Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie will be running for Ontario Liberal leadership
Published May 22, 2023 at 1:24 pm
Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie is taking aim at the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.
Sources have confirmed that she has put together a team to work out the logistics of a run and has launched a website that appears ready to kick off her campaign.
“I want to be leader of a Liberal government that puts people first,” Crombie stated on BonnieForLeader.ca earlier today before most of the content on the website was taken down.
The website explained that as leader of the Ontario Liberals, she wanted to take down Ford’s government “that has made things worse through cutback and under funding of key public services.”
“Ontario is at a tipping point,” she said on the website. “We cannot afford more of what this government has done over the past five years.”
For months speculation has swirled that Crombie would seek the position once Steven Del Duca stepped down after the party’s crushing defeat at the hands of Doug Ford’s Conservatives who were re-elected last June.
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Since then the Liberals have been seeking a high-profile candidate that can turn the party’s fortunes around in time for the next election in 2026.
Crombie, 63, has served as Mississauga’s mayor since 2014 but previously sat as a Liberal MP in the riding of Mississauga-Streetsville from 2008 to 2011 when she was defeated by Conservative Brad Butt who now serves on Mississauga City Council.
Her decision comes just days after her relationship with Ford appeared to be on the upswing when the Premier announced that he would grant Crombie’s long-held desire to break away from Brampton and Caledon and allow Mississauga’s independence from two-tiered local government.
Federal MP Nate Erskine-Smith has also declared his intention to seek the party leadership.
The Liberals will announce its new leader in December giving Crombie plenty of time to mount her campaign.
She is expected to have more to say about her leadership bid tomorrow.
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