Could Bonnie Crombie be the Liberals’ saviour?
The bad news for Ontario’s Liberals is that they’ve hit bottom. The good news? Hitting bottom means they’ve bottomed out — and have nowhere to go but up. Just not so fast. For a once-powerful party that has seen better days, these are early days in the rebuilding exercise.
But after a weekend reunion in Hamilton, the party may be breathing easier. More than 1,500 diehards braved a cosmic snowstorm to preside over the rebirth of a moribund movement.
There were no formal tributes to the departed Steven Del Duca. He is gone and now forgotten. Instead, all eyes were on the new crop of aspiring leaders, each of them playing coy about “exploring” their candidacy and testing the waters. It doesn’t matter who they are, because you’ve likely never heard of these undeclared unknowns: Stephanie Bowman, Ted Hsu, Yasir Naqvi, Nate Erskine-Smith and Adil Shamji. I’d tell you which ridings these backbenchers represent, federal or provincial, but if you don’t already know, it likely won’t help. That said, I will say each of them is whip-smart: Among them — in random order — is a trade lawyer and ex-attorney general; an emergency room physician; a chartered accountant and bank vicepresident; an Oxford-educated litigator; and a Princeton-educated physicist.
That’s a big brain trust, but it bears repeating that political science and rocket science are unrelated. Physics requires logic, while politics demands fuzzy logic.
Which is why Premier Doug Ford’s Tories rule the province today, while the leaderless Liberals languish in obscurity and purgatory. Not because they’re not smart, which Del Duca was in his day. The question is whether they can touch people, reach voters, connect with them, and win them over.
None of the aspirants (two of them political rookies) strikes me as a breakout contender — at least not yet. In the old days, an unknown leader might have taken the time — and had the luxury of time — to cultivate the mass media and reap a harvest of votes at election time. But we live in an era of celebrity politics, where a Ford can come from out of nowhere to rule Ontario and win re-election by cementing his connection to voters.
Against that backdrop, what’s a Liberal to do? One possibility is to fight fire with fire, meet celebrity with celebrity. Perhaps that’s why a gaggle of former movers and retired shakers from the old Liberal brain trust took stock of the candidates and then tried to recruit the leader of another party — the Greens’ Mike Schreiner, MPP from Guelph. Schreiner was a no-show on the weekend, of course. Like Del Duca, his apparition had not only come and gone but was also forgotten.
Yet that did not leave the field open to the other contenders or pretenders to the throne. Unexpectedly, they had a close encounter with celebrity power and buzz beyond the environmental movement: Bonnie Crombie had arrived. Until recently, she had evinced no interest in the Liberal leadership, insisting her loyalty was to the mayoralty of Mississauga. But Crombie, too, made her way through the snow drifts to the Hamilton convention centre to press the flesh — or more precisely, pose for selfies with admiring delegates in a crowded hospitality suite. Her Honour was never onstage but she stole the show.
Beyond celebrity power, is there a path to power? Crombie’s experience as a former MP and city councillor, now helming Canada’s sixthbiggest city, sets her apart from her rivals. More importantly, she boasts a talent that her rivals cannot yet claim: A proven ability to poke and provoke Ford when they go face to face on the issues.
Will she run or will she walk away? Crombie is dragging her feet for now, insisting she won’t be rushed. The only certainty is that the race is starting to get interesting. Unlike the New Democrats, who missed out on a leadership race when Marit Stiles ran unopposed, the Liberals may be in for a contest.