PC leader: ‘We have taken back Ontario’
Conservatives win majority government with Liberals reduced to third-party status
Doug Ford is the new premier TORONTO of Ontario, with a Progressive Conservative majority. Within 45 minutes of polls closing, the PCs had won or were leading in at least 70 ridings — a gobsmacking showing in an election once considered to be a tight race.
The NDP, which emerged midway through the campaign as the best hope for voters opposed to a Ford-led PC government, were firmly in second place — relegating Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals to third after 15 years as Ontario’s governing party.
“We have taken back Ontario,” Ford bellowed to supporters packed into the Toronto Congress Centre.
“My friends, help is here! “Tonight we have sent a clear message to the world: Ontario is open for business.”
Ford started delivering his victory speech just as Wynne was giving her concession remarks to her supporters. Wynne, who won her riding of Don Valley West, resigned as the Liberal leader Thursday night, acknowledging it had been a “difficult night” for the party, which had won or was leading in merely seven ridings as of 11 p.m. Thursday. “There is another generation and I am passing the torch to that generation,” Wynne said through tears.
“I know that tonight is not the result we were looking for and no one feels that more sharply than I do.”
Despite opinion polls calling for a hotly contested race between the PCs and the NDP, Ford easily surged to a majority on a platform heavy on populist values and light on details, deflecting criticism for his lack of a costed platform. A lawsuit from Rob Ford’s widow alleging Ford mishandled his brother’s estate and destroyed the value of the family business also appears to have done little to damage Ford’s brand as a competent businessman. “I know that my brother Rob is looking down from heaven,” Ford told supporters. “I’m just getting chills talking about him right now.” At the PC election party, where Ford’s “For the People” campaign bus was parked inside the cavernous ballroom, supporters roared as early election results came through on TV. A huge cheer went up in the room every time a broadcast showed projections that a Liberal cabinet minister would fall in their riding: Finance Minister Charles Sousa, Economic Development Minister Steven Del Duca, Treasury Board President Eleanor McMahon. But scattered boos broke out when the TV switched to victorious Green Party leader Mike Schreiner giving a speech on the need to fight climate change. In her speech to supporters in Hamilton, NDP leader Andrea Horwath cast her party’s performance Thursday as a victory. “We have won more seats than we have held in a generation,” Horwath told supporters, who responded with chants of “Andrea!” “I am deeply humbled that Ontarians have asked us to serve as the new official opposition.” A switch to electronic voting machines seemed to accelerate results, with projections of the PC victory coming within an hour of polls closing. The fast pace of the results was somewhat surprising, considering the peculiar series of events that had upended several polling stations throughout voting day Thursday. Two separate police investigations thrust four schools into lockdown forcing Elections Ontario to extend voting hours at polling stations across several electoral districts — perhaps a fitting end to a rollicking campaign.