OLP: Time For Crombie To Release The Election Review

On Accountability And Transparency

(Nathaniel Arfin is one of the smartest minds in progressive politics, a former Special Assistant in Justin Trudeau’s PMO, and one of the co-founders of the New Leaf Liberals. He also played a significant role in Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s digital operation in 2023, and I’m happy to have my friend write for Scrimshaw Unscripted on the leadership question facing the OLP.

And if you got this email before I remembered I forgot to write this in, I’m an idiot.)

We’re less than two weeks away from the AGM. The election was 6 months ago. Bonnie Crombie and her team commissioned a review of the last election, telling us that we will learn lessons. When she went on Theresa Lubowitz’s podcast, again, there was talk about the lessons learned. And with 10 days to go until we’re all signing in, here’s a question: Where the hell is the review?

From the outset, I’ve emphasized my desire to build a stronger, more dynamic, and more resilient Ontario Liberal Party - a party that represents our values. Me, and a few other Liberal members manifested that into an open call, asking for an open, fair, and democratic Leadership Review at our AGM. The Leader’s actions since have represented everything but those values.

The rebuff, and the not-quite-unanimous backing from caucus was expected. We never expected anything other than loyalty, because this isn’t about a bloodless coup of electeds. We are a grassroots movement designed to try and save the party we love, and while we disagree with those caucus members about the leader, we all want the same things. We all want a Liberal Party that can win the next election. We all want better health care and better schools. We want the same things because we’re on the same team. But if the argument is that Crombie’s learned from her mistakes, the cavalcade of embarrassing decisions that followed isn’t a ringing endorsement.

Crombie and her team chose to spend party money to fund a Meta ad, targeted specifically to members, advertising not only Crombie’s humility in defeat, and her “accountability”, but also emphasizing the “success” of the 2025 election – an election which saw the OLP finish 3rd, and saw Crombie drop her own seat of Mississauga–East Cooksville. Remember, by her own admission, Crombie has said the reason the party didn’t spend any money on ads in 2024 was wanting to save their bullets for when it mattered. Good to know she thinks saving her own leadership is more important than attacking Ford.

The comms team in the party has been laser focused on Crombie affairs, evidenced by the complete lack of activity on the official social media accounts, but things still seem to be falling through the cracks. The Wire, a once-monthly newsletter was relaunched in June, but has since been left to languish. The new “Bonnie’s Brief” series was originally billed as a weekly update from the leader, but it has now become (mostly) bi-weekly. And now, those of us who are concerned about these marked failures are trying to make our voices heard. Our calls for transparency, for renewal, and for grassroots growth, have been met with defiance and indignation.

We are 10 days away from our AGM, and the members have not been provided with the information necessary to make an informed decision on our leadership. Six months ago we lost an election which we all knew we weren’t going to win. But we weren’t prepared. We weren’t prepared because our leadership failed us. They didn’t do the work to correct the failures identified in 2018 and in 2022. And now they’re trying to hide it from us.

Will the 2025 review have anything new or revelatory in it? Probably not, since the 2022 review might as well not have existed for all the lessons learned from it. But this is the problem - the 2022 review should have been enough to fix the structural problems the party faces, but it wasn’t. We elected a leader who told the Star she thought it would be easier than it’s been, and we’ve been dealing with the consequences of that ever since.

Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec has said that he’s been told the review is coming, but even if what he’s being told is accurate, the fact it’s come down to the wire is unacceptable. The problem with Crombie is that we are constantly being told things - that lessons have been learned, that we’re making progress, that she knows what she’s doing, that things will get better - and never shown them. Abacus’ poll last week has us down at 27%, down on the election and 26% down on the PCs. Even in Liaison, we’re still down 9% against an incompetent government. If the only reason we didn’t grow more against the PCs is Ford’s Captain Canada routine, we’d be seeing evidence of growth as Ford returns to being seen for what he is. But the problem is, Ontarians know Ford, and still prefer him to Crombie.

We are constantly told that Crombie is growing and improving, but there’s never any concrete proof. The polls aren’t getting any better, the party doesn’t have the money to attack Ford, hell we can’t even run a weekly newsletter or a monthly bulletin with any consistency. It’s just not good enough.

We all want the same thing - we all want a party that can be a strong fighting force for our ideas and our values, that can defeat the PCs and provide a legitimate alternative to the NDP’s pie in the sky views. I’m married to an educator and the father to two small children - I see the damage being done by Ford on a near daily basis. I am desperate for a party that can do its job. We aren’t, right now.

If the Ontario Liberals can’t do something as simple as getting members the post-election review with more than 10 days notice to the leadership review vote, they’re not ready for the hard yards of winning. This is emblematic of the need for more, and for better. We need to demand more from our party, or we’ll be forced to accept permanent opposition and a reconstituted Big Blue Machine. That's not good enough for me.

I just hope it’s not for everybody else.