10 thoughts on the Ontario Liberal Party AGM this weekend

I’m on the train on my way back to Ottawa for the return of Parliament after spending the weekend in Toronto for the Ontario Liberal Party Annual General Meeting. And before my train even left the station I needed to come up with 10 new thoughts. Life moves pretty fast. Unlike my delayed train.

1.      1. No one won today. Not the Crombie loyalists. Not the Nate-stans or New Leafers. Not the OLP rank and file. And not Ontarians that want a credible alternative to Ford. Rebuilding will be on hold yet another round of leadership drama. So maybe Doug Ford and Marit Stiles won.

2.      2. Crombie had no choice. The artificial bar set by the New Leafers was silly. But realistically, she needed over 60%. Under that, it would be challenging. Without a united caucus, it would be impossible. Caucus wasn’t united. Credit to her for recognizing it fairly quickly. Her position had become untenable. She’ll stay on until a new leader is picked. John Fraser is sparred a third interim leadership.

3.      3. I heard a lot of talk this weekend about early nominations. They are important. They’re not going to happen this cycle. Sure, you could open things up during a leadership race. But how do you get serious people to invest the time and the money in a run when they don’t know who their leader is going to be?

4.    4.  If this leadership isn’t going to be a wasted year or more, we need the party executive to step up. We have a huge executive, and they have not been as active as they could or should be for years. The workI’ve argued really needs to happen doesn’t need to wait for a leader. The president and her team need to start now with rebuilding dormant riding associations, building up local organizational and fundraising capacity, and recruiting and training campaign workers and managers. And our two relatively new commissions – Seniors, and Rural and Northern – have important  work to do too. This work can’t wait. Rebuild that big red machine so the new leader can hit the ground running. It’s not easy, but they need to run a leadership and a rebuild at the same time.

5.      5. Lots of people will take credit for what happened this weekend. In my last post, I posited Crombie had two opposition groups: the Nate loyalists and the Liberals who believe governing is our manifest destiny. I believe it’s the latter group that were the silent plurality of those that voted Yes for a leadership review. They are frustrated with three straight election losses. I share their frustration. But if they don’t step up to be part of the rebuild, we’ll all be back here in the same place in four years.

6.      6. Let’s not overlook the good Crombie did. She increased our vote. She raised a lot of money. She grew our caucus and got us back to official party status. She rescued the party from near oblivion and left a strong base for her successor to build on. We saw early fruits of that work with a well-run convention this weekend.

7.     7. Let’s not overlook the bad of the Crombie era. There’s lots. But I will highlight a few. Biggest of all, she had a weak core team that were poor organizers, made bad decisions, and didn’t see an election coming that everyone else in the province saw coming a mile away. There is no excuse for how poorly prepared the party entered that election. And these were a lot of the same people that have been in these roles since the McGuinty years. This party needs a new generation of competent organizational leadership around the next leader.

8.   8.  Can we get Brian Gallant to take up residency here? His speech was great. It was a clear call for compassionate and progressive Liberal values. He clearly has national ambitions. Carney needs to bring him into the fold.

9.      9.The texts and WhatsApps are already burning up with leadership speculation. Navdeep Bains. Jeff Lehman. Probably Nate. Probably a surprise or two. If Bains runs, he will run away with it. If he doesn’t run, It’s wide-open. But I know who I won’t be voting for.

10.  10. I can’t end without a food review. The OLP hands-down beats the federal party when it comes to feeding their convention attendees. Great spread for lunch on Saturday. Two salads, pasta, haddock, chicken, two deserts, soup and bread. At federal biennials, I don’t recall any free food outside the Laurier lounge.

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My pragmatic OLP leadership take that will probably make everyone upset

I have been confirmed as a voting delegate from Ottawa Centre for the upcoming Ontario Liberal Party annual meeting in Toronto, and I will be voting against a leadership review. Not because I think Bonnie Crombie has done an amazing job – in fact, I have a long list of issues– but because I think dumping the leader again and again and expecting different results without doing any of the hard rebuilding work needed is the definition of insanity, and would ensure Doug Ford rule until he gets tired of pretending to be Premier.

Let’s start with Crombie. I ended up voting for her after my initial pick dropped out, and she was the more electable of the candidates on offer. The others left standing were worse choices. And the arguments for her were compelling: Liberal credentials but an OLP outsider, a proven fundraiser, and someone who could help win back the Blue Liberals that we need to win back in areas like Peel and York regions.

Did she deliver? Some yes, lots of no.

Pros: she raised a lot of money. I was a deputy campaign manager in a swing riding where we came up just short; the centre provided a lot of support in calling and IDs.  The size of caucus increased sharply, we regained official party status, and the resources that comes with have allowed for more resources that will pay dividends in the years ahead. Our caucus has always punched above its weight and now, with more resources and strong new MPPs, it continually outshines the NDP’s performative opposition. And we got a helluva lot more votes – it just wasn’t as efficient as we would have liked.

