PCs glide to easy victory, Liberals trail NDP for official Opposition status

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OTTAWA — The election few people wanted ended with the result everyone expected.

Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives easily secured their third majority government Thursday evening, exceeding the 63 seats needed to win a majority — but Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie won’t be leading her party from the opposition benches.

Crombie, who resigned as mayor of Mississauga to take the reins of the Ontario Liberals, put her hopes into winning a seat in Mississauga East-Cooksville, but lost to PC candidate Silvia Gualtieri — the mother-in-law of Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.

Ford easily won his seat in Etobicoke North, while NDP Leader Marit Stiles will still represent the Toronto riding of Davenport.

“Together we made history,” said a triumphant Ford, who was referring to his third back-to-back majority government.

To the cheers from supporters, Ford vowed to stand up to President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs.

“Canada won’t start a fight with the U.S., but we’re ready to win one,” he said.

With the Tories dominating opinion polls throughout the month-long campaign, all eyes were on the Liberals to see if they could garner enough support to upset the NDP as official Opposition and regain the official party status they lost after the 2018 election.

While the Liberals will still be relegated to third party, they secured enough seats to regain official party status at Queen’s Park.

Final results were still being tabulated at about 10:15 p.m.

The Ontario Liberals hit the hustings hard almost as soon as the writ was dropped with Crombie showing her face in a number of contested ridings, particularly in the nation’s capital where the Liberals went into the election with four seats.

That’s one more than they had in the wake of the last election after Kanata-Carleton flipped from the PCs to Liberals in a 2023 byelection.

In the waning weeks of the campaign, the Liberals switched tack from focusing exclusively on the Ford Conservatives and instead turned their sights on attracting NDP voters as a means to limit Tory seats in ridings with a split vote.

Opposition parties criticized Ford’s timing of the election call, questioning his professed motives of needing a mandate to fight U.S. President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs — despite Ford still having several more years before a mandated election call.

Thursday’s win ensures Ford will remain premier throughout Trump’s four-year presidency.

Less people turned out for advance polling than in 2022 — with Elections Ontario reporting 678,789 ballots cast this week compared to 1,066,545 who cast an advance ballot in the previous Ontario election.

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Former CP24 anchor Stephanie Smyth won Toronto-St. Paul for the Liberals, unseating NDP incumbent Jill Andrew.

Karen McCrimmon kept her seat for the Liberals in the Ottawa-area riding of Kanata-Carleton, keeping the seat she won in the 2023 byelection.

Nepean, another Ottawa-area riding formerly held by longtime PC MPP Lisa MacLeod, has also gone Liberal red with Tyler Watt winning the seat.

In Hamilton Centre, controversial Independent candidate Sarah Jama, booted from the NDP for her anti-Israel views, came fourth — Robin Lennox won that riding for the NDP.

Bobbi Ann Brady — whose hopes to run for the PCs in Haldimand-Norfolk were dashed after the party opted to appoint somebody else instead — easily won her second term running as an Independent.

The Green party kept its pair of seats — Aislinn Clancy held onto Kitchener Centre, while party leader Mike Schreiner easily retained his seat in Guelph.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
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