Ted Hsu, MPP – Your Ontario Liberal MPP Report from Queen's Park
Ted Hsu MPP
The 2025 provincial election is over and my weekly wrap is back! Here are my five takeaways from a cold and snowy four week campaign.
1. Meeting voters where they are
When I spoke with voters at the door, I brought up fixing our health care system, housing and cost of living. (I’ll never forget how many earfuls I got from people having trouble keeping up with rising rents, and that will influence my work in the Legislature). However, many conversations kept turning towards people’s fear of Donald Trump’s threats to Canada. This is a lesson about meeting voters where they are. Going forward, we still have to tackle fixing the healthcare system, the cost of living, building homes, childcare and our education system, and protecting the environment but, to be able to earn people’s attention, we have to acknowledge their fears about Trump with some real ideas on what the provincial government should do.
2. There has to be a way to vote online
Voters were more upset about how the early snap election call affected their ability to vote than having to get to the polls through the snow, ice and cold. If somebody was away from home during the election, they had to immediately request a mail-in ballot kit. Many thought there wouldn’t be enough time to vote by mail, not knowing that Elections Ontario would sent a kit by Fed-Ex (!), and didn’t attempt to vote. Others found out about mail-in voting too late.
I think we need to find some way to handle mail-in ballots with some online system.
3. There’s a core Conservative vote that is a tough nut to crack
Here in Kingston and the Islands the PC candidate, Ian Chapelle, did not show up to any debates and had, at most, a handful of lawn signs in the whole riding. He was sighted doing some door knocking but, even on the last few days of the campaign, I had people asking me who the PC candidate was. I am hoping to meet him in person some day. He was working as a PC staffer in the Ministry of Education before the election and, who knows, he is probably a nice guy.
Here’s the interesting thing: Ian Chapelle earned 12,022 votes compared to ex-