Liberals win enough seats to regain official party status

The Liberals will secure enough seats to regain official party status after two terms in the single digits, but Leader Bonnie Crombie failed to win a seat in Mississauga East-Cooksville.

The Liberals were leading or elected in 14 ridings late Thursday. The threshold for official party status in Ontario is 12 seats.

The party was decimated in 2018 after 15 years in power, plummeting to seven seats in the provincial legislature as the Progressive Conservatives swept in with a majority.

The Liberals captured eight seats in the last election and had nine at dissolution.

Leader Bonnie Crombie appealed directly to NDP voters over the last several weeks, painting her party as the only viable alternative to the Progressive Conservatives.

“People counted us out. They said the Ontario Liberal Party was dead. Tonight, you proved them wrong,” Crombie told supporters Thursday night. “The Ontario Liberal Party is back to official party status, and that’s a big milestone. But it gets better: we increased our share of the votes substantially, to 30 per cent. … So this is a building block for us.”

“It is a momentum that we can continue to push forward and to grow,” she added.

The Liberals have been able to flip three seats so far.

Liberal candidate Stephanie Smyth, a former broadcaster, defeated NDP incumbent Jill Andrews in Toronto-St. Paul’s.

The riding was long considered a Liberal stronghold, but the NDP took it in the 2018 election, which saw the Liberals reduced to single-digit seats.

A Liberal candidate came close to snatching it back in the last vote and the party put up another high-profile candidate this time.

The Liberals also made gains in Etobicoke-Lakeshore where candidate Lee Fairclough defeated PC incumbent Christine Hogarth. 

Voters also elected Liberal candidate Jonathan Tsao to replace Independent Vincent Ke in Don Valley North.

With files from The Canadian Press.