Two Ontario Liberal MPPs are drawing a line in the sand, insisting that the next leader of the third-place party needs to have a seat in the provincial legislature in order to effectively hold the Ford government to account.
The provincial party is holding its third leadership race in seven years after two successive leaders — Steven Del Duca and Bonnie Crombie — failed to gain a seat at Queen’s Park, leading to their resignations.
While four candidates have officially entered the race, only two — Etobicoke Lakeshore MPP Lee Fairclough and Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec — can boast electoral success and the ability to directly needle Premier Doug Ford and Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers during question period.
Dylan Marando, a former policy adviser for both the federal and provincial Liberal governments, and former federal industry minister Naveep Bains have also launched their leadership campaigns as Queen’s Park outsiders.
As the leadership race begins to take shape, the two caucus members running for the party’s top job are looking to define a central question party members will likely be asked ahead of the convention in November: Should the leader have a seat in the legislature?
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“It’s been eight years, as Ontario Liberals, that we haven’t had a permanent leader with a seat in the legislature,” said Cerjanec as he launched his leadership bid this week. “We can’t continue doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
“Moving forward, we do need a leader with a seat in the legislature. I think that’s really important to be able to hold this government to account.”
Fairclough — who, like Cerjanec, also managed to unseat an incumbent Progressive Conservative MPP during the 2025 snap election — shared those sentiments.
“I have heard consistently that that’s important to people. It’s part of the reason people encouraged me to run,” Fairclough said at Queen’s Park.
“Our primary goal is to bring about change in this province. If we are able to do that with a leader with a seat in the legislature, I think it’s going to make a big difference.”
While neither the party’s 2022 or 2025 campaign debriefs delved into the impact of having a seat in the legislature, both documents noted that Del Duca and Crombie were relative unknowns to the broader voting population and that the lack of awareness dragged down the party’s overall support.
Jonathan Scott, a vice-president at Crestview Strategies who served as a key adviser to Crombie, said presence in the Ontario legislature can be used as “leverage” in the race, and it might serve as the ballot box question for party members.
“The ability to get this party back into contention as a political operation is far more important than the 1,400 people who view the clip of you on question period on your social media feed,” Scott said.
“In this day and age, when you need to be able to go viral and break a story down into relatable videos, I don’t think it matters whether you’re doing that from a coffee shop in Bradford or a pub in Kitchener versus the floor of the legislature.”
A spokesperson for Navdeep Bains said the candidate will “absolutely” run for in an Ontario riding and that “having a seat matters.”
“The Legislature is where the daily work happens, and anyone looking to lead our party should be clear that they intend to be there. Like others in this race, he is actively looking at the right path to a seat,” Bains’s team said in a statement, but added that the focus is currently on travelling the province on a listening tour.
While Marando said he, too, will run for a legislative seat regardless of the outcome, he pushed back on the notion that being an elected MPP serves as an advantage in the leadership race.
“Having a seat doesn’t mean you have what it takes to be premier,” Marando said in a statement.
“Because of my work in the premier’s office and Prime Minister’s Office, I have more experience in the executive branch of government than Lee, Rob, Navdeep, and Nate (Erskine-Smith), combined.”
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