What Day 1 Tells Us About Ontario’s Provincial Election
Following the Campaign
This is the first provincial election since 2007 that I will not be working out of the Ontario Liberal Party (OLP) campaign headquarters. That means this is also the first election since I was in undergrad that I’m free to comment on how the campaign is unfolding.
Some background: In 2011, I was a member of the media monitoring team that watches endless hours of TV news and reports back on what journalists, talking heads, and other parties are saying. In 2014, I was responsible for writing every email sent out by the campaign, including fundraising emails. In 2018, I wrote every email, coordinated province-wide campaign literature, and was one of the leader’s speechwriters. In 2022, I took on a lighter load and just stuck to campaign literature.
All of this experience has given me a great deal of burnout, hence why I’ve been turning down day-to-day political involvement for the last two years. But I also like to think it’s given me a lot of insight into what makes a strong campaign and how to read the political winds that can knock even the best political campaign off course.
In an election where the leading voices are either politicians, talking heads speaking on a party’s behalf, or journalists who never get to step behind the campaign curtain, I thought it might be helpful to weigh in on the race with some experience but from a distance. Given I have a day job, I don’t know how often I’ll write about the campaign. But I’ll at least give you a sense of how I feel things are shaping up first thing out of the starting gate.
One caveat I will make is that it’s much easier to comment from the sidelines than it is to make the right choices from inside the campaign. I want to thank the campaign workers from each party for their dedication to our democracy and for putting everything they have on the line over the next four weeks.
Framing the Campaign
What each party says and does on Day 1 of the campaign tells you a lot about how they plan to approach the campaign. In the pre-campaign ramp-ups I’ve been a part of, the team will try to plan out the first 7–10 days of the election in terms of where the leader will visit and what the “message of the day” will be. They will try to tie what the leader is saying to where the leader is visiting on a given day and, through these campaign stops, build a campaign narrative that can win the election.
Conservatives
Doug Ford kicked off his campaign in Windsor for two key reasons. The first was to be able to use the Ambassador Bridge and the border between Canada and the US as a reminder of why he says he called the election — to win a new mandate to fight Trump’s tariffs.
When it comes to the leader’s ‘tour’ schedule, the tour team will try to choose visuals that tell a story all on their own. While we speechwriters like to think what the leader is saying is most important, the visual often matters even more because it’s often all a voter will see. You want an image that can immediately convey key information even if a voter were just to see it on the front page of a newspaper, on the muted TV at the doctor’s or dentist’s office, or even while quickly scrolling through a social media feed.
The second reason to host the kick-off event in Windsor is that Ford’s team sees this as a surge or growth campaign for their party. They believe they can increase their existing super-majority to 100+ seats out of the 124 available at Queen’s Park. They had success in winning some traditionally NDP-held seats in the area in 2022 and hope to take even more this time around.
Liberals
Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie took her campaign kickoff to Barrie, joining star candidate and former president of the Ontario Medical Association, doctor Rose Zacharias. Their backdrop was the Barrie and Community Family Health Team office, a visual that echoed the focus of the event — addressing the family doctor shortage that has exploded under Doug Ford.
By pivoting to health care messaging, the Liberals are trying to reframe the ballot question to an issues-based, service-focused referendum on Doug Ford’s leadership after six years of failing to deliver on his promises to improve the services Ontarians rely on. Ontario Liberals typically run on four policy areas — health care, education, the environment, and jobs. It fits the Liberal brand to kick off the campaign with one of these four areas.
But kicking off the campaign in Barrie is not just about being able to stand with a respected voice in the medical community. It’s primarily about the fact that the Liberals lost the riding of Barrie — Springwater — Oro-Medonte by just 296 votes in 2022. Heading straight to Barrie means that the Liberals also see this as a growth campaign where they can win back seats they’ve held in the past. Barrie was a surprise riding in the win column for the party back in 2014.
If the party is to form government again, it needs to win seats in the politically coveted 905 region that typically determines which party forms government. It’s no surprise then that Crombie is following up her visit to Barrie with a visit to Markham-Stouffville on the same day.
