From Friday, September 12th to Sunday, September 14th, the Ontario Liberal Party will be hosting their annual general meeting in the provincial capital of Toronto, at the Sheraton Centre downtown across from Toronto City Hall.
While I’ve recently left the Liberal Party of Canada, the OLP is a fully separate institution both on paper and in practice. Relations have become frosty between Federal Liberals and Ontario Liberals, especially with the lovey-dovey atmosphere between Premier Ford and Prime Minister Carney.
And at this Ontario Liberal AGM in ten days, two very important things will happen. For one, new executive elections will be held, where Crombie loyalists are being challenged by anti-Crombie Liberals for their positions of authority. But more importantly, the second vote that will be held is Bonnie Crombie’s leadership review, where delegates at the AGM will vote on whether she can even keep her job.
So I’ve maintained my OLP membership, at least for now, because these two votes will be decisive in shaping the future of the party. What will my provincial entanglements look like after September 14th? I cannot say. It will depend almost entirely on what happens at this AGM.
But my initial thoughts are not favourable. There are basic things that OLP’s central executive and staff are failing to do. I can’t read into whether this is intentional maliciousness or merely gross incompetence, but the end result is that the scale has been weighted to benefit Crombie’s status quo. And that is not okay.
Firstly, the executive battles are not being fought on even ground. For note, the Ontario Liberal Party does not just have their central executive, but also the executives for four commissions: the Ontario Young Liberals (OYL), the Ontario Women’s Liberal Commission (OWLC), the Ontario Liberal Rural and Northern Commission (OLRNC), and new this year, the Ontario Liberal Seniors Commission (OLSC).
During the voting period at the AGM, members will be given ballots for contested positions on the central OLP executive, but you will also get ballots for contested spots on any commission you are eligible for. Ages 25 and younger get to vote for OYL, while ages 60 and older get to vote for the OLSC. Women get to vote for the OWLC, and anyone in one of the designated rural or northern ridings can vote for the OLRNC.
Voting is further broken down, however, by region. While some executive roles are at-large for the entire constituency of the party or the commission, many are regional vice-presidents who are integral to coordinating riding EDAs. You may only vote for a regional position if the riding you represent as a delegate is in that region.
“Represent” is the operative word there, not where you live. The AGM is a delegated convention, where you cannot simply attend and vote, but must be elected by fellow Ontario Liberals in your riding as a delegate. However, since running a delegate election meeting costs money, central OLP staff asked that in ridings over the limit after the deadline to submit intent, that people select an option to be relocated to a riding that still had space.
Many people in both the pro-Crombie and anti-Crombie camps selected this option, as they were assured that they would be placed in a riding in the same region. However, I have spoken with numerous delegates who were shuffled outside their region, and who have received confirmation that they will only get to vote for positions in the region they have been shuffled to.
As such, people have been shuffled out of regions with contested positions into positions without contested positions, and vice versa, a massive problem for the integrity of these contests. This would also present a problem for the OLRNC as well due to qualifying for that commission based on riding. However, they do not have any contested positions, and indeed have two unfilled regional spots, so that at least is a moot point.
But for every contested role across the party, of which there are many, there is an even bigger problem. Several candidates for roles on both the central executive and the commissions have provided communications to me from the returning officer, confirming they will not receive any voter contact information for delegates, neither phones nor emails. As such, candidates are being prevented from actually communicating with the people who will be voting.
Some candidates, that is. Primarily, the restrictions limit anti-Crombie candidates, who do not have access to lists from prior campaigns or the internal party database. And while it would be illegal to use any of those things, it is an open secret that many Liberals seem to do it anyway! As such, only candidates that challenge incumbents have been restricted, while incumbents themselves are privileged.
The second core issue surrounds the fairness of the leadership review, which will determine whether Crombie can stay as leader of the party. On paper, she just needs to make sure 50% + 1 vote “No” on a leadership review. In practice, she needs a clear majority of the membership to back her in order to stay on, and a near-even split would be disastrous.
That is not my concern with fairness. Thankfully, unlike voting for executive roles which will happen later in the AGM, delegates will get a leadership review ballot immediately upon registration on September 12th or 13th, with the results being announced on the 14th. And as every single delegate qualifies for this vote, the region shuffling mentioned above is not a consideration.
