The campaign to select the next leader of the Ontario Liberal Party takes a significant step forward on Monday night with the first leadership debate. Five candidates are seeking to become the fourth permanent leader of the provincial Liberals since Premier Doug Ford became leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Each of the previous three — Kathleen Wynne, Steven Del Duca and Bonnie Crombie — lost an election to Ford and resigned the leadership. The debate is taking place at a studio in Brampton and will be livestreamed on YouTube at 7 p.m. on Monday night. You can watch it live at the top of this post.
Navdeep Bains, a former cabinet minister in the Trudeau government, is leading the fundraising race and is thought to be the favoured candidate of party insiders. Bains retired from politics in 2021 to work in the private sector and was most recently an executive at Rogers Communications.
Stephanie Bowman (Don Valley West) and Lee Fairclough (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) are both members of provincial Parliament, which means neither would have to wait for the opportunity to win a seat at the Ontario legislature in a byelection. Del Duca and Crombie both held the Liberal leadership while not a sitting MPP, and both struggled to make an impression on voters before a general election campaign.
Neither Bowman, first elected in 2022, or Fairclough, first elected last year, are long-time MPPs, but party members will have to weigh whether having a seat at the legislature is a significant asset given the party’s recent electoral struggles.
Eric Lombardi , a financial technology engineer and housing advocate, and Liberal policy advisor Dylan Marando round out the field.
Each candidate will make an opening statement and there will be sections on a number of policy areas.
The leadership race comes after a spring session at Queen’s Park that was dominated by criticism of the premier’s ill-fated purchase of a private jet for his travels. (It was quickly sold back to Bombardier after a public outcry.) Public polls have shown a slipping of support for Ford and the PCs, but the premier insists that internal numbers suggest his voters are still behind him . When reports first surfaced in the spring that Bains was considering a return to politics, Ford said he didn’t mind who the Liberals ultimately selected. “You can run Mickey Mouse against me, or Donald Duck, I don’t care,” Ford said. Fifteen years of Liberal governance in Ontario were ended in 2018 when Ford defeated Wynne.
The campaign has already generated mild controvers y when Nate Erskine-Smith , a federal MP at the time, announced plans to contest a provincial byelection in Scarborough as a first step toward seeking the party leadership. He lost a close race for the nomination and challenged the results, but the party accepted the candidacy of businessman Ahsanul Hafiz after an appeal.
The Liberals, who despite the lack of a full-time leader are ahead of the official-opposition NDP in some polls, will make their selection on Nov. 21. Each party member will vote using a ranked ballot in a one-member, one-vote contest.
