The Liberals won just eight seats in the June 2 election, attracting even fewer votes across the province than in 2018. That means the party had the worst election result in its history with the second worst result. The Liberals are now facing another four years without a formal party status, which means they will not receive funding for party staff at Queen’s Park. The party is also facing a leadership battle to find a replacement for Steven Del Duca, after announcing his resignation on election night. The sheer magnitude of this second consecutive rejection makes some Liberals demand a deep and careful examination of what went wrong, along with a diligent effort to hear from voters, with a view to calculating the party’s future direction before rushing into a leadership race.
“It’s either an extinction event or a renaissance event, and I hope it’s the second,” said Jonathan Scott, a Liberal general who helped run Michael Coto’s second party in 2020. Scott believes the party did not really receive the message sent by Ontario voters in 2018 about how unhappy they would be with the way the Liberals ruled during the last 15 years in power. CLOCKS Steven de Duca announces resignation as leader after Ontario Liberals crash:

Liberal leader Steven Del Duca says he will resign after election defeat

After just one election, the former cabinet minister says he will resign. He also failed to win his riding. “This time around, as the party is searching for the soul that accompanies such an electoral defeat, we really need to learn those lessons,” Scott said in an interview. He said it was imperative that the party show “a level of humility and radical reform” to build behind the ashes of the election. The Liberal candidates who lost on June 2 are also among those seeking this kind of soul search. “I do not think we can minimize what happened,” said Andrea Barak, who lost to the current NDP member at University-Rosedale, a part of Toronto that the Liberals once considered a stronghold. “We lost two elections very badly and I’m worried about becoming irrelevant to the people of Ontario or not being considered a party that can win,” Barak said in an interview.
Although he believes that the party is in a “little crisis”, he also believes that this provides a huge opportunity.
Andrea Barrack was the Ontario Liberal Liberal Party candidate in the University-Rosedale riding in the 2022 provincial election. (Andreabarrack.ca) “We really need to think about what we are advocating and for whom we are doing this,” Barak said. “How does this purpose fit into the new context in which we find ourselves? And do we have solutions that matter to people?”
Liberal candidate Jeff Lehman lost just 609 votes to Ford’s attorney general Doug Downey on the Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte ride. Lehman says it is important for the party to focus on both its core values ​​of social progress and fiscal responsibility. “Our challenge now is to restore Ontario residents’ faith in this centrism, in this fiscal responsibility, so that they can talk about the importance of the economy as we talk about the importance of social progress,” Lehman told the show. The TVO Agenda with Steve Paikin. , in an episode titled “Are the Ontario Liberals in Crisis?” Both Lehman and Barrack say the Liberal Party has moved too far to the left and left the political center of Doug Ford’s PC Party, which in this campaign presented itself as an ideologically mediocre and workers-friendly choice. . In conversations with a number of Liberals after the election defeat, a common theme emerges: they admit that their party has fallen victim to a kind of arrogance, a very strong belief that they are always right and instead of really listening to the people, they seem much more willing to talk. It’s a phenomenon you could call “libsplaining”. Prime Minister Doug Ford speaks to Stelco officials during an election campaign at the Hilton Hamilton steel plant in May. (Peter Power / The Canadian Press) Liberal organizer Simone Racanelli says party activists need to make a consistent post-election scrutiny and think carefully about the party’s future identity.
“The next election could be or die for us. I personally believe it will be,” Racanelli told CBC Radio Ontario Today.
Racanelli helped lead the Liberals’ campaign in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, a western end of Toronto that the party had identified as its main target, but failed to win by just 803 votes. “One of the things I heard most at the door was people who either did not know who our leader was or did not like what they heard about him,” Rakanelli said. He said two key things the party needs to address are “how to improve our communications and how to connect with the average voter.” There seems to be broad agreement among the Liberals that a quick leadership race would be wrong. A Liberal supporter monitors election results on election night after broadcasters predicted that Ontario computers would win the majority government. (Chris Young / The Canadian Press) “Long before we see who the new leaders should be, the party needs to think about reforming itself,” Scott said. “We need a more inclusive party.” He said it was important for the Liberals to do it slowly in order to achieve it in time for the next election. “Change or die,” said Scott. “You may not die in three terms, but you could. This is not a Russian roulette game I would like to play in elections.” Barak, who has worked as a senior executive in each of the public, private and non-profit sectors, also wants the party to devote its time to electing a leader.
“When you decide you want to hire a leader, you start with the job description,” Barrack said. “Start by really understanding what you want this person to do. We have some time to do it well.”
With just four seats in Toronto, three in Ottawa and one in Kingston, the Liberals are left without representation in vast areas of the county. Barrack said she was surprised by the weakness of the party’s equestrian organizations, which hinders the Liberals’ ability to find out what matters to voters in the community. “We need people talking to their neighbors about issues that interest them,” he said.