Cons: She lost her own seat. Yes, Patrick Brown sent in half of Brampton to campaign for his mother-in-law and against Crombie. But a loss is a loss and this was embarrassing. On taking the leadership, she brought in a lot of the same old people that have been running things back to McGuinty. I voted for renewal and she delivered more of the same. The scramble to find candidates for an election that it seemed obvious everyone knew was coming was a major organizational failure. The central campaign lacked focus and organization.

So, why not vote for a new leadership process? Because doing so would not address any of the things that are wrong with out party. The problem with the OLP isn’t Bonnie Crombie. It wasn’t Steven Del Duca either. I voted for Michael Coteau and I couldn’t stand Del Duca’s vests, but I don’t think Coteau would have done any better than he did.

The problem is that successive leaders have allowed the party apparatus to atrophy. Riding associations have gone dormant. We got used to being in government and being sent policy and organizers and messaging and campaign managers from on high. We stopped grassroots organizing, we stopped building the capacity at the riding and the regional level so that there were teams and organization ready to go locally when the writ is dropped.

That’s the responsibility of the leader, yes. And the party executive – they have largely escaped responsibility here. And the party grassroots. There is no big red machine. It’s each of us committing to the party’s renewal and revival. That is where the renewal needs to take place.

So I’m supporting Crombie, albeit reluctantly. Not because I am convinced she has recognized the problem. But because it we dump the leader (again) it guarantees that for two years we will be focused on leadership shenanigans instead of what really ails the OLP.

Can she pull this out? Maybe. But I haven’t seen the things I would want to see from her yet. Namely, a fulsome mea culpa on the 2025 campaign and her shortcomings, a recognition of the deeper organizational issues with the party, and a commitment to change.

I would put her opposition into two categories, and here is where I will upset the other half of the party. Half are diehard Liberals who view government as our manifest destiny and any election short of government as a failure. I think she can win them over with the recognitions I have outlined – a recognition of the problems and a plan to fix them, building on a stronger base thanks to the 2025 results.

The other opposition group are the Nathaniel Erskine-Smith acolytes who never got over him not winning the leadership and have always viewed Crombie, despite her long history in Liberal politics well pre-dating his, as a Conservative plant. These folks will not be dissuaded from their position. And for all the reasons I put him last on my ballot for OLP leader last time, he is not the answer to anything this time.

So that’s where I land. I am voting for a slim hope for renewal versus the guarantee of two years of no chance of real renewal because another leadership race will not solve what’s really wrong.

Back when the federal party was deep in the woods, as a leadership candidate, Justin Trudeau astutely made the point that the party could not rely on his personal charisma or family name to rebuild the party – it would take hope and hard work and collective effort by everyone. He did end up being a bit of a messiah anyways but his point was bang on.

As Liberals, we have a habit of investing all the credit for our successes and responsibility for our failures with  the leader. And sometimes you get lucky, whether its with the son of a popular former Prime Minister born on Christmas Day, or a former central banker arriving on the scene when the US is declaring economic war.

But other times, you have a nice guy from Vaughan with a penchant for sweater vests or a lady from Mississauga trying her best. It’s not fair to expect them to carry us. Yes, we need to hold our leaders accountable. But we need to hold ourselves accountable as well.

Hope and hard work can’t just be a slogan.

 

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Mississauga councilor: Conservative ridings get $, rest get scraps

That's certainty how I'd read the comments of Mississauga councilor Sue McFadden, who was explaining her reasoning for deciding to seek the Conservative nomination for Mississauga-Streetsville, held by Liberal MP Bonnie Crombie:

“In the three years on Council I saw we were getting only scraps from the provincial and federal governments. I look at what Bob Dechert (Tory MP for Mississauga-Erindale, elected in 2008) has been able to deliver and I realized that I can better contribute to my community if I’m in Ottawa.”

We've all always expected that the Conservatives drastically favour their own ridings when it comes to distributing the Canadian taxpayer's infrastructure and stimulus funding. And now we have a city councilor and wannabe candidate confirming the ugly truth: the Conservatives disproportionately dole out the pork to their own ridings, and the rest of the country can suck a lemon.

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Wajid Khan IS running again

The conventional wisdom seemed to be floor-crossing turncoat Wajid Khan would not be running for re-election as a Conservative in Mississauga-Streetsville. Not sure how this news flew under the radar, or maybe I was just out of the loop, but it seems the conventional wisdom was wrong:

Meanwhile, Khan was acclaimed to run for the Conservatives just hours before the Liberal announcement. The luncheon was attended by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.

Khan told The News after his acclamation, and prior to the Crombie win, he wasn't concerned about who his Liberal challenger would be. He was upbeat and said he felt the next election would be the start of a wave of support for the Conservative party.

It's past my bedtime so I'll leave the exploration of the mayrid of issues Khan's running raises, such as re-examining the Cons sending his old election opponent to patronage heaven to clear the nomination for him, for others to dig their teeth into.

In the meantime, I'll just say Very Interesting, and Go Bonnie Go....

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