Ontario Liberal Leader works to shake off criticism she is ‘Doug Ford lite’

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Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie acknowledges that she has a few things in common with Premier Doug Ford: They both spent formative years in Toronto’s Etobicoke neighbourhood; they frequent the same Italian restaurant; and even share some mutual Conservative friends.

Plus, she said in a recent interview, the two employ a comparable political style.

“I think we’re both very much retail politicians,” Ms. Crombie said. “We both do that very well. So, I think there’s a lot of similarity.”

But the differences, she said, couldn’t be more stark.

Ms. Crombie, the former three-term mayor of Mississauga, said she wasn’t born wealthy and she didn’t inherit a family business. She grew up as the daughter of a Polish immigrant mother, in a rooming house owned by her grandparents in Toronto’s west end, while her father struggled with mental-health issues and substance abuse. He died in a Toronto men’s shelter in 2000.

“That really differentiates us,” Ms. Crombie said of Mr. Ford, son of the late former MPP Doug Ford Sr. “I didn’t have things handed to me. I didn’t grow up in a big home like where he did in that ritzy area. Even though he tries to paint me that way.”

The comparison to Mr. Ford has been a liability for Ms. Crombie since she entered the race last year to lead Ontario’s third-place Liberal Party. Her leadership rivals accused her of being “Doug Ford lite” as they warned that she was too cozy with developers and unprincipled in her positions.

Ms. Crombie was criticized after describing herself as “centrist, even right of centre” and suggesting that her party had moved too far to the left under former premier Kathleen Wynne.

Now, she is working to define herself while rebuilding support for the Liberals, who have struggled to recover from a collapse in the 2018 election, when the Progressive Conservatives gained power. The party raised more than $1.2-million in donations by the end of last year as a result of an aggressive push for donations after Ms. Crombie’s leadership win in early December

She said she took her “foot off the gas” this quarter on fundraising, instead focusing on building her campaign team. She has since hired a new staff member to handle fundraising efforts.

In the five months since taking over the helm of the party, Ms. Crombie has quickly emerged as Mr. Ford’s biggest political opponent. While the Liberals have only nine seats in the legislature – not even enough for official party status – Mr. Ford pays Ms. Crombie an inordinate amount of attention.

The Premier repeatedly brings up Ms. Crombie’s name while attacking the federal carbon price, and the Progressive Conservative Party wasted no time in launching a series of attacks ads against her.

“They portray me as some sort of socialite, quite frankly,” said Ms. Crombie, who is 64 and has three children. “I feel that everything I have, I’ve earned. I worked very hard in my life.”

But the Liberals remain far behind the PCs in major polls, although most have the party surpassing the Official Opposition NDP. Ms. Crombie, who does not yet have a seat in the legislature, has relied mostly on private members’ bills from her MPPs to relay her party’s positions to the electorate. But they are overruled – and overshadowed – by Mr. Ford’s majority government.

Carleton University political science professor Jonathan Malloy said Ms. Crombie is limited by the fact that she doesn’t have a legislature seat and her public profile is not high across the province.

“It’s a long road for her to bring the Ontario Liberal Party back,” he said. “She hasn’t, I think, made a big public impact at all. I assume that she probably is having at least some impact within the party to try to rebuild.”

Prof. Malloy said he expects that Ms. Crombie is also trying to differentiate her party from the unpopularity of the federal Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I think the real contrast she wants to draw almost is against Mr. Trudeau, rather than Mr. Ford.”

After initially resisting the Premier’s goading about putting a price on carbon, Ms. Crombie recently launched a committee to come up with her party’s environmental policies, but explicitly ruled out provincial carbon pricing. Ontario does not currently have its own carbon price, which means the federal levy applies on gasoline, home heating and other products. Ms. Crombie won’t comment on the federal levy.

Without a seat, Ms. Crombie spends her time meeting with Liberals around the province and dropping in to Queen’s Park for announcements, in an attempt to portray the party as one of ideas and not just opposition. In a recent speech to a business crowd in Toronto, she focused her attention on underspending in health care and education.

She has also revised her position on housing – in particular, allowing multiplexes with up to four units right across the province, which the Liberals are now championing in the face of opposition by Mr. Ford. But it was a policy she opposed as mayor of Mississauga, saying a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work.

She said her thinking has evolved since the housing crisis has worsened.

“I would have said let’s put it where it’s appropriate. But now my views have broadened that there’s a crisis, we need to be a little more adaptable,” she said.

She also reiterates her opposition to Highway 413, a corridor that will link Peel, York and Halton regions north of Toronto, because of environmental and cost concerns.

“Would you rather build a road than invest $20-billion in hospitals and education?” she asks. (The federal and provincial governments recently signed a memorandum of understanding on the planned highway, a move that will help clear the way for the province’s controversial megaproject.)

And she opposes the “gimmicks” in the recent PC budget, including scrapping licence-plate plate fees and extending the gas tax cut.

After toying with the idea of running in the May 2 by-election in Milton, after PC minister Parm Gill quit to run federally, Ms. Crombie decided against it.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense for the mayor of Mississauga to represent another town,” she said.