On the final day of Ontario’s election campaign, the main parties’ leaders are all pushing to maximize the number of votes they pick up on Thursday and refusing to consider a situation in which they don’t win.
All four packed their final day of campaigning with multiple stops that took them across southern Ontario, with events concentrated in battleground areas west of Toronto.
Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford started the day in Oldcastle, Ont., where he told reporters he wanted to be “premier forever” and thought his party had a chance of winning in every riding.
“I just want to win — I don’t look at the numbers, I just want to win a majority, a large majority,” Ford said on Wednesday. “I think we have a shot at all 124 shots across the province. People are feeling it like they’ve never felt it before.”
He also had stops planned in the London area, Hamilton, St. Catharines and in Mississauga East—Cooksville, the riding Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie is hoping to win.
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Crombie stayed closer to Toronto on the final day of the campaign, making three stops in Mississauga, another in PC-held Oakville and a final stop in Hamilton.
The last stop of the day is a seat the Ontario NDP won last time around without an incumbent, one of several the Liberals are targeting.
“We have the wind in our sails, I am feeling so optimistic about tomorrow,” Crombie said in Oakville, which will be a rematch of 2022 when the Liberal candidate finished roughly 2,000 votes behind the Progressive Conservative winner.
“I feel the momentum. You can feel it on the ground, you can feel it in the streets — I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.”
NDP Leader Marit Stiles also has a whirlwind itinerary planned — starting in Toronto and running through Niagara Falls and Hamilton before returning to the provincial capital for a final stop.
Asked about Liberal attempts to poach NDP ridings and voters, Stiles said she believed the NDP party machine was stronger.
“We already have a lot of seats in every region, in every corner of the province,” the NDP leader said.
“New Democrats have boots on the ground in many parts of this province — I truly believe that the path to victory for us is in flipping blue seats to orange but I will not allow the Liberals to feel that they are somehow entitled to the votes of Ontarians.”
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner is concluding his focused campaign in Kitchener Centre, which his party won in a recent byelection.
The election will be held tomorrow, Feb. 27.