The overall result of Thursday’s provincial election hasn’t really changed the big picture, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some interesting outcomes.
Parties lost seats they were hoping to win or keep, others won where they weren’t expecting it, and people with some questionable views were thankfully defeated.
The big shocker of the night, for those not paying attention, was Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie losing in Mississauga East Cooksville.
Crombie was trying to win a seat the PC Party had won in 2018 and 2022 that had no incumbent and was now open. The candidate the PC’s put up against Crombie was Silvia Gualtieri, whose son-in-law is Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown.
Crombie and Brown have a very difficult relationship from their times as competing mayors on Peel Regional Council. Brown put his sizable political machine behind getting Gualtieri elected – and it paid off with her winning over Crombie by 1,227 votes.
The Liberals did pick up a couple of seats including Etobicoke-Lakeshore, a true swing riding both provincially and federally. Incumbent PC MPP Christine Hogarth, who held the riding from 2018, lost on Thursday to former health executive Lee Fairclough.
In Toronto-St. Paul’s, Liberal candidate and former TV anchor Stephanie Smyth handily defeated Jill Andrew, a two-time incumbent, NDP MPP. Andrew is one of the MPPs from the New Democrats with problematic issues around Jewish identity and Israel.
She was called out on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2024 for drawing equivalence between the Israeli and Palestinian experience just months after the Oct. 7 massacre. Andrew has been accused of exhibiting antisemitism by other members of the NDP, she’s also been kicked out of the legislature for wearing a keffiyeh.
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If Andrew and her views were problematic, Sarah Jama’s were outrageous, and it is good that she’s gone from Queen’s Park.
Jama was elected as the MPP for Hamilton Centre in March 2023 to replace then party leader Andrea Horwath who had resigned. By October 2023, Jama had been kicked out of the NDP caucus and censured by the Ontario legislature, barring her from speaking.
Jama took part in protests where the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas were praised, and she made several comments taken as denouncing Israel and blaming the Jewish state for the terrorist attacks. Having her removed from the legislature is a cleansing action, her vile views won’t be missed.
Hamilton Mountain is one of those surprise ridings where the PC Party picked up a seat that wasn’t on their target list. It was held by the NDP since 2011, and the PCs have been a distant second in the last two elections placing well behind MPP Monique Taylor.
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Lawyer Monica Ciriello won for the PCs by more than 2,000 votes ahead of Liberal candidate Dawn Danko with NDP candidate Kojo Damptey in third. Party officials say it was hustle by Ciriello that helped her win a riding the PCs haven’t won since 1995.
In Ottawa, the Liberals stole the riding of Nepean from the PCs and blocked the PCs from taking back Kanata-Carleton.
Nepean had been represented by MPP Lisa MacLeod since 2006 and will now be represented by nurse turned politician Tyler Watt. Watt has grown a sizeable audience in social media and used that to help his campaign. If he uses his audience and his at times bombastic style in a good way, he will draw attention to his party. If he uses it in the wrong way, he’ll be a burden on his party.
In Kanata-Carleton, Karen McCrimmon kept a riding she won in 2023, but one the PC Party wanted back. They had held the riding for decades but lost in a byelection that was dominated by a very local issue – building homes on a beloved golf course. That McCrimmon was able to hold the riding shows her hustle in the riding and on the campaign trail.