Leader Marit Stiles holds her seat as NDP retain official Opposition status

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NDP Leader Marit Stiles eased to victory in her Davenport riding, even if her party failed to put an Orange Crush on Doug Ford’s victorious PCs despite achieving official Opposition party status.

It was clear Ford’s PCs would win a third majority government shortly after the polls closed at 9 p.m.

Stiles, 55, remained optimistic during her post-election speech, taking the stage to Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman! before she was briefly disrupted by a lone male demonstrator who yelled and held a sign that said, “Marit’s legacy is genocide,” before security intervened.

“We set out in this election to form a government on your side,” said Stiles, whose party was leading or elected in 26 ridings.

“Now the results aren’t everything that we hoped, but the people of Ontario made their choice. They re-elected the government, hoping it will help protect them from (U.S. President) Donald Trump and his tariffs. And they can trust me and my team to do a different but also very important job — to serve the people of Ontario as their official Opposition.”

During her campaign, Stiles often cited health care and affordability as her priorities, including a promise to bring back rent control and upload 50% of the TTC’s operating costs to the province.

At NDP headquarters at The Great Hall on Queen St. W. — an events venue for everything from live music to weddings — there were orange Ontario NDP placards plastered everywhere with Stiles’s name on them on the main floor and the upstairs balcony.

Food was provided by Toronto caterer Miski with a cash bar, while Stiles’s campaign spots played on a loop on the main-floor stage.

Supporters were also doing their bit. They were decked out in orange with one woman wearing a long orange shirt with pleated sleeves that she got for a mere $7 at Value Village. Everyone cheered when Stiles was declared a winner in her riding and again when the NDP achieved official Opposition status chanting: “NDP! NDP! NDP!”

The married mother of two daughters, whose husband is Jordan Berger — he ran unsuccessfully for the NDP in Davenport in 2003 — was first elected in Davenport in 2018. This will be her third term representing the large Toronto riding, which was created in 1999 from parts of Oakwood, Dovercourt, Parkdale, High Park–Swansea and a small part of York South.

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With no challengers, Stiles was acclaimed leader on Feb. 4, 2023, replacing Andrea Horwath, who is now Hamilton’s mayor.

Born in Newfoundland and Labrador, where she lived on a farm and was a synchronized swimmer with her younger sister, Stiles moved to Ontario to attend Carleton University in Ottawa and worked as a policy researcher before becoming research and policy director with the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists.

She also served as a Toronto District School Board trustee in 2014 and was the president of the NDP from 2016 to 2018 before her election as an MPP in Ontario when she beat Liberal incumbent Cristina Martins.

The snap election call by Ford sent opposition parties scrambling in the rare winter campaign.