Liberals gear up for 2022
New provincial party rules aim to broaden slate of candidates
The Ontario Liberals are gear- ing up for an election two years away as the Progressive Conservatives celebrate two years in power. Premier Doug Ford marked his second anniversary of taking office Monday — which ended almost15 years of Liberal rule under Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty — at the same time as the Grits are getting their act together.
New leader Steven Del Duca, who won the crown in March, wants the Liberals to modernize to expand their base of support.
As of Wednesday, party membership, which used to cost $10 a year, will be free.
Also that day, the Liberals will unveil new rules for nominations to broaden the slate of candidates in Ontario’s 124 ridings, only eight of which are currently held by Liberal MPPs.
“We have made changes to our nominations rules to bring about more inclusion and have an outstanding group of candidates who represent all of Ontario in the next election,” wrote party president Brian Johns, chair of the 2022 election campaign, in a weekend email to members.
“Every single riding is now required to show that they’ve made specific outreach efforts to prospective candidates from communities that are underrepresented before they can hold their nomination meeting — including but not limited to Black, Indigenous and people of colour, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and marginalized communities,” Johns continued.
“We have lowered the cost of registration for candidates under 30 years old by 75 per cent and for female candidates by 50 per cent. We will make it easier to reach our goal of 50 per cent female candidates by giving the nominations commissioner the power to, if necessary, designate anomination contest open only to women.”
The Liberals hope to have 30 of their124 candidates be under the age of 30.
Over the weekend, Del Duca announced the leadership team for the June 2022 election.
The campaign’s vice-chairs will be Kate Graham, a runnerup in the March leadership race who has emerged as one of the party’s rising stars, and Sumi Shan, chief strategy officer at Dunya Habitats, an agri-tech start-up. Christine McMillan, a partner at Crestview Strategy and a respected party organizer, will be campaign director.
Other key players include senior adviser Don Guy, an architect of McGuinty’s electoral victories in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and Najva Amin, Del Duca’s chief of staff.
Omar Khan, a strategist at Hill and Knowlton and one of the Liberals’ sharpest political operators, will chair the campaign “war room.”
Privately, those close to Ford admit that the Liberals — despite not even qualifying for official status in the legislature, which requires 12 seats — could be a greater threat to a second term than Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats, who have 40 seats and are the official opposition.
“Del Duca has the luxury of recruiting candidates in 116 unheld seats, including some winnable ridings they could get back from us and the NDP,” said a senior Tory. “Are you telling me there won’t be reeves and councillors and mayors lining up for choice seats like that?”
The Tory added the governing party had hoped to launch a blitz of attacks ads “defining Del Duca” this past spring, but the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on hold.
“We want to remind voters that he was a senior minister in the Wynne government,” the Tory said.
But the insider conceded that tying Del Duca to Ford’s predecessor could be a tougher sell as memories fade about the previous Liberal administration that was in office from 2003 to 2018.