Expensive promises have started to flow on the campaign trail of Ontario’s snap election — but exactly how much they’ll cost the next government isn’t something the parties are ready to say.
On Wednesday, the Ontario Liberals and NDP tried to move the debate onto the Progressive Conservatives’ record on social issues with promises around social support and housing.
The Ontario NDP unveiled a major homelessness promise, while the Liberals made a commitment to double rates of disability assistance.
The day before, the PCs had said they would take over Ottawa’s beleaguered light rail transit system.
None of those promises were costed, though parties are promising more details when they unveil their platforms later in the campaign.
NDP Leader Marit Stiles was in Toronto’s High Park neighbourhood to draw attention to encampments, a topic both her party and the Liberals believe Doug Ford’s PCs may be weak on.
“After seven years of Doug Ford, encampments are the new normal,” she said. “Seeing tents in parks is a stark reminder of how utterly Doug Ford has failed. He has failed on housing, he has failed on health care, he has failed on creating good jobs, and he has failed to make life affordable.”
To the west, in Hamilton, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie was making similar comments.
“Every small town, every community, not just large cities, are seeing tents and encampments,” Crombie said. “And let me tell you that I don’t remember seeing them eight years ago or nine years ago or 10 years ago, this is a failure of Doug Ford’s Ontario.”
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On Monday, Stiles announced that, if elected, her party would create 60,000 supportive housing units, part of the NDP’s plan to create a public sector builder to boost the number of new homes.
The NDP would also upload the cost of shelters to Queen’s Park, taking on a cost that has fallen to property taxpayers since the 1990s.
Neither promise, however, has a dollar figure attached to it. Stiles said the province could not “afford not to do this.”
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles speaks during a campaign event in Ottawa, Tuesday, Feb.4, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld.
Crombie’s Liberals also made a large, as-yet-unfunded promise to improve the province’s social safety net.
If elected, the Liberals said they would double the rate of the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) and then peg its increases to inflation.
“ODSP rates are so low that people are forced to live in poverty and rely on food banks just to get by. It’s unacceptable,” Crombie said. “Keeping people healthy starts with getting them the basics, and that is why as premier, I will double ODSP. Permanently.”
Before taking questions, the Liberal leader said she wouldn’t be revealing the cost of the pledge but that it would be calculated in the party’s platform when it is released later in the campaign.
The NDP and Liberals both hope Ford’s PCs are vulnerable on the issue of homelessness and encampments, which have increased in recent years.
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has calculated more than 81,000 people across Ontario were homeless at some point in 2024, a 51 per cent increase from 2016.
The municipal organization has called that figure “staggering” and demanded action from the provincial government to end chronic homelessness.
Ontario PC Leader Doug Ford speaks with union leadership as he makes a campaign stop at a sheet metal workers union and training facility, in Ottawa, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Before the early election, Ford’s housing minister had tabled a proposed bill to give police more powers to prosecute public drug use, new consequences for repeat trespassers and $75.5 million for cities to build housing and clear encampments.
That law did not pass before the legislature was dissolved for the early election but the funding did begin to flow to cities, which the PCs said at the time were seeing success in starting to clear encampments.
If re-elected, the Progressive Conservatives said they would retable and pass their encampment bill.
