Crombie's Climate Incoherence

On Bonnie's Carbon Tax Answer

Bonnie Crombie was interviewed this week about attack ads from the Ontario PCs that (amongst other things) accused her of supporting a carbon tax. When asked – in an interview, I must add, that she choice to give to CityNews, not in some media scrum she was unprepared for – if she did support a carbon tax, she said she’s never given a statement on the carbon tax, and then that it was something she would “study further”.

She did this after the leading the interview asking whether the attack ads she’s now facing are a consequence of her gender. Of course, we don’t know how Doug Ford would have treated Steven Del Duca, since the world shut down 4 days after he was elected leader of the OLP, but if the claim is that attack ads are sexist, seems like a former Federal MP would remember the way consecutive male Liberal leaders were firebombed with attack ads immediately upon winning the Liberal leadership – including the now-PM, when the Liberals were in third.

It's obviously not great that Crombie can’t seem to handle a straight forward policy question – she had to walk back that she would be open to some form of Greenbelt land swaps in the leadership campaign, and her biggest unforced error of the campaign (the imfamous “right of centre” line) came from a TVO interview – but I don’t like Bonnie’s politics and probably never will. She’s substantially to my right, and at some point acting like this is some revelation is nonsensical. She’s not the leader I wanted them to pick; holding her to the standard of not being Nate would be setting her up to fail, and moreso bad writing for this site.

That said, there is an actually incredibly salient point for Crombie to grapple with, which this interview shows she hasn’t yet – there’s absolutely no institutional reason for anyone to give a shit about the OLP. The greatest advantage of the Federal Liberals, as I’ve written many times, is First Past The Post’s clarifying effect. If you’re a federal progressive and you hate the Conservatives, in most places you have to vote Liberal. In many cases provincially, that same clarifying effect has gone from propping up Liberal parties to killing them, relegating them to sideshows in the battle between the actual parties of potential government. Two straight elections in third place mean that there’s little reason the OLP have to be taken seriously. This comeback has to be earned, not merely taken for granted.

Crombie, for all her ideological choices, seems not to get this. And it’s the question looming over the leadership at this point.

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The reality of third party life is that it’s hard to make the case for your own existence. Parties sustain themselves when the best and brightest replenish the ranks, and when you’re a third party it’s hard to make the case that it’s worth it for young, smart, and ambitious people to invest in a party that’s stagnating far away from power.

The thing that usually unifies political parties that have divisive leadership elections is the prospect of power. Staying in the tent is worth it because the new leader can provide something not just to the loser but to his loyalists, and that’s the chance at power. Christine Elliott came back into the tent and made sure the establishment of the PCs backed in Ford because he dangled the prospect of Deputy Premier and Health Minister in front of her, and she thought that was a genuine prospect. With the Liberals, Bonnie – through no fault of her own, to be clear – doesn’t have that. Which means she has to keep her internal opponents onside on merit.

The carbon tax answer is evidence that she doesn’t get this, because that answer is an abandonment of both the Federal carbon tax that presumably she has voted for at the last two elections, but also a repudiation of one of the efforts of the last Wynne government she’s already in hot water for having criticized for spending too much. I assume some form of clarification will come soon, but the problem isn’t that she can clean up her mistakes, it’s that everyone will think her mistakes are her actual views.

Plainly, the reason many on the anti-Crombie wing of the party voted against her is because we think that whatever bon mot she dropped in the final third of the race to seal the deal, she doesn’t actually believe many of the progressive ideals she claimed to espouse. It’s a matter of trust and faith, not a matter of the policy platform. Whatever you think of Bonnie’s housing policy versus Nate’s, there’s not a mountain to overcome on the details. If Crombie is genuinely committed to the things put in her name in the leadership contest, then the future of the OLP is secure, because the details can be negotiated. But the thing is, nobody actually believes this is true.

Put more bluntly, what is keeping me in a party with a leader who cannot defend a basic, market-based solution to the climate crisis that’s been bog-standard Liberal policy in Ontario for a decade? Fucking nothing. I can easily just vote for the NDP, and have both the belief that this party is led by someone who actually holds progressive ideas and vote for the party in best shape to win a general election or, at least deprive Ford of a majority. (Note: best shape to do so doesn’t mean I think they will; as of right now, I expect a third PC government in 2026.) And if I can come to this conclusion, there’s little to stop the rest of the province.

The Ontario Liberals aren’t owed a future; progressives thinkers aren’t obligated to devote their time to the OLP in order to influence future governments; progressive voters aren’t forced by the voting system to vote for the Liberals as the harm reduction option. These three truths are the most important thing anyone trying to rebuild the OLP have to remember, because many of them are used to Federal thinking, where at a minimum the final true are true. Until the OLP gets that their existence is not guaranteed, there’ll be this weird indifference from the leadership.

Crombie isn’t a progressive, and I’ve made my peace with this fact. If she is so unconcerned with building a big tent that she refuses to back in a core Liberal policy, then she’ll only strengthen the NDP. If she genuinely doesn’t know what she thinks about what has arguably been the political issue of the last decade, then she’s the least intellectually engaged leader of a political party in modern history. Either way, the OLP’s not guaranteed shit.

And if Crombie can’t even stand for a basic tenet of modern Liberal policy, then she’s made it clear that there’s no reason for many to bother investing in a party that’s willing to stand for everything and nothing.