Crombie’s In No Position To Handhold Anybody

On The OLP Leader’s Latest Gaffe

“Everyone I know says I'm a fool to mess with you

And everyone I know says it's a stupid thing to do”

I’ve been asked more times than I can remember why I can’t properly get on board with the current leadership of the Ontario Liberals. When she was a candidate, I was a Bonnie Crombie Hater, even to the point of having that in my Twitter bio for months. As leader, I’ve been at best whelmed by her performance and often not even that. I voted for her, tried to be constructive with ideas, and gave her a more full-throated endorsement than I gave Mark Carney. (In fairness, that is because my Carney endorsement was incredibly lukewarm and mostly an anti-endorsement of Tom Allison, but it’s still true.)

It would be easier to have gotten on the team. It would have been easier to believe, if only because it would have given me something to believe in in the incredibly bleak days of 2024’s Liberal Party politics. I tried my best to get there, I sincerely did, and when the party met the moment - namely on housing, where Crombie put together a transformational, ambitious, and genuinely revolutionary policy that served as a reason alone to elect her - I said so clearly and enthusiastically. But it’s just fundamentally been clear to me that Crombie would never be the leader we needed, and she hasn’t been.

The last week is instructive - starting with a video to members talking about the need for growth and fixing mistakes and learning from February, then having most of your caucus attack your leadership rival for expressing his opinion isn’t exactly consistent. If the party made mistakes that need to be understood and fixed, the correct answer would be to welcome all analysis of where the party went wrong - if, of course, you sincerely care about feedback and growth. The fact that the commitment to listening and learning didn’t come on February 28th, when you instead tried to declare everything peachy, also matters.

But Monday’s interview with Deb Hutton was the one that made me remember why I never bought in. In it, Crombie is asked about rebuilding the party and local riding associations - an anodyne question that should have done nothing but been an opportunity to tout the number of ridings you’ve been to. But in it, Crombie managed to slip up. “Particularly in the unheld ridings in the rural areas and the northern areas, those are so important that we handhold and mentor back into shape.” I’d laugh, but it’s not funny in the slightest.

It’s a very specific combination of condescension and obliviousness to think that rural and Northern Liberal associations need it, but this is how Crombie is. As a Northern Liberal who voted for Crombie told me, “We should totally trust them to rebuild the northern infrastructure of the party. Look at the powerhouse slate of candidates they ran in the most recent election.”

I could feel the sarcasm through my phone.

The problems the Ontario Liberal Party face are varied, and the causes are deep. The last three leaders have all made mistakes that have led us to this place, and when a party is in this bad of shape there’s a thousand causes of the problem. But the fact that Crombie did a better job than Del Duca - which is objectively true! - does not in and of itself justify another chance at this.

We just saw the benefits of deviating from the safe play federally, where a stagnant leader who was being told to stick around because the alternatives could be worse gave way to a leadership race that saved our party. I’m by no means claiming that Trudeau and Crombie are equally hated, but like Trudeau, Crombie will not lead us where we want and need to go as a party. She failed in February.

It behooves Crombie to have people talk about what Nate Erskine-Smith did to help the campaign and whether he did enough, but it’s a distraction from the fact that she didn’t do enough. She didn’t travel the province in 2024 laying out policies in preparation for the campaign. She didn’t have enough attention grabbing announcements in the campaign, dumping good policies that would win votes in the platform released a week out from polling day. She didn’t listen to credible ideas on how to take advantage of Ford’s weaknesses on corruption, education, or the province’s deteriorating fiscal position. We spent more time opposing the way Ford put beer in corner stores than talking about building new schools and fixing old ones.

The leadership wants to make this a re-run of 2023, but it’s not one - it’s a fight about whether this leader, in this moment, deserves our backing. It’s about whether 5 seats and party status gained is good enough, it’s about whether anybody actually ever could have done better or if this - or something like this result was the best any leader could have done. If they want to make that argument, they’re free to make it, but the fact they’ve leant on attacking their critics instead of making a case says everything.

Friend of the site and co-founder of the New Leaf Liberals Nathaniel Arfin put it well. “The idea that rural and Northern ridings need handholding from a central organization that couldn't even win Bonnie her own seat is laughable, and the kind of thing you only say when you convince yourself a bad election result was actually a success.” Because let’s be real - nobody would have thought this result was acceptable at any point until it happened, and it suddenly had to become acceptable. But it having to become acceptable isn’t the same as it genuinely being so.

It would be so much easier to go along with this leadership. It would be incredibly easy to just go along to get along, to not rock the boat and to not make trouble. Maybe everybody’s right, and this is a stupid thing to do. But at my core, I know this leadership isn’t good enough. And if I know this, then there’s no choice. We need a leadership race. We need better. And so long as Crombie keeps showing that she is unfit to lead, I’ll do everything in my power to demand more.