Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie’s political future is about to be determined

Mayor Bonnie Crombie’s political future will be determined this weekend when Ontario Liberals vote on a new party leader.

Should the third-term mayor of Mississauga emerge victorious in the political contest in which she’s the perceived favourite, she’ll immediately take up the full-time task of pushing the Liberals’ agenda province-wide with a focused eye on defeating Premier Doug Ford in the next election, slated for June 2026.

If she loses, well, it’s back to City Hall in Canada’s seventh-largest city to complete her term.

Results of this weekend’s vote will be made public on Dec. 2 in Toronto.

Crombie, 63, released a statement Friday morning in which she laid out her case as to why she’s the best of the four candidates to tackle key issues of health care, affordability, education and — most importantly, Liberals will tell you — taking down Ford at the next available opportunity.

“This vote is critical. Ontario cannot afford another four years of Doug Ford’s inside deals and misplaced priorities,” Crombie, who succeeded the iconic Hazel McCallion as Mississauga mayor in 2014, said. “Our health-care and education systems are in crisis. Our doctors, nurses, PSWs and educators are struggling. Our environment is being sold off to friends of the Premier. And the cost of housing, groceries and heating keeps going up.

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“Doug Ford and his Conservatives do not have an ounce of leadership to tackle the big problems at Queen’s Park,” she continued. “We need positive, progressive, pragmatic Liberal leadership in Ontario.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks at a news conference in Mississauga Friday morning.

Only moments prior to Crombie’s statement being released, Ford, speaking at a news conference early Friday morning in Mississauga in which he announced police funding, offered his take on the challenge he feels Crombie would present should the two go head-to-head down the road.

Responding to a question from the media asking if he’s “scared of the prospect of Bonnie Crombie as Liberal leader,” Ford laughed.

“No. Was that a joke, or no?,” the premier responded. “But anyways, you say you’re in Bonnie Crombie’s neighbourhood; I call it PC neighbourhood because we have every single seat in Peel Region right up from Caledon over to Brampton over to Mississauga. So, anyways, I say bring it on.”

In the final Ontario Liberal Party leadership debate held last Sunday in Brampton, Crombie and her three rivals took a break from attacking each other and instead focused on a few main objectives, chief among them figuring out how to unseat Ford in the next provincial election.

Crombie has been on leave from her Mississauga mayor’s post since Oct. 6 to focus on her provincial bid.

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie debates the other candidates last week on TVO.

Liberal MPs Nate Erskine-Smith and Yasir Naqvi, and former Liberal MP and current provincial caucus member Ted Hsu are the others vying for the Liberal leadership this weekend.

In her statement today, Crombie urged Liberals to get out and vote in large numbers.

“This week, I’ve blitzed across the province working hard to earn Liberals’ votes, with dozens of events in Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener, Toronto, Mississauga and places in between,” Crombie said. “I’m pushing hard to the finish line because in-person voting begins this weekend. I believe this weekend will be the start of Liberals coming together, rebuilding together and winning together in 2026.”

In a bid to prevent Crombie from emerging victorious, Erskine-Smith and Naqvi several weeks ago formed a pact in which they’ve each urged their supporters to list the other as their second choice when Ontario Liberals vote on a new leader this weekend.

Hsu wrote on social media on Nov. 9 that he was also invited to “explore this arrangement,” but declined.

The Liberal Party of Ontario will use the ranked ballot system to select the victor this weekend. In voting, party members will rank their preferred choices among the four candidates.

If one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the first-choice votes, they’d secure the victory. However, if not, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is dropped from the contest and the second-choice votes from party members are then counted for the candidates who are left standing.

The pact between Erskine-Smith and Naqvi also seeks to combine forces on get-out-the-vote efforts this weekend.

Crombie was shown in an online Angus Reid poll in September to be the preferred choice by a wide margin to be the next leader of the Ontario Liberals.

The Mississauga mayor, who served as a Liberal MP from 2008 to 2011, won a third-straight term last fall, earning 77 per cent of the vote in the 2022 municipal election.

The four candidates vying for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

A recent insauga.com interview with Mayor Bonnie Crombie.