Latest news with #BonnieCrombie
CBC
05-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Crombie says she won't ask any Ontario Liberals to step aside so she can have a seat
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said Wednesday she intends to try again to win a seat in the legislature, but will be leading the party from outside the chamber for the foreseeable future. Crombie is trying to brand the third-place party as "the people's opposition," as it won a much higher percentage of the popular vote than the NDP, which will form Opposition because it won more seats. In last week's election, the Liberals increased their number of seats to 14, above the threshold needed for official party status in the legislature for the first time since 2018, but the party also ended up in third place again and Crombie didn't win a seat. She hasn't given up seeking one, but it may be a while before she gets another shot at running. "I will not ask any of my incredible caucus members to step down," she said Wednesday. "I will, at the right time, find a seat." Crombie, who was mayor of Mississauga for three terms before becoming provincial Liberal leader in 2023, ran in Mississauga East-Cooksville, where the Progressive Conservative candidate won by 1,210 votes. The Liberals had been hoping that Crombie's mayoral record and name recognition in Mississauga could help them flip all six Mississauga ridings, but they did not win any. Mississauga-Erin Mills, however, was so close between the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives that it is going to a recount. Crombie said she would like the party to conduct a post-election analysis of the results to see what it could have done differently and what it should do better next time. There will be a leadership review at some point, but for now the party's executive council and the 14-member caucus voted to support her continuing on as leader, Crombie noted, framing the Liberals' election result as positive. "We are the people's opposition," she said. "We are the ones who gained support right across Ontario with 30 per cent of the vote. We brought in five new members. We're the only party to have gained strength." The NDP lost seats and strength in the popular vote, but with 27 seats it will remain the official Opposition. NDP Leader Marit Stiles noted Tuesday that the Progressive Conservatives spent a lot of time and energy targeting NDP ridings such as Windsor West, Niagara Falls and Oshawa and the New Democrats held them all. "We fought back hard and we used every resource we had to hold on to those communities," she said. "At the end of the day, I'm proud of the campaign we put on." Premier Doug Ford has said the legislature cannot resume until at least the week of March 17 because that is the earliest that members of provincial parliament can be sworn in, but he has not indicated how quickly he intends to get the house back in session after that.
CBC
28-02-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Ford's PCs look for historic Ontario election win while NDP, Liberals appear locked in battle for 2nd
Ontario Votes 2025: Join our special broadcast for live results and analysis Live The latest It's election day in Ontario. PC leader Doug Ford is after his third straight majority, which would be the first in the province in more than 65 years. Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, NDP Leader Marit Stiles and Green Leader Mike Schreiner are campaigning for a change. Polls close across most of Ontario at 9 p.m. ET. We'll have the results here as they come in. CBC News is live now with special coverage of the results. Tune in through the player above. Updates February 28 8 minutes ago Meet the team Rhianna Schmunk As mentioned, we've got the CBC's Dwight Drummond, Rosie Barton, Mike Crawley and David Common bringing you everything you need to know about election results from our broadcast centre in Toronto. They're joined by three expert panellists: Liberal strategist Ashley Csanady, who's been on leave leading communications for Bonnie Crombie, and former NDP strategist Marion Nader. She spent 10 years at Queen's Park as the party's press secretary. Finally, we have Conservative strategist Vivek Prabhu, who was part of the first two Ontario PC campaign war rooms, with a focus on digital content and advertising. 