This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Now that the votes are in, the real work begins for Ontario’s political parties.
None of the party leaders held a media availability the day after the election, but all are facing questions about what the results mean for their parties and what they must do next.
What’s next for the PCs?
Despite asking Ontarians for a “stronger mandate,” Doug Ford and his party are headed back to Queen’s Park with 80 seats, barring a successful recount — close to the same number of MPPs that they went into the election with.
PC incumbents Patrice Barns in Ajax and Christine Hogarth in Etobicoke—Lakeshore lost their seats.
While the legislature was originally scheduled to return on March 3, that won’t be the case now, with a Ford campaign spokesperson noting it won’t be before March 15 as the election results still need to be certified.
The premier will appoint his cabinet but hasn’t said when that will happen.
Ford took some heat last August after a shuffle that grew his cabinet to 37 members including himself — making it the largest cabinet in the province’s history — and no sitting cabinet ministers lost their seats.
Once the legislature resumes, MPPs will elect a Speaker and the throne speech, which outlines the priorities of the government, generally takes place the next sitting day.
This whole process could take a few weeks.
And because the PCs did not deliver a budget before the election, a fiscal plan is expected to be tabled this spring.
The tariff threat, which the PCs centred their election campaign on, will likely factor heavily into the budget. While U.S. President Donald Trump initially put a pause until March 4 on the imposition of 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian products, save for energy at 10 per cent, he said earlier this week that the tariffs will hit next week.
The possible imposition of tariffs would likely elicit some sort of response from Ford and the province, which, at minimum, could include pulling American alcohol from the shelves of the LCBO, which Ford previously indicated he would do.
Will she stay on?
Bonnie Crombie and the Liberals also have a lot of decisions to make.
Crombie took a victorious tone in her election-night speech, telling party members to celebrate the Liberals’ return to party status for the first time since Kathleen Wynne’s government was defeated in 2018 — but did not mention that she’d lost the race for a seat in Mississauga East—Cooksville.
Even though the Liberals won enough seats to qualify for funding from the legislature and more time in question period, the party still doesn’t have a leader with a seat in the House — and hasn’t since the Wynne days.
The longer Crombie remains without a seat, the longer her salary depends on the party.
The party will have to decide how to proceed with a seatless leader, for how long, and what it might do to get her a seat.
History holds a cautionary tale. When John Tory was Progressive Conservative leader in 2007, he failed to win the Don Valley West seat. When an MPP in a safe Tory seat — Laurie Scott, who was easily re-elected in Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock on Thursday — resigned so that Tory could win the seat in a byelection, he lost.
Since the Liberals’ loss in 2018, the party has relied mainly on a stalwart MPP to guide it in the legislature. John Fraser, who has been serving as a leader in the house for Crombie, also served as interim party leader, twice, as the party went through the last two rounds of leadership replacements.
But when it comes to the big question, the party is divided: some Liberals want to see Crombie replaced as leader, and others don’t, according to party members who posted about their views online.
Those who spoke with The Trillium said the same.
According to the Ontario Liberal Party constitution, Crombie will have to face a leadership review — but exactly when it will be has not yet been determined.
The review is likely to be held at the next annual general meeting and must be held within two calendar years. The party’s last AGM was in September and they must be held within 18 months. Three Liberals said they expect it to be in the late summer or fall.
Some Liberals told The Trillium they don’t think Crombie will survive the review, given the loss of her seat and failure to deliver Mississauga on election day, and said that if the party waits too long to hold the review, the membership will interpret that as skirting accountability.
“It’s impossible to try to make the case of progress without a seat,” another Liberal said. The same source said returning to party status, gaining a few more seats and increasing the vote share — plus the per vote subsidy that comes with it — simply isn’t enough.
“Most of the party members that picked her thought that she could win,” that Liberal said, adding that if “that facade is gone,” it’s unlikely she has the organizational skills to heed off a leadership review.
Some Liberals said they doubt Crombie would try to boot a sitting MPP and run in a byelection, which could create more internal dissent.
Another issue divided Liberals into two camps: those who want wholesale changes, including of the leader, and others who want wholesale changes at the party organization level that would have to be put on pause if there was another leadership race.
Crombie will be meeting with the party’s executive council on Saturday morning and caucus in the afternoon, followed by another meeting with Liberal candidates, according to a statement from the campaign.
It also countered some of the rumblings of discontent by saying Crombie is getting credit for the party’s seat gains in the election.
“There are always dissenters, but we are confident the majority of Ontario Liberals are behind Bonnie and want to keep building on the growth we achieved last night,” it said. “The deck was stacked against us in this campaign, but we brought the OLP back to party status, and we must keep moving in the right direction, together."
Who would replace Crombie is also an open question, with some Liberals debating if Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who came in second in the 2023 leadership race, would run for the leadership again or stick with federal politics now that he’s been appointed to cabinet.
One potential star candidate some hope for is former federal minister Navdeep Bains, who decided not to run in the 2023 race.
“If he gets in it changes the game,” one source said.
A ‘success’ for the NDP
NDP politicos told The Trillium they considered the election a success, as they retained official Opposition status and ended the evening with a seat count just under what they had when it began.
Leader Marit Stiles doesn’t appear to be in any trouble, as she handily won her seat and led her party to the same result. Expectations for her were lower than for Crombie. Time will tell if the party’s gradual slippage from 2018’s 38-seat result becomes a problem for Stiles, who ran uncontested for leader in 2023.
The party did not answer questions about its legislative or electoral strategies by press time.
The NDP held onto several battleground ridings, including Thunder Bay—Superior North, Hamilton Centre, Toronto Centre, University—Rosedale, Sudbury and several in Niagara Region.
But it failed to make meaningful progress in ridings it hoped to pick up, including the Michael Ford-less York South—Weston, and Sault Ste. Marie, where the PC incumbent didn’t run — a heartbreaker for the NDP, who fell to the PCs by 118 votes after gunning hard for the seat.
It’s undecided yet whether the party will ask for a recount in the Sault, according to Shirven Rezvany, the NDP’s media relations director.
Automatic recounts are triggered at differences of 25 votes or less. The official tabulation should come in this weekend, Rezvany said, after which the party could make its case for a judicial recount.
Overall, it was an uninspiring but perhaps realistic best-case scenario for the party that some predicted would fall to third place.
The NDP’s vote share dropped significantly compared to the Liberals’, with over 900,000 votes compared to the Grits’ 1.5 million. The efficiency of the orange vote saved the day, as many 905 seats were hotly contested by the Liberals, but ultimately went PC.