Midway into Ontario election campaign, some parties still struggling with pitches

As Ontario’s snap winter election campaign reaches its halfway point, Progressive Conservatives’ main opponents are still scrambling to pitch themselves to voters, while polls suggest the incumbents maintain a significant lead.

Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford called the early vote for Feb. 27, more than a year before the next fixed election date, in what some observers say was a strategic move intended to catch his rivals at a disadvantage.

Ford has said his government needs an even bigger mandate from Ontarians in the face of looming tariffs and four years of U.S. President Donald Trump.

But other party leaders have accused Ford of calling the snap election for his own benefit, calling it unnecessary and a waste of money.

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie acknowledged last week that figuring out when an election might come was difficult.

“He was musing about election calls. We didn’t know when the timing would be,” she told reporters at a campaign event in Toronto.

In the lead-up to the winter, Ford had consistently refused to rule out a 2025 vote.

While some anticipated an election in the spring, the window for a provincial contest seemed to quickly narrow after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he would resign as Liberal leader and prorogued federal Parliament until late March — after which a federal election seemed all but certain.

It was widely expected that Ford wouldn’t risk having an election at the same time – and the U.S. tariffs he was road-testing as a reason for the vote threatened to come early in the new year.

The snap call at the end of January gave the opposition parties even less time than they might have expected to patch together a platform and convince voters it’s time for a change.

Philippe Fournier, a polls analyst, said the short campaign period was a clear strategic move from Ford.

“There’s no doubt it was by design that the PCs decided to have the minimum length duration for this election,” said Fournier, who serves as editor-in-chief of 338Canada, a poll analysis and vote projection website.

All four of the main parties have announced a full slate of candidates, with the NDP reaching that milestone more than a week into the campaign, the Liberals last weekend and the Greens this week.

Crombie and NDP Leader Marit Stiles, seen as Ford’s main competitors, both made several announcements in the first two weeks of the election that included no details on how much the measures would cost taxpayers.

Crombie has said her party needs to do some more work to fully develop its platform since it has been “a little abrupt to get it all costed.”

She said at a press conference Wednesday she would release the party’s full platform soon. The NDP has said the same.

Meanwhile, Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner is the first and only leader to release a fully costed platform.

“We want to be honest and transparent with the people of this province, because that’s the kind of government they deserve,” Schreiner said at a platform launch event Wednesday.

Kayla Iafelice, a Conservative political strategist, isn’t buying the argument that the snap election timing is why opposition parties haven’t fully developed their plans.

“There had been talk for quite some time that there was going to be an early election,” said Iafelice, a former spokesperson for Ford. “Anybody who’s worked in politics and anybody who understands politics knows … you get to work, and you start to be prepared.”

Iafelice acknowledged that both the NDP and Liberals seem to lack the “infrastructure” they need to respond quickly to a situation like this, and they don’t have the number of people they need behind the scenes to piece a comprehensive platform together.

“I think part of the problem why they don’t have these fully costed and fully detailed platforms is primarily a resource problem,” she said in a phone interview.

Ford has not released a fully costed platform for the PCs, either.

But as premier, he has had control over the provincial budget during his incumbency, and his government would have been preparing a fully costed provincial budget for release in early 2025.

Fournier, the poll analyst, said the early election gamble seems to be paying off.

“Since the campaign began, we have not seen clear trends other than Doug Ford’s PCs should win a landslide majority at Queen’s Park if the numbers hold.”

Fournier said based on aggregate analysis of recent polls the PCs are currently projected to win about 45 per cent of the popular vote and hold around 100 seats.

He said it’s difficult at this point to determine whether the NDP or the Liberals will have the upper hand when it comes to forming the Official Opposition.

While the Liberals are projected to have the edge over the NDP in the popular vote, as of the halfway point, there’s a possibility they split the vote while the PCs win “almost everything” said Fournier.

The contest, which Elections Ontario says will cost up to $189 million, will see voters heading to the polls in a rare winter election.

If the NDP, Liberals and Greens were caught by surprise, that’s even more so the case for the average voter.

Lydia Miljan, a political science professor at the University of Windsor, told The Canadian Press earlier this month that Ford’s decision to call an election nearly 1 1/2 years before the fixed date caught Ontarians “off guard.”

The short campaign leading up to a February vote — when some people may be travelling for winter vacations and others, depending on the weather, may find themselves less motivated to make the trip to their local polling station — could lower voter participation, she said.

There has been minimal fanfare during the election campaign’s first half. Campaign events from all parties have been kept to organized numbers, and none have held large-scale rallies or crowded events.

Leaders’ debates are scheduled for the awkward times of Valentine’s Day afternoon and Family Day evening.

But for Iafelice, there’s little excuse for the opposition to have a muted response to this opportunity.

“When you are an opposition party, your goal is to have a very clear agenda of what you’re pushing back on against the government, it is your job to make sure Ontarians know what the alternative is and to keep the government in check,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2025.

Rianna Lim and Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press