8 minutes ago Riding to watch: Oshawa Lucas Powers This largely blue collar riding with deep ties to the auto manufacturing sector has historically been a battleground between the NDP and PCs. New Democrats have held the seat since 2014, when Jennifer French defeated former longtime PC incumbent Jerry Ouellette. French's 2022 margin of victory over her PC challenger was just 747 votes, and now Ouellette is back on the ballot for the PCs. Both parties have put a lot of resources into the riding, with Stiles making visits and several high profile PC cabinet ministers doorknocking alongside Ouellette. This is a riding where the threat of U.S. tariffs could play a big role in the final outcome. Another factor is the Liberal campaign dropped their candidate in Oshawa over an offensive social media post that led to mounting backlash from the Sikh and LGBT communities. 15 minutes ago Riding to watch: Kitchener Centre Lucas Powers Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner has held his Guelph seat since 2018 and it was only in 2023 that the party picked up its second-ever seat, in Kitchener Centre. Former local councillor Aislinn Clancy won the riding in a byelection in 2023, nabbing it from the NDP in a landslide. The Greens are looking to hold this seat and prove it was not a byelection fluke. Since the early 2000s, this riding has been held by all three parties. 22 minutes ago Riding to watch: Toronto–St. Paul's Lucas Powers This riding was once thought of as a Liberal stronghold, but NDP took it in the great Liberal defeat of 2018. A star Liberal candidate came close in 2022, and the party has another prominent candidate this time around in former news anchor Stephanie Smyth. If the Liberals are to pick up seats this election, this is one of the possibilities. 24 minutes ago Watch our election night special John Rieti Voters, we've got a great election night show ready for your streaming pleasure. The great Dwight Drummond is hosting, with Mike Crawley delivering analysis. We've also got Rosie Barton putting questions to a panel of political insiders. David Common has somehow memorized details from all 124 ridings, so he's in charge of results. Watch live in the player above, on YouTube or CBC Gem. We've also got an ASL version. 28 minutes ago Riding to watch: Haldimand–Norfolk Lucas Powers Bobbi Ann Brady took many political observers by surprise when she won this riding in 2022 as an independent — a feat rarely accomplished in Ontario elections. Her win ended the PC hold on the riding since 1995. Brady actually worked for the former PC representative, Toby Barrett, for 23 years. He backed her bid as an independent against the Tory challenger, upset by the party's move to appoint a candidate — whom he described as a "rival" — rather than hold an open nomination. The PC candidate this time is local mayor Amy Martin, but Brady is popular among local voters. 33 minutes ago Riding to watch: York South–Weston Lucas Powers From now until polls are set to close at 9 p.m., we'll be featuring a number of ridings with particularly interesting races. Most of these snippets were compiled by our colleagues at The Canadian Press, and we've added some additional context here and there. If you want to read about them all in one place, tap here. OK, first up is York South–Weston. The decision by PC Michael Ford, Doug Ford's nephew, to not run again has made this race more competitive. The younger Ford was elected in 2022, unseating New Democrat Faisal Hassan, who is running again this time. In 2022, Hassan lost to Ford by fewer than 1,000 votes. 44 minutes ago Rhianna Schmunk Comparing the promises of Ontario's 4 main party leaders in 4 minutes 4 days ago Duration 3:59 Before casting your ballot on Feb. 27, it's important to know how the four major party leaders compare on hot-button issues. CBC's Julia Knope breaks down some of their key promises. We're almost at the end for voting time, folks. If you're a last-minute, undecided voter looking to compare candidates quickly, you can find our party platform tracker right here. It's a comprehensive look at how the PCs, NDP, Liberals and Greens compare on issues affecting Ontarians' lives. If you prefer, you can watch a four-minute breakdown above. February 27 1 hour ago Biggest mandate? Maybe not so much Rhianna Schmunk Ford says he needs 'strong' mandate from Ontarians to respond to potential U.S. tariff fallout 1 month ago Duration 0:50 Ontario Premier Doug Ford made the comments after two sources close to his government told CBC News he could trigger an early provincial election as soon as next week. As we've said, Ford started this campaign saying he was chasing 'the largest mandate in Ontario's history.' But by the end of the campaign, he struck a different tone. 'I don't look at the numbers,' he said in Windsor on Wednesday, per our colleagues at The Canadian Press. 'I just want to win.' Ford would need to win 95 seats to set the record.