NDP
The NDP is deploying a different strategy. Leader Marit Stiles is spending the first day of the campaign flitting across Toronto ridings, shoring up support for MPPs who made inroads for the party in past elections. This launch seems to suggest a hold-steady strategy of simply keeping the seats the party already has without trying to make big incursions elsewhere.
Rather than any specific policy focus, the NDP also seem to be framing the campaign as an opportunity to turf Doug Ford and replace it with an experienced (in opposition, at least) NDP team under Marit Stiles. The people, rather than the policy, seem to be the focus of their initial messaging. That’s why most of the images from these stops feature Marit backed by candidates and supporters rather than anything that evokes specific issues.
Greens
Mike Schreiner is the longest-serving leader of the four parties that have seats in the legislature. He’s spending his first day of the campaign in the Guelph and Tri-City area of south-central Ontario. His campaign also has a hold-steady strategy, focusing on keeping his seat in Guelph and Aislinn Clancy’s in Kitchener Centre. The Greens will likely demonstrate a modest growth mindset later on in the campaign as they work to build on gains they’ve made in recent elections in places like Parry Sound-Muskoka.
I haven’t seen any visuals from Schreiner’s campaign stops as of this writing, but I think we can assume the party will put a lot of its focus on Ford’s environmental record and the scandals that have come along with it.
Sloganeering
A key part of framing the campaign is coming up with a catchy slogan to sum up what you are offering the public. Here’s what the parties seem to have landed on for this race:
- Conservatives: Protect Ontario
- Liberals: More for You
- NDP: On Your Side
- Greens: People Over Profits
My Take So Far
Ceding the Economy to Ford
From my vantage point, Ford seems to be the only candidate who understands what the ballot question is in this election. COVID job losses, months of (now relenting) inflation, and the threat of more economic pain on the horizon thanks to Trump all mean that people will have a hard time focusing on much beyond keeping a roof overhead and food on the table. It’s not that the other issues don’t matter. It’s just that economic woes are felt more viscerally and on a daily basis in a way that other issues are not.
That doesn’t mean the other parties need to cede the issue to him. It’s true that voters tend to trust conservatives on the economy and value-for-money issues. That’s not because conservatives have a particularly good record on this front. It’s just that their relentless focus on these issues in their key messages makes people think they do.
When you look at Ford’s record, however, he’s very much at risk on fiscal issues. Ontario’s own labour market reports show that there has been a 46% increase in the number of people without a job in this province when comparing June 2018 (when Ford took office) to November 2024 (the latest available data).
While Prime Minister Trudeau has provided a lot of cover and taken a lot of blame for Canada’s premiers, he will no longer be in office by the time Ford settles back into his if he’s re-elected during this campaign. That’s why it’s crucial for the opposition to highlight how Ford’s jobs and economic performance trails other provinces. How many voters actually know that Ontario has become a have-not province under this premier or that the province’s credit rating is lower than Alberta's, BC’s, Quebec’s, and Saskatchewan’s?
Ford has also kept both the Auditor General and the Financial Accountability officers busy writing report after report about the government’s poor (some might say scandalous) use of taxpayer dollars under his watch. While he’s delivered endless and unchecked corporate welfare to big business, core services are being starved and the workers that deliver there are being driven out by poor working conditions and stagnant salaries.
Despite this, Ford’s budgets are more expensive than his predecessors and he’s already added an astonishing $91 billion to Ontario’s debt. This is a record he can absolutely lose on.
Early Election Message Distraction
The opposition has so far been using the snap election call as a way to call out Ford’s tendency towards waste and creating unnecessary cost burdens for taxpayers.
There are two problems with this message. The first is that it puts opposition campaigns on the defensive when they should be using the opening moments of the campaign to share their vision for the future. The second is that framing the election as unnecessary risks sending people the message that they don’t need to bother to vote.
From a practical standpoint, we know the campaign is not actually a waste of money as it would cost more or less the same for Elections Ontario to manage it today versus a year from now. From a messaging standpoint, you can’t argue that Doug Ford’s leadership is devastating the province while also arguing that a campaign to replace him can wait.
