With the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party (OLP) in flux, pressure mounts on Kingston’s Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Ted Hsu, ArtSci ’84 consider another run.
Following the Sept. 12 to 14 OLP annual general meeting—an annual gathering where members review leadership, elect party executives, debate policy, and set strategy for the next election—party leader Bonnie Crombie announced that she intends to resign once a successor is chosen. Her decision came despite 57 per cent of delegates voting against holding a new leadership race, above the 50 per cent threshold required to avoid one, but below the 66 per cent some party members called on her to receive if she wanted to remain leader.
“I want to do everything I can to ensure that opportunity isn’t impeded by any one person. This is more important than ambition. This is about the very thing that unites us all,” Crombie wrote in a statement posted to her Instagram account on Sept. 14.
During her stop in Kingston amidst the provincial election, she spoke to her agenda of tackling unaffordability by reducing taxes on small businesses, building more affordable homes by removing hidden taxes, like development charges, and tackling healthcare issues by training more doctors.
Following Crombie’s planned resignation, Hsu has yet to release details on whether he plans to run at this time, explaining he’s still contemplating his next steps.
“A lot of people have contacted me, and I’m taking the time to talk to family and friends and deciding what to do,” Hsu wrote in a statement to The Journal.
Hsu first ran for OLP leader in 2023 but only received 10 per cent of the vote in the first round of a ranked-choice election. Crombie won 43 per cent in the first round, and following the elimination of Hsu and fellow leadership candidate Yasir Naqvi, won a majority of the vote with 53.4 per cent. More recently, though, Hsu handily won his seat in Kingston and the Islands with 33,288 votes, over 21,000 more than Conservative runner-up Ian Chapelle.
At the time of publication, there’ve been no announcements made on when the new leadership race will occur.
Tags
MPP, Provincial elections, Ted Hsu
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