Ontario byelections ‘temperature check’ arrives for Ford and Crombie

Voters in two Ontario ridings are set to cast ballots Thursday in byelection races that will mark the first electoral test for new Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie after months of sparring with Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives.

Byelections in both Milton and Lambton-Kent-Middlesex are taking place between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Thursday after two cabinet ministers stepped down, triggering the two races.

In Milton, former minister of red tape reduction Parm Gill resigned earlier in the year to run as a federal candidate for Pierre Poilievre. Monte McNaughton, who held the position of labour minister, resigned in 2023 to take a job in the private sector.

The two byelections are the first time people have been able to vote in any provincial race since Crombie won the leadership of the Ontario Liberals, with the Greater Toronto Area seat of Milton seen as a particularly winnable seat for the Grits.

But pollsters and political strategists both agree that the margin of victory is so slim that a few votes could make a major difference.

“A narrow PC win, a narrow Ontario Liberal Party win wouldn’t surprise me,” David Valentin, principal at Liaison Strategies, told Global News.

Polling released by Liaison Strategies on April 26 shows a two-way race between Ontario Liberal candidate Galen Naidoo Harris at 41 per cent and Progressive Conservative Zee Hamid at 39 per cent. The slight Liberal lead is within the poll’s margin of error.

The NDP’s Katherine Cirlincione was polling at nine per cent and Ontario Green candidate Kyle Hutton at five per cent.

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Looking at those numbers, even Progressive Conservatives say they understand why Crombie, who flirted with the idea of running in Milton, ducked out.

“It is a swing riding on the best of days,” said Laryssa Waler, a former top staffer in the Premier’s Office and a Principal at GT and Co.

“Even in the last election when Doug Ford won a massive majority, we won Milton by 1,700 votes. It was a razor-thin win even during a massive sweep.”

With the Liberals seeming to nudge slightly in front in a tight race, turnout could play a key role in Milton, Valentin said. Data from Elections Ontario shows just 5.5 per cent of registered voters cast a ballot early in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, while 6.6 per cent turned out in Milton.

While byelections can sometime serve as a referendum of the ruling party, the race in Milton has, instead, focused on local issues, including local train service and well-organized opposition to the construction of a quarry.

Liberal Naidoo-Harris, along with other opposition candidates, has said he will fight against a proposed quarry in the town. The project is currently at the environmental assessment stage; technical studies must take place before it proceeds, something Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said will need to play out.

“It’s in front of environmental assessment right now and after the EA is done, we’ll sit down with the community but I always believe if communities don’t want something, we don’t do it. If they do, then we move forward with it,” Ford said at an unrelated event Tuesday.

“But let’s sit down and get the EA done with.”

Ahead of the byelection, the Ford government also announced it was willing to spend up to $3 billion on two-way, all-day GO Transit service between Toronto and Milton. Delivering faster train service would mean building a new rail line for passenger trains to bypass freight carriages.

“I think you’ve definitely seen some intrigue and some issues pop up in Milton, whether it’s the quarry, whether it’s GO train service, whether it’s the keffiyeh and the political arguments we’ve seen at Queen’s Park over that,” Valentin said.

“This is a very tight election… so I think we’re going to see a very close result but which issue is going to bring people over the finish line, we don’t know yet.”

The byelection will also provide a “temperature check” on the public’s attitudes to Crombie, he said.

Polling from Liason Strategies suggests Lambton-Kent-Middlesex will be far easier for the governing Progressive Conservatives.

Results also released on April 26 show PC candidate Steve Pinsonneault with 52-per cent support and Ontario Liberal Cathy Burghardt-Jesson at 21 per cent. The NDP is in third place at 14 per cent for Kathryn Shailer and the Green Party’s Andraena Tilgner polled at eight per cent.

The riding was held for more than a decade by McNaughton before he resigned in 2023. The former labour minister first took the seat in 2011, long before the PCs formed government, and held it until he resigned.

Liaison Strategies’ polling suggests just nine per cent of voters were undecided when asked at the end of April, with numbers predicting a potentially resounding victory for Ford.

However, Progressive Conservative insiders are watching the vote share. If the PC party’s support slips in a fairly conservative riding, insiders say, it could be an indication of the premier’s softening popularity.

A Progressive Conservative win in Lambton-Kent-Middlesex would mark a rare byelection victory for the governing party. Of the four byelections held since the June 2022 election, the government has failed to record any wins, losing one seat in the process.

In Hamilton Centre, Sarah Jama — now an independent but elected under the Ontario NDP banner — retained the seat for the official opposition. Kanata-Carlton saw the PCs lose a cabinet minister’s seat to the Ontario Liberals, who also retained Scarborough-Guildwood.

In the latest byelection — Kitchener Centre — the Greens snatched the seat from the Ontario NDP.