If the opposition parties are smart, they’ll start saying that the election is absolutely necessary in order to finally elect a premier who will actually look out for the province. They should use the threat of Trump’s tariffs as just another reason why Ontario can’t afford to re-elect a premier with a fiscal record as brutal as Ford’s has been in rosier times.
The Liberals’ Missing Economic Message
I’ve laid out all the ways that Ford is vulnerable on economic issues. But highlighting those failings is not enough to dislodge him as the premier of choice for economic-minded voters.
Past Liberal Party victories have always had a central message about creating a strong economy for families underpinned by further core messaging about protecting the social safety net so it’s there when people need it. When you bring up this balance, most people think of Peterson or McGuinty. But Wynne’s 2014 majority was also won by talking about fair wages and creating more economic opportunities for everyone.
I suspect the Liberals opened with a health care message to combat the impression some progressives have that leader Bonnie Crombie’s message of renewed centrism means the further erosion of the safety net, should she become premier. Liberals are right that they need to do some work on that front to build trust with voters who will cast their vote based on who wins the so-called progressive primary.
But if the Liberals wait too long to put family finances and a growth economy at the centre of their messaging, it won’t matter how many times Crombie talks about being a centrist in an effort to win back economic voters. Ultimately she needs to find a narrative that goes big on both. And the “Real Leaders Fix Healthcare” hat she sported at today’s launch is not it.
The NDP’s Chronic Identity Crisis
Part of me thinks the NDP’s choice to highlight the leader and her team instead of core issues relevant to voters is because they haven’t quite landed on how they want to approach an issues-based campaign. But replacing “Right Plan” with “Right Leader, Right Team” likely won’t sway too many hearts and minds. For their sake, I hope it’s just a placeholder.
That’s because I can’t recall a single election where voters based their decision on a specific leader’s personality or the bench strength of a party. Even Justin Trudeau, who won the Liberal leadership by force of personality, won the support of many voters in the 2015 general election with promises of electoral reform and pot legalization. Most voters don’t care very much about the faces around the cabinet table.
The challenge for the NDP is the split nature of their support base. The party has a long history of working-class, labour union-friendly politics in Northern and southwestern Ontario. But it has also built a progressive base of support in bigger communities like Ottawa and Toronto. Midway through each election, they usually end up picking a side.
To get a better sense of the NDP strategy, I’ve turned my attention to the folks at Counsel Public Affairs, who are also tracking this election in their company newsletter. I worked with their president, Brad Lavigne, during the 2018 Toronto mayoral race. He’s an NDP organizer with good information about what that party’s strategy will be for this campaign. According to Counsel:
For Marit Stiles and the NDP, the campaign push is an effort to return to the party’s populist roots, aiming to recapture some of the party’s traditional working-class base while aiming for suburban breakthroughs with appealing opening salvos like removing tolls from the 407. Finding new areas to grow support will be critical to retain their status as Official Opposition against a diminished Ontario Liberal Party that may have nowhere else to go but up.
That push towards populism certainly explains why, on the eve of the election, Stiles made an announcement about uploading the cost of driving on the 407 for GTA drivers. The announcement is a big departure from what many progressive voters were probably expecting (and hoping for ) from the NDP after Stiles, a progressive Toronto MPP, took over as leader.
The NDP has explored populism during elections before. The previous NDP leader, Andrea Horwath, ran in four different elections. Three of those campaigns were heavy on working-class populism and light on progressive policy. The outlier was their 2018 campaign, where she offered a more robust policy platform and campaigned for a progressive Ontario. That campaign delivered the party’s best result since 1990.
If the NDP does side with populism again this time out, it would put their downtown Toronto seats at risk. It’s a confusing choice, given the party launched its campaign by having the leader skip across several Toronto ridings. I’ll be interested to see how Stiles manages the dual nature of her party during this campaign.
Theresa has served as the Communications Coordinator for the Ontario Liberal Party, the Director of Communications to Ontario Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, and an election speechwriter for former Premier Kathleen Wynne. She owns a communications company operating out of Toronto.
