Bonnie Crombie wins the vote, but loses the war

Technically enough votes...but in truth nowhere close.

In extremely blurry quality from the digital zoom on my Android phone, the results of the Leadership Review Vote at the Ontario Liberal AGM are displayed on a screen to delegates. Bonnie Crombie received 57% of the vote, meaning that 43% of delegates rejected her as their leader despite no actual opponent on the ballot. | Copyright © Jake Landau, all rights reserved.

The Ontario Liberal Annual General Meeting is complete, after a long weekend starting at 15h00 ET on Friday, September 12^th with registration, and ending at 13h30 ET on the 14^th with the final pronouncement of the results for both the executive races, and whether Bonnie Crombie would survive the Leadership Review vote.

With the New Leaf Liberals group and her political rival Nate Erskine-Smith socializing the bar of reaching more than two-thirds of the vote in her favour if she wanted to remain, Crombie was dealt a harsh blow with the final result early this afternoon, winning only 57% of the vote and thus seeing nearly half the party’s delegates reject her. This result got an audible reaction from the crowd of delegates in the room, and it became immediate discussion how long she could last before being pushed out.

Two-thirds is a fairly reasonable bar to meet, with a fairly humorous anecdote from Canadian history being that after Joe Clark resigned as leader of the PCs in 1983, then-Prince Charles remarked to him with incredulousness at a private dinner that “What I don’t understand is: Why was 67 per cent not enough?”

In an election with several candidates, Charles would have been right; 67% would obviously be wonderful in a general election. But in a leadership review, there’s just the one candidate, and it’s not a matter of preference but rather a vote of confidence. And despite claiming in her post-result speech that she would remain as leader, ultimately Crombie understood by the end of today that she did not have that confidence.

The Liberal “big tent” has been fractured into two halves since her 53%-to-47% victory over Erskine-Smith in the 2023 Ontario Liberal Leadership Race. These similar results today indicate that her leadership was highly divisive right up to the end, never managing to win the other faction’s support, and in many cases intentionally alienating them.

She also did not have that confidence from caucus, who were pulled into a meeting with her before the results were announced, but refused to provide her with their unanimous endorsement. Sources tell me that at one point caucus members were separated from each other and split into two different rooms, for reasons unknown.

So without the membership and without caucus, the question then becomes whether she would have the confidence of the incoming executive? Many of the candidates she supported did win, but the New Leaf Liberals successfully installed many of their own people into executive roles as well, including Noah Parker and Jennifer Alexander, both of whom I briefly interviewed on It’s Getting Pretty Late a few days ago.

Truthfully, there was no path for her to remain as leader following this result. As I walked the floor with delegates after the announcement of results, we made casual guesses as to how long it would take for Crombie to face the music, like Justin Trudeau did this past winter when he finally made his call to resign.

Most delegates I chatted with guessed about a week. For my own part, I was admittedly too reserved and guessed two to three weeks. One individual, however, told me he thought it would only take “hours”, and his bold guess ended up being the closest of all. Just a few minutes before 17h00 ET this afternoon, just a few short hours after insisting she would not resign…she did.

On the one hand, I’m glad Crombie eventually made the right decision, and I don’t want to rub salt in the wound if she’s willingly stepping away. But on the other hand, could she not have figured this out a bit quicker? Did the pronouncement of results have to be delayed an hour past the scheduled time of noon, so that Crombie, who clearly knew the results before we did, could try and corral caucus onto her side in that private meeting?

Colin D’Mello of Global News reported at 13h53 ET that Bonnie Crombie cancelled her planned post-results media scrum with members of the press gallery. If she thought she could remain as leader, then she should have been prepared to defend it to the press. And if she already knew at that point that she couldn’t defend herself, then it was silly and disrespectful to give that speech on TV and drag things out for hours.

In any case, Crombie’s plan is to remain as leader until the conclusion of a new leadership contest, rather than leaving a gap for an interim leader to fill. This isn’t without precedent, as Trudeau did the exact same thing before Mark Carney took his job. But there’s also merit to having an interim leader, so that the party can make a clean break and use distance to give itself a fresh slate.

The incoming executive will determine the specifics of the upcoming Leadership Contest, including aspects like timing and qualifications. And after going to sleep tonight, I look forward to waking up in the morning and covering all the nitty-gritty details of that race as it unfolds before us.

But what comes next can be discussed tomorrow. Because tonight? New Leaf Liberals are walking with their chests held high, celebrating a victory that was hard-fought, and well-earned.