Kathleen Wynne endorses candidate in Liberal leadership race

“I have thought long and hard about this. We’re years away now from the 2018 election,” Wynne told the Star in an exclusive interview, referring to her crushing loss to Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives that ended almost 15 years of Liberal government. 

Her Liberals went from a majority government to the obscurity of just seven seats, too few for official party status in the legislature and the millions of dollars in funding that come with it. Issues in the defeat included high electricity rates and a partial sell-off of Hydro One that undermined Wynne’s “activist centre” brand. 

The struggling party has been mired in third place behind the New Democrats ever since and is in the midst of its third leadership race since 2020. A comeback has proved elusive, and despite holding second place in public opinion polls, the Liberals failed to win in any of the three Sept. 3 byelections.   

“It’s unusual for a former leader to weigh in,” said Wynne, who remained publicly neutral in the last two leadership contests, “but I feel like we’re at a very important point now for the party. We all need to say where we are.”

Fairclough said she is grateful for the endorsement from Wynne, the province’s first woman and first openly gay premier who brought the party back to a majority government in 2014 after three years in a minority.  

“She knows what the leadership component of this job is, and for her to see in me that I am the right person to lead the party and to lead the province, it means a lot,” the MPP said from Windsor, where the party was holding a meet and greet with leadership candidates Monday night. 

“She’s a very important mentor in our party,” Fairclough added, acknowledging “there will be opinions” about the high-profile endorsement.

Wynne said she expects a mixed reaction to her move.

“There will be lots of people who will say I’ve done the wrong thing. There will be people who said I did the right thing,” she added.

“Lee and I have had this conversation. I said, ‘There are people who love me. There are people who hate me. That’s the reality, in the party and out of the party.”

Wynne essentially conceded defeat a few days before the 2018 election but urged voters to elect Liberals in a last-ditch bid to maintain a meaningful presence in the legislature.  

“With a majority government, Doug Ford would have too free a hand for the comfort of most people,” Wynne warned at the time. After that election, there was criticism the party did not concentrate its resources on 25 or 30 of its most winnable ridings to avert a rout.

With the Liberals second in the polls behind Ford’s Progressive Conservatives — now in their eighth year and fighting off scandals like the “gravy plane” jet purchase and panicked sale and MPP expenses — there is hope the party has better odds in the next provincial election due in 2029 or 2030 behind the right leader, Wynne said.

She noted Fairclough was chief executive at St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener, giving her important experience running a big organization that is a part of Ontario’s massive health care system.

“And if you have stepped onto the rugby field as a member of the Canadian team, you’re a brave person. That kind of grit is really important to me,” Wynne said.

Fairclough is running against former federal industry minister Navdeep Bains, who is the fundraising leader in the Nov. 21 race, Don Valley West MPP Stephanie Bowman, a chartered accountant and former bank executive, and two others who have not held elected office: Dylan Marando, who was a policy adviser to Wynne, Dalton McGuinty and Justin Trudeau when they were in power, and financial technology engineer Eric Lombardi, a housing advocate.

They have been stacking up endorsements of their own, with Bains boasting Burlington MP Karina Gould, former Ontario energy minister Brad Duguid, Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi, and Scarborough-Guildwood MPP Andrea Hazell, to name a few.

Endorsements for Bowman, from Wynne’s old riding of Don Valley West, include MPPs Mary-Margaret McMahon, Rob Cerjanec and Karen McCrimmon, as well as former health minister Elinor Caplan. Fairclough also has several MPPs on her team.