CBC
13-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Northerners looking for more details of election health care promises, skeptical of change
All major parties in the Ontario election are putting price tags on hiring doctors to connect millions of Ontarians to primary health care, but some in northeastern Ontario say details are scarce and money alone won't fix the problem. Just prior to the snap election call, progressive conservative health minister Sylvia Jones promised $1.8 billion to expand health teams across the province in an effort to connect two million Ontarians with family physicians by 2029. Since then, Ontario liberal leader, Bonnie Crombie, has promised $3.1 billion to recruit an additional 3,100 family doctors by 2029, along with what Crombie calls a " guarantee" of a family doctor for everyone in Ontario. NDP leader Marit Stiles says the party, if elected, would spend $4.05 billion to recruit 3,500 new doctors over the next four years — more money and more physicians than either the PCs or Liberals. She's also framing the promise as a " guarantee" of access to a family doctor. Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner has said his party is "committed to ensuring that everyone in this province has access to a family doctor, nurse practitioner, or primary healthcare provider," but hasn't released details yet. There are few details from the parties on how the money will be spent across the province and fewer still on addressing the crisis in northern Ontario, which has its own unique set of obstacles, said a couple of health care providers in the region. The remote and rural nature of the region complicates and compounds the stress of providing family care, said Dr. Kevin O'Connor, making it unattractive to the dwindling number of medical graduates who chose family medicine. As a rural generalist in Mindemoya, on Manitoulin Island, he provides primary care as well as emergency room coverage without much of the support that doctors in cities like Sudbury have. He said he's not reassured by the emphasis on promises to put money toward hiring more doctors because he said it's more complicated than that, and is urging politicians to take a deeper look. "I'm very frustrated to a certain extent by these platforms, in that all they talk about, and this sounds funny for me to say, is doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor," he said. "We need to talk about the system, we need to talk about nurses, we need to talk about whole teams and how things are going to be allocated." O'Connor said he thinks the politicians, instead of promoting doctors as a solution, should tap the skills of other health care providers so doctors can focus where they are really needed. "Maybe you're not going to have your own family doctor the Norman Rockwell way 50 years ago, but you're going to have access to this team," he said. "And then there will be family doctors involved, maybe with their name on the patient, but that's not who you're going to see every time." Jennifer Clement is a nurse practitioner who worked in a clinic for 18 years and recently left to start a consulting company called Clement-Scarfone and Associates. While she also supports the team approach, she said at her former clinic, it was a continuing problem to recruit staff. "Especially the further north you get, it's very hard to attract staff," she said. "So I haven't seen anything about that plan. And from what I understand nobody's really talked about it yet. How are they going to attract people to work in these rural communities?" NDP Leader Marit Stiles launched her health platform in Sault Ste. Marie, making mention of a 'northern command centre" to manage capacity but not giving much information about what that means. "The needs of the north are very different than the needs down south," said Clement. "Our distance, driving across our region. So it would be interesting to see what that looks like; saying it, unfortunately, right now, is just a lot of lip service." While both Clement and O'Connor said how the parties handle the health care crisis influences their votes, it may also be crucial to those receiving care. Laurie Kendrick moved to Sault Ste. Marie three years ago to help support her parents who lost their family doctor, and in doing so lost access to her primary care provider. She has spent a lot of her time shepherding her elderly parents to various appointments and spells at the emergency room as illnesses flared up. "You're really kind of just managing each crisis as it comes along," she said. How politicians manage health care is still a key influence as she heads to the polls, despite the recent diversion in the headlines to the threatened trade war with the United States. "It's still going to remain a primary issue way more than tariffs," she said. "They will come and they will go. But this is where we're stuck right now. It is a really awful place to be for elderly and other people as well." She does remain hopeful since her father was recently assigned to a nurse practitioner and will receive continuous care. Her mother passed away in December, she said, after a fall. Slim hope for solutions in four years Clement, Kendrick and O'Connor say they doubt the election will be a catalyst for real change, and are highly skeptical that most, or all, Ontarians will be connected with a family doctor in the next four years as promised. O'Connor said the flaws in the system are too deeply embedded. "We're in a bit of a doom loop, right now," he said. "We're getting by with locums and agency nurses that are more expensive than the usual doctors and who come in and can make good livings and get out, and not have to be in the community. And, you know, God love them. We need all those people. But what we're doing to fix the problem is at the same time perpetuating the problem. So what we need is some higher level thinking about the structure and how we can get a reset." He's encouraging some real structural change but says there's no evidence that the parties are digging into the problem. "The headlines are so unrealistic: a doctor for everybody, trust my party." he said. "I don't think that they're thinking hard enough about it or taking it seriously enough, at least in their messaging. I think they're just saying what people want to hear."
CBC
12-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Crombie criticizes PC's spending, pledges to tackle Ontario's affordability crisis
Speaking on Metro Morning, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie laid out what election issues are at the forefront of her mind ahead of the Feb. 27 vote, including providing family doctors to Ontarians without one and tackling the province's affordability crisis.
CBC
08-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Bonnie Crombie in Hamilton: doubling ODSP, encampments, family doctors, unions and 407 tolls
Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie announced an intention to double Ontario Disability Support Program income support payments if elected. She made the announcement during a tour of Hamilton's Neighbour to Neighbour Centre, an organization that works to alleviate poverty in the city. She also spoke about encampments for homeless people, the need for more family doctors, union endorsements and tolls on the 407.
