Why are Ontario Liberal Executives stalling on the leadership contest?
I honestly did not imagine it would ever be THIS slow.
It has been over two months since Bonnie Crombie signalled her intent to step down as Ontario Liberal leader, after receiving a disappointing result in her leadership review vote at the party’s AGM on September 14th.
This is not a column about putting Crombie on blast; she’s accepted that she cannot remain in her position, and while I may prefer an interim leader, she has kept herself out of the spotlight and focused on useful tasks. She may continue to draw a salary, but she’s also continuing to bring money into the party, so it’s not a real concern for me.
With that said, if Crombie really is planning to run again for Mayor of Mississauga in 2026, then it would no longer be appropriate for her to hold this partisan role or draw a salary from a political party. It would not be fair to Ontario Liberal members for her to insist on staying in the interim if she’s already putting resources towards another job. But that’s a topic to discuss in a different column.
No, the problem here actually has nothing to do with Bonnie Crombie at all. Any leadership race is actually conducted by the Executive Council, i.e. the central executives elected at the most recent AGM. There are twenty-one of these executives, including eight at-large members, nine regional vice-presidents, and the four commission presidents for youth, seniors, women, and rural/northern ridings.
And the problem, dear reader, is that the vast majority of these twenty-one executives seem to be taking this leadership race as slow as humanly possible. Forget 2026; at this pace, the Ontario Liberals might still have Bonnie Crombie in 2027.
In Policorner, Queen’s Park journalist Ahmad Elbayoumi discusses the events of an Ontario Liberal Provincial Council meeting on November 2nd earlier this month, which involves both the Executive Council and riding association presidents in a wider conclave.
While 42% of Provincial Council want a new leader to be picked by May/June 2026, 29% are content to wait until September/October, and 13% not until November/December, at the end of next year. Those numbers don’t add up to 100%, which means some party officials are potentially willing to go into 2027!
One of the participants, according to Ahmad’s reporting, stated that “the [Ontario Liberal] party is clearly pushing to delay the race egregiously late, why is beyond me.” And when you consider timelines for Ontario’s municipal elections in 2026, I would agree with the judgment that such a late timeline would be “egregious”.
As the Association of Municipalities of Ontario shows on their website, every Ontario municipality will be holding local elections on Monday, October 26th, 2026. Overlapping the Ontario Liberal leadership race with this period is guaranteed to cause lower engagement; both volunteers and donors will be tied up and not fully accessible to Liberals running in the contest.
The smart thing to do would be to elect a new Liberal leader in early spring, and then all those political campaign resources would be able to flow into municipal candidates after the conclusion of the Liberal race. This is what other parties do, because they understand municipal politics is a source of valuable talent and allies.
And if you wait after the municipal election, then you will not have a new leader until 2027, and Marit Stiles’ Ontario NDP will continue to dance circles around the rudderless Liberals by taking bold and principled stands that grab public attention.
In Ahmad’s Policorner piece, it’s also noted that several executives have taken umbrage with Noah Parker, Regional VP for Toronto EDEY. They spoke anonymously to Ahmad to claim Noah is acting in “bad form” for putting forward motions at Executive Council.
What did those motions ask for? Nothing more than clear timelines and expectations, exactly the transparency I would want! To Noah’s credit, he took these backroom jabs in stride, telling Policorner “I’m happy to give them time to see my perspective and that of the members who elected me. We need to move efficiently, and with a renewed focus on changing the way we do things.”
And having had Noah on my own podcast, I can confirm he doesn’t take the opportunity to jab at his fellow Executive Council members, even when I repeatedly gave him the opportunity. He’s a far more graceful man than I am, and certainly more graceful than his “colleagues” that anonymously sling shit.
Polls sent to membership, including to my own email, ostensibly for the purpose of “consulting” on leadership race rules, use the question prompts to falsely suggest that online voting would cost more money than in-person voting held at a physical location in all 124 ridings.
That’s a patent absurdity, but from the central party’s perspective, they would be paying more, because previously they’ve been able to foist off the costs of holding a local ballot station to that riding association. The flip side is that none of the party membership should care, because performing these tasks is one of the few jobs we expect of the central party!
In conclusion, the only reasonable determination of fact here is that the priority of Executive Council is not to move efficiently. In two months, the Ontario Liberals have done nothing, but in that same amount of time, the Federal Liberals went from Trudeau’s resignation to Carney’s swearing-in ceremony.
The leadership race must conclude by Spring 2026. If it does not, the Ontario Liberals will be creating a giant mess for themselves…and I’ll be there to write “I told you so.”