As the second day of Ontario’s snap election campaign got underway, party leaders struck out into fresh territory looking to woo voters in areas they didn’t win in 2022 and flip ridings before election day.
Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford started the campaign deep in the traditionally NDP-held territory of western Ontario, campaigning in Windsor at the U.S. border on the first day of the election, before moving to London.
The PC leader is bringing a promise of blue-collar job protection to ridings in London that have most recently sent NDP representatives to Queen’s Park. Amid the threat of tariffs from the U.S. on Canadian exports, Ford is pitching his party as the area’s best option.
On Thursday, the party unveiled a promise to spend an additional $1 billion on skills and development if re-elected, along with $38 million for action centres in areas hit by layoffs if the U.S. levels tariffs.
“We’re very confident that that market’s going to continue to grow,” Ford said of electric vehicles, which are set to be made in the area, and fears of potential job losses in the industry. “But we’re going to be here to support the sector, we’re going to be here to support the workers. And we’ll do whatever it takes to protect the workers.”
The decision to launch the campaign and tariff threat message in parts of the province where the PCs didn’t win in 2022 appears to be supported by a confident PC party leader. Asked if he had fears of losing any of the 79 seats his party held at dissolution, Ford simply replied, “No.”
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To the east of Ford, in Toronto, Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles boarded her orange battle bus beside Queen’s Park to take her campaign into territory won by Ford last time around.
Stiles drove to New Hamburg, an area won by PC Mike Harris Jr. last time around. Later in the day, she will drive to Essex, where PC candidate Anthony Leardi is defending his seat.
Before that, on the first day of the campaign, Stiles was in York-South-Weston, a Toronto seat last held by the PC leader’s nephew, Michael Ford.
The NDP leader said she is also gunning for areas where the Liberals hope to gain or maintain ground.
“I want to be a premier in a government for all Ontarians — everybody,” Stiles said Thursday.
“I will continue to appeal to folks who have voted Liberal in the past because I don’t think Bonnie Crombie‘s values are the values of a lot of those folks, I think Bonnie Crombie doesn’t want to defeat Doug Ford, I think she wants to be Doug Ford.”
Liberal Leader Crombie, the only party leader without a seat in the last legislature, was in Mississauga launching her campaign. She’s hoping to win a riding that was previously held by a cabinet minister who resigned during the Greenbelt scandal to sit as an Independent.
Crombie repeated her message that Ford’s call for an election was unnecessary as she tried to cast herself as a “different kind of Liberal” who would cut taxes in the province and “stimulate growth.”
Thursday was the second consecutive day Crombie campaigned in an area her party didn’t represent during the last legislative session.
She launched her campaign in Barrie, where Doug Downey, who served as attorney general, won by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2022. Later on Wednesday, she campaigned in the riding won by Paul Calandra, Ford’s housing minister.
On Thursday, Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner took his party’s campaign to the riding of Wellington–Halton Hills, where former Speaker Ted Arnott, elected under the Progressive Conservative banner in 2022, has chosen not to run again.
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