Bonnie Crombie is outside as a liberal ontarium leader after scoring a weak mandate in a leadership review, since experts say that the game will now continue a difficult reconstruction and once again the frantic process will begin to choose a new chief of the party.
Crombie resigned after receiving 57 percent support in the mandatory review of delegates at a party meeting in Toronto. That occurred months after the liberals finished a disappointing third in the counting of seats in the provincial elections of Snap, which saw Prime Minister Doug Ford Cruise to a majority government.
Initially, Crombie pointed out in the convention on Sunday that he planned to stay, but after meeting with the party executive, he issued a statement hours later announcing his departure.
“Although I received most of the support from the delegates, I think it is the best decision for the Liberal Party of Ontario to facilitate an orderly transition towards a leadership vote,” he said in a statement.
Crombie spent summer crossing the province in an effort to sew delegated support before the fundamental vote. It occurred when the internal divisions within the party began to appear and former leadership rivals and some party members asked for their expulsion.
And a campaign report document published in early last week criticized Crombie and his team’s strategy during the writing period. A three -members committee dissected the end of the party, praising the best seat count and work to win the official party status again.
But they also criticized multiple aspects of the strategy and communications of the campaign team, including the decision to focus on medical care as the central theme of its platform and allowing Ford to frame the vote as a fight with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, for his tariff policies.
The political future of Bonnie Crombie will be in the hands of the Liberals of Ontario this weekend, since it faces a mandatory leadership review to determine if it will stay as head of the Provincial Party.
The Ontario liberals were established for their third leadership career since 2018
Crombie’s resignation means that the party will face its third leadership career since 2018. The Ontario liberals, who were in power for more than 14 years until they were defeated in 2018, have been third in three consecutive elections. The party could not say immediately when the new race will launch.
The Charles Bird liberal strategist said he hopes the game will move quickly to find the Crombie successor.
“I think there would probably be an emphasis on not waiting for two years to choose a new leader,” he said. “We are not in a similar position earlier this year, in terms of the leader, not necessarily have enough time to settle with the people of Ontario.”
Bird, who is director of Earnscliffe Strategies, said he also believes that the party can look outside the current 14 -member Caucus in Queen’s Park for possible candidates.
“My sense is that the party could look for some new blood, someone who could really stimulate interest among the inhabitants of Ontario in terms of a new way to follow,” he said.
The part faces questions about their identity, experts say
The boss among Crombie’s critics was the federal deputy Nate Erskine-Smith, who found himself secondly in the 2023 leadership career. Erskine-Smith said in July that he had not decided if he would run if Crombie were forced.
“A new leadership career would attract talent, attract contributions, attract public attention, and that is exactly what we need if we are going to renew this party seriously,” he said.
Erskine-Smith did not respond immediately to a comment request on Sunday.
Crombie and Erskine-Smith represent different political inclinations within the Liberal Party of Ontario and different fields that fight for control, said Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Ottawa, Geneviève Tellier. Crombie tried to attract the party and its policies back to the center of the political spectrum, while Erskine-Smith would attract the party to the left, he said.
“I think they need to have a great, great debate within the Liberal Party about their identity,” he said.
“One thing that was raised in the report (campaign report) was that people in the field could not tell voters why they should vote for liberals.”
The campaign report highlights systemic problems, says Insider
The campaign report also exposed a series of systemic problems within the Liberal Party. The volunteers of the party in the areas of the north and rural were felt without support by the central team, which were seen as too focused on Toronto.
The report also highlighted the concerns about the “starvation position” of the party on spending between electoral campaigns and the fact that the supporters of the party’s bases are aging.
“We are not attracting enough young people, unions, ethnocultural communities and groups motivated by policies to be volunteers as we used to do it,” says the report.
Nathaniel Arfin, co -founder of the New Leaf Liberals, a group that asked Crombie to be aside, said the game has not done enough to address these systemic problems since 2018.
“We have seen in the post mortem of our elections in 2018, in 2022, and now again in 2025, the same types of problems,” he said. “Our inability to retain volunteers, our inability to interact with people outside the GTA and Toronto, our inability to resonate on issues that matter to the most inhabitants of the ontians.”
“That is what we need, that is what we are going to have to advance,” he added.
While party members may have been dissatisfied with Crombie leadership, it is not guaranteed that a new leadership contest would join the party, said Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Trent, Cristine de Clercy. It can further inflame the internal divisions that have existed for some time, he said.
“Together with the normal reconstruction process in which they are already involved, this is another rotation, another set of friction and potential fractions within the party that may well compromise its ability to be competitive in the next elections,” he said.
