Brown-John: Perilous political journey ahead for new Ontario Liberal leader

Published Jan 05, 2024  •  Last updated 8 hours ago  •  3 minute read

Incoming Ontario Liberal Party Leader Bonnie Crombie reacts as she takes to the stage after winning the Ontario Liberal leadership election, in Toronto, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo by Chris Young /The Canadian Press

In the torrential rush to prepare for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, New Year’s Eve, National Cookie Day, or Maple Syrup Day or Eat a Red Apple day you may have missed the news that Ontario’s provincial Liberal Party has a new leader.

Bonnie Crombie won leadership of Ontario’s currently rather obscure Liberal Party. She out-polled three other contenders. Her success on Dec. 2 incidentally coincided with “World Pear Day.”

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Crombie has been mayor of Mississauga, that rambling suburb of Toronto, since December 2014.

As of Jan. 14, she will be taking on, and seeking to cope with, Ontario’s current “one step forward and two steps backwards” dancer, Premier Doug Ford.

Crombie indicated in November on TVO that she would run for Ontario’s legislature in 2026 — the next scheduled Ontario provincial election.

Crombie is an experienced political animal. Now a youthful 63 years of age, she earned a BA and an MBA from the University of Toronto. Her birth parents were of Polish origin.

From 2008 to 2011 she sat as a Liberal member of Parliament. She was defeated by a Conservative in the 2011 federal election. That same year she was elected as a City of Mississauga municipal councillor.

In 2014, long-serving Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion retired and she gave her support to Crombie, who won a close victory for the mayoralty job over a fellow city council member. She was re-elected with substantial majorities in 2018 and 2022.

Mississauga is a rather astonishing city, with a population that rose from 172,000 (1971) to over 800,000 (2022), Some 60 Fortune 500 companies base their global or Canadian headquarters in Mississauga —names like Walmart, FedEx and UPS. Mississauga is also home to Pearson International Airport.

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With the City of Brampton and Town of Caledon, the city is part of the upper-tier Regional Municipality of Peel. Mississauga is where the big money resides, hence its desire to split from its municipal partners.

Throughout her mayoral tenure, Crombie advocated for dissolution of the upper-tier regional municipality. In 2023, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government supported that split with the “Hazel McCallion Bill” (a Bill to Dissolve Peel Region) tabled in the Ontario legislature last May.

However, Ford’s “Minister of Everything Controversial” Paul Calandra announced a ‘roll-back’ of the prospective “full dissolution” on Dec. 13.

Crombie was not happy and said so in a press conference after Calandra and Ford’s retreat from what she referred to as “the right thing,” or what Hazel McCallion had wanted.

Reasonably, you might ask, why should Crombie’s battle with Ford’s government over Peel matter to those of us dwelling in Ontario’s Deep South?

Crombie, now leader of a rump Liberal party in the legislature, continues to focus and fight a battle largely of interest to only those on the western fringe of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

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Toronto-acculturated Tory Premier Doug Ford has yet to demonstrate that he has a working perspective of an entire province of Ontario as opposed to an introspective view of the world from the GTA. Consider the mess and scandal of the Greenbelt and his developer friends.

Crombie very well may suffer from the same GTA myopia. Her entire political career centred on Mississauga. Granted, winning legislative seats in the GTA is critical to any political party aspiring to govern Ontario, but there is much more to Ontario than the GTA.

Indeed, beyond the GTA political tremors can occur. For example, how does NDP leader Marit Stiles feel after losing a legislative seat in Kitchener Centre to the Green Party?

Doug Ford, despite his bluster about his concerns for all folks in Ontario, has demonstrated very little capacity to understand that Ontario is much more than just the GTA.

Crombie not only will be faced with Ford and the ongoing dissolution process in Peel regional municipality but she also will need to make a major effort to shed the GTA introspection and find her way into the rest of Ontario.

Ignoring the “boonies” can be costly — just ask the NDP.

There is a very perilous political journey ahead for Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie even if she can shake off her Mississauga mantle.

Lloyd Brown-John is a University of Windsor professor emeritus of political science. He can be reached at [email protected].

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