The Ontario election could have been an email. It had all the makings of one, short, irritating, and unnecessary — a missive that, once completed, was already set to be forgotten. Because politics is politics, as cynical as predictable, each party and leader will claim victory after last night, but this was an election that everybody lost, not least of whom include the people of Ontario.
The country’s most populous province is stuck with Doug Ford as premier for another several years. It’s stuck with more of the same: a “tough” on crime agenda that doesn’t work, hallway healthcare, unaffordable housing, bullying of drug users, weak to no climate action, ripped up bike lanes, a war on workers, highways that will induce congestion rather than solve it, and, almost surely, scandals.
The election was a waste of time, money, and attention — not that anyone was paying all that much attention to it. For all the talk of Progressive Conservative fiscal prudence, Ford blew $189 million to run an early election in the dead of February with the sole goal of extending his government’s life because the timing was right. He’s allowed to do so, of course. Indeed, it was brilliant strategic politics, so much so that he won without most voters bothering to show up to indicate whether they were pleased or displeased with his seven years in power.
During his victory speech, Ford said the province had given him a “strong, historic, third majority mandate. A mandate to protect Ontario.” With a voter turnout of only about 45.5 per cent, up slightly from the all-time low in 2022 of 44 per cent, it’s hard to claim Ford has received the “strong mandate” to deal with Donald Trump that he said he so desperately needed. When the final numbers are tallied, we’ll see that something like 80 per cent of eligible voters either stayed home or voted for somebody else.
Even with a low turnout, or perhaps because of it, as the returns came in Thursday night, it was immediately clear Ford would win. CBC called a PC majority just 10 minutes after the polls closed. It was Ford’s third and the first time a premier has managed as much since 1959. But as CBC reported, Ford’s goal had been to grow his majority, pressing somewhere in the region of 90 seats, up from the 83 he won in 2022. One journalist on the broadcast suggested that Ford was gunning for 96 seats, which would have set a record. He will have to settle for a mere 80, or so, depending on the final counts in a few close ridings. Regardless, Ford will likely end up with slightly fewer seats than last time, but still roughly 53 more than the second-place NDP.
So, Ford “lost” in the sense that he retained government but his majority shrank. He also lost in the sense that the Liberals were able to grow their seat share under Bonnie Crombie, returning to official party status, with all the extra resources and status in the legislature that comes with that and will, presumably, make Ford’s life a little harder – but maybe not all that much harder.
Crombie was brought on as Liberal leader to grow the party and, specifically, as former mayor of Mississauga for a decade, to win its ridings for her party. Save for a close race in one of six, she didn’t do that. She didn’t even win her own seat, which means she can’t heckle Ford from the legislature, or lead her party from within the chamber. It will be cold comfort for the Liberals that they managed 30 percent of the popular vote as things stand, more than 10 points higher than the NDP, but walked away with just 14 seats compared to the NDP’s 27 before final counts are complete.
Like in 2022, the election felt like a race for second place from the beginning as the NDP and Liberals jockeyed for official opposition. Late in the campaign, Crombie even expressly took aim at NDP voters, arguing the Liberals were the only party that could defeat Ford. That was, of course, untrue. During her concession speech, Crombie called on her supporters to “celebrate coming back to party status.”
As NDP leader Marit Stiles took the stage to give her speech in the dying hours of the night, she acknowledged that voters had given Ford the job of premier once more – let him keep it, strictly speaking – but said they had given her and the New Democrats a “different but important job,” official opposition, once more. The NDP ended the night down four seats and roughly five per cent in the popular vote, weaker than in 2022 and now competing with a stronger Liberal Party. The NDP will nonetheless claim a win since it held on to official opposition, but during the election it was incapable of mounting a convincing case against Doug Ford and his trailing list of failures and scandals. One might just as easily call that a loss.
Despite claims to the contrary by political operatives whose job it is to put a happy face bandaid over the cuts suffered by their side, nobody won Ontario’s election. The contest was a waste of money, time, and attention and Ford remains in power with a divided and weak opposition. Ontarians, as we will see in the months and years to come, will have to live with the consequences until the next vote, in 2029, unless a cynical premier, perhaps Ford himself, drags us to the polls earlier once more.
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