Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie says she is positioning her campaign to try and snatch left-leaning voters away from the NDP as the election campaign enters its final stretch.
Crombie pitched her party as the only alternative to Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives and urged people who would normally vote for the NDP and Marit Stiles to lend her party a vote.
“It’s not too late — this election is no way over yet,” Crombie said on Tuesday.
“There are 10 more days and we’re going to make the most of each one of them as we see the race narrowing between the premier and myself. And that’s why I’m reaching out today to NDP voters and I’m asking them, if you want to change our health care system, please vote for Ontario’s Liberals.”
The plea was a repetition of comments Crombie made in her closing statements during a televised leaders debate on Monday night.
Stiles dismissed the request as desperate and suggested the Liberals were looking at trying to recapture official party status, not form government.
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“Their path is they’re just trying to make party status,” Stiles said. “The truth is, my focus is and continues to be flipping blue seats to orange.”
Polls have shown Crombie’s Liberals polling in second place but someway behind Ford’s PCs.
In 2022, both the Liberals and NDP drew 24 per cent of the popular vote, while the Progress Conservatives pulled 41 per cent. The Liberals, however, only won eight seats, compared to 28 for the NDP.
Parties require 12 seats to make official party status, which comes with additional funding and debate rights within the legislature.
Stiles has kept her pitch broad this campaign, saying she wants to draw votes from disaffected Tories and Liberals.
“I think there are people out there who have previously voted Liberal who I think will not see their values reflected in the current Liberal Party and leadership,” she said. “I’ve never shied away from that — my push is for all Ontarians, however you voted before.”
Crombie has claimed the NDP think “money grows on trees” as she courts their voters.
“Ontario Liberals have the only platform that’s realistic and achievable,” she said on Tuesday.
Last week, the NDP candidate in a tight Toronto race bowed out after nominations closed and encouraged her supporters to vote for the Liberals. In western Ontario, a Liberal candidate also dropped out after nominations closed, although they did not endorse an opponent.
Meanwhile, Ford was supposed to fly to Sault Ste. Marie for an event but delays at Toronto Pearson International Airport after a plane crashed cancelled the plan.
Ford and the PCs have run an increasingly frontrunner campaign as the election has gone on, with Ford last taking questions from reporters in Ontario last Monday. After debates on Friday and Monday, the PC leader was the only party chief to skip out on questions from reporters.
“Doug Ford is hiding; he is in hiding right now,” Stiles claimed. “Last night, after the debate he wouldn’t even stand up in front of the reporters, he will not defend his government.”
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner made an announcement in Bruce–Grey–Owen Sound, where his party drew nine per cent of the vote in 2022 but the outgoing PC MPP is not running again.
The election is being held on Feb. 27.