The Ontario Liberals won a pair of provincial elections on Thursday, including a previously Progressive Conservative seat.
The party has no leader at the moment, although five people are vying for the title, and has severely reduced resources after two successive election paths, but ended the evening with the highest number of seats since 2018.
Victories by Andrea Hazell in the Scarborough Guild and Karen McCrimmon in Kanata Carleton bring the Liberals to nine seats in the Legislature. It is still not enough for the party’s official status or to put them within striking distance of the Official Opposition NDP, but the party framed the victories as momentum ahead of the 2026 general election.
The Scarborough Guild was represented for 10 years by former Liberal cabinet minister Mitzie Hunter until she resigned in May to run in the mayoral election. Her successor, Hazell, is a community advocate, small business owner and Chairman of the Scarborough Business Association.
“The Ontario Liberals are standing up for those who call Scarborough home, for working people, for families, for health care and for education,” she said in a statement.
The Progressive Conservatives ran local councilor Gary Craanairford as a candidate, but he finished more than 1,000 votes behind Hazell.
In the Kanata-Carleton round in the Ottapora area, Karen McCrimmon-the former Liberal MP for the round – won the seat for the Liberals by 651 votes over Progressive Conservative candidate Sean Zimbebster.
Kanata-Carleton has been without Representatives since Merrilee Fullerton abruptly resigned from her position as Minister of children, community and social services and her seat in March.
Premier Doug Ford made two trips to the riding in the final days of the campaign, and Myer siemiatycki, professor emeritus of political science at Toronto Metropolitan University, said it’s showing that Conservatives lost riding despite the big push.
“This is a seat held in office for the party, and to lose it when the prime minister plus some high-profile cabinet ministers have done the rounds in that round to promote the Conservative candidate…this is really a big setback for Prime Minister Ford and the Conservatives,” he said.
All the leading candidates in the partial election had said one of voters ‘ top concerns was affordability, but the Liberal and NDP candidates also said they were hearing about health care at the doors. In Kanata-Carleton in particular, McCrimmon said voters were upset that two rural hospitals in the area had to temporarily close their ERs due to staffing shortages.
There may be many issues that prompted Kanata-Carleton voters to choose a Liberal, from health care in the Greenbelt to concerns about funding autism therapy, siemiatycki said, but despite that it is likely to cause concern for the Tories.
“There could be a bigger message in this if the premier were to take from him that the people of Ontario’s two largest municipalities are not happy with him in his government,” he said.
The NDP came third in both elections, but noted that the party’s vote share increased in both races from the last election.
Voting was low, with 35 percent of eligible voters voting in Kanata-Carleton, and only 22 percent in Scarborough-Guildanair.
Residents of the east Toronto riding just voted last month in a mayoral election, which came just eight months after the municipal general election, and only 13 months have passed since the last provincial general election.
A third provincial election will have to be called in the Kitchener Centre in the coming months, after NDP representative Laura Mae Lindo resigned this month.
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