don’t have to agree with every decision to recognize that Ford connects with people who haven’t voted PC in generations—union families, first-generation homeowners, new Canadians, suburban commuters. That’s a coalition built on feeling seen, not being lectured. And it’s why Ford’s popularity doesn’t rise or fall with Bonnie Crombie — or any Liberal leader. He built it himself.
Crombie’s loss can be best understood by two forces: a disciplined, well-resourced local operation in Peel and a provincial opponent whose support is rooted in identity and practicality, not ideology. In Mississauga East–Cooksville, the PCs fielded a candidate with deep family ties and a turnout machine that was never going to be outworked. Add the PCs’ decision to pull the province into a February snap election and you have a recipe for a leader’s-seat knife fight that even the most seasoned campaigner could lose.
The left keeps making the same strategic mistake: confusing their disdain for Ford with a strategy to beat him. It’s easy to tweet that he’s unserious, or cruel. Truth is: he’s neither unserious nor cruel, in fact, the opposite. While opponents are busy psychoanalyzing his syntax, Ford is talking about keeping families safe and getting shovels in the ground: building subways, highways, schools and hospitals.
Consider the map. The Liberals picked up seats and cleared the 12-seat threshold for party status — a meaningful step from their 2018 nadir — but they still fell short of replacing the NDP as Official Opposition. That’s a sign the anti-PC vote is not consolidating, and the Ford coalition is cementing. A leader swap won’t fix that; a total reset might.
So what should the Liberals — and the broader left — learn from the Crombie year?
Stop running against Ford’s personality and start running for specific policies that matter to the same people who like him. Quit your cheap shots at Ford voters. The fastest way to lose a swing voter is to tell them they’re wrong about what they see with their own eyes. Treat their reasons for liking Ford as rational — even if you disagree — and offer credible, concrete improvements on the issues spoken about at the kitchen table. If your message boils down to “we’re smarter,” you’re not only losing; you’re losing on purpose.
Fix your ground game. Crombie’s personal defeat is a case study in turnout physics. If you want to beat a Peel-region machine, you need your own — ward by ward, ethnic and faith community by community, with organizers who speak the languages, know the personalities, and already have the WhatsApp groups. The thing is: Crombie knows this. She was a popular Mississauga mayor. That they lost her riding is still a bit of a head-scratcher. The work to win your riding doesn’t start in a writ period; it starts yesterday.
What did Crombie get right? She professionalized fundraising, recruited credible slates, and restored some voter permission to consider the Liberals again. Those are necessary preconditions for a comeback. Dismissing her year as a failure is lazy analysis — and, for Liberals, dangerous self-comfort.
Crombie’s exit won’t move Ford’s numbers one bit. That’s the point. His coalition is not made up of second-choice votes from people who dislike Bonnie Crombie or Marit Stiles, it’s made up of people who like Doug Ford. Until the party accepts that Ontario’s centre-left cannot beat Ford by scolding his voters — or by rerunning personality contests — it will keep choosing moral satisfaction over political victory.
Laryssa Waler is the founder and CEO of Henley Strategies and former executive director of communications for Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
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