By Ray Rivers
September 15th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Bonnie Crombie: Losing is never easy.
Bonnie Crombie had been a very popular Mississauga mayor and the Liberal faithful put their faith in her to return the party back to power. But that was not to be. Some would say she lacked courage – should have tried harder to win any of the by-elections, the one in Milton for example.
Everyone loves a show by an irreverent clown.
Some might say that she clearly failed to understand the public mood when Ford called the last election. The de facto election issue was primarily an area of federal, not provincial jurisdiction. But Ford played with Ontario voters’ emotions and they rewarded him with another majority government. Everyone loves a show by an irreverent clown and Doug Ford had only been bettered by his younger brother Rob when it comes to that.
Both the Liberal and NDP election platforms were mundane and boring by comparison. And how many voters understand the nuances of provincial authority in international affairs? The pungency of the Greenbelt, Ontario Place and Science Centre scandals and Ford’s mismanagement of the economy and record accumulating debt notwithstanding, Ford was the populist with the mostest.
Crombie and her team just didn’t get it. And then there was the generous stipend Crombie extracts from the dwindling party offers, while waiting to be gainfully employed as MPP. Or perhaps the die was cast when Crombie failed to win a seat in her own neighbourhood – where she had commanded huge support as mayor.
The Liberals have returned to official party status and that should help the search for the ‘right’ candidate. But perhaps the party needs to take a serious look at the future of other third parties. The NDP and Liberals eat each other for lunch every election, and yet a merger is out of the question as each party dwells in its own vanity – their distinct pureness of purposes.
While Ford has a majority of seats, he governs without the consent of the majority of voters. A ranked ballot would elect the first candidate to get 50% + 1 votes.
While Ford has a majority of seats, he governs without the consent of the majority of voters. We still call that democracy but we can do better. A ranked ballot which guarantees the winner has at least 50% support is better. But the Tories fear they’d lost power under that system. So Mr. Ford has banned ranked ballots even in municipal elections, fearing they might also creep into the provincial arena.
Still it is debatable whether a ranked system would have worked to Crombie’s advantage in the last election. In that race the NDP came out as the clear alternative to Mr. Ford. So a ranked ballot might have only further collapsed the Liberal vote. Even without ranked ballots, the truth is that the NDP has become the main opposition, or government, in all the provinces west of Ontario.
Unless the Liberals can better distinguish themselves, that may well be the future scenario for Ontario as well. So while Bonnie was clearly humbled and hurt by the rejection from many of the party faithful this past weekend, all but forcing her to resign, another leader of that party might have done no better.
Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Ray: You should have started with the last paragraph, that is spot on.