The problem comes with the conduct of the OLP executive and staffers concerning what information voting delegates are receiving from the party before the leadership review. False information has been propagandized, and useful information has not been released as promised.
Firstly, OLP President Kathryn McGarry has falsely claimed that while she respects the decision of delegates, there will be problems if Crombie is removed. It is unacceptable for the party president to claim neutrality and then immediately undermine it in the same breath.
It is even further unacceptable that what she claims are blatant lies. She claims that an interim leader can’t open nomination contests, and that a new policy convention can’t happen under an interim leader. Let me make it clear again, both of these are lies.
According to Section 9.3 of the OLP’s constitution, which sets out the process for selecting an interim leader after a vacancy:
The interim Leader so elected shall be entitled to exercise all constitutional authorities of the Leader and shall be identified to the Chief Electoral Officer as the Leader of the Party, until such a time as a Leader is elected through a Leadership Contest.
If the text isn’t enough? There were multiple by-elections under previous interim leader John Fraser after Del Duca resigned in 2022, before Crombie was elected as leader in December 2023.
I already knew that McGarry had been repeating these lies, and that people had publicly confronted her about them. I did not expect that when she spoke at the OYL Summer Fling on August 17th two weeks ago, she would repeat those lies right in front of me to a room packed with Young Liberals who will be attending the AGM.
This kind of fearmongering is pathetic. If you want to vote for Crombie, fine, and if you want to tell others to do so, fine! But don’t hold a role that should be neutral and then betray that neutrality. And don’t lie to influence the vote, especially when you have been repeatedly called out publicly for those specific lies!
But even worse than the lies they tell are the truths they hide. On May 28th, OLP began a Campaign Review process in which OLP members would be surveyed online and at in-person group discussions to determine the flaws in Crombie and her team’s campaign.
In McGarry’s own words, the report from this process was supposed to come out “later in the summer”. And quite obviously, this report as to what the team did wrong is extremely relevant to voting delegates deciding whether Crombie needs to be replaced!
Well, it is now September 2nd, just ten days from when delegates will arrive in Toronto and begin to cast ballots for the leadership review. And the Campaign Review report is…nowhere to be found! In passing conversations, some OLP members cited to me that “French translation” was an issue; I find such a suggestion patently absurd for a political party with caucus funding that aims to govern a bilingual province.
Liberal MPP for Ajax Rob Cerjanec claimed on August 31st that he was told on the 29th that the report “is to be released soon and definitely before the AGM.” But the clock is ticking, and even if Rob is correct the lack of time to read and discuss the report will prevent delegates from using it to inform their votes, both for the leadership review and for the party executive.
Most concerning of all, Sabrina Nanji reports for the QP Observer that the party executive already has voted to release it, reporting that I have confirmed myself with other sources. This would mean that the report is intentionally being suppressed by someone in the central party, presumably because it would make someone look bad.
For all of these reasons cited above, I am very concerned about the fairness of proceedings at the Ontario Liberal AGM. Any voting process should be fair, ensuring that people vote for who they are entitled to vote for. Candidates should be able to contact voters to talk with them. Party executives should maintain neutrality on the leadership question and not spread lies to incite fear.
And whoever at the Ontario Liberal Party is keeping the Campaign Review report from being public? I wouldn’t expect that to work to Crombie’s benefit in the leadership review.
Because the more you try to hide something…the worse you make it seem.
Small correction, but while the Returning Officer did initially signal to us Council candidates that we would not be given access to delegate emails and phone numbers, he has since compromised and is giving us access with the condition that we may each send a single mass-email to delegates. I am personally fine with that.
To be fair and based on my long record of interacting with and publicly questioning Kathryn McGarry, I do not believe that she is a liar. I think that what she is claiming is not that organizing a policy conference would be illegal without a permanent Leader, but rather she is trying to imply that a policy conference would be logistically "impossible" with a leadership selection conference on the horizon. That being said, I have no trust that she would organize a policy resolutions conference even if there was no leadership contest, which is why I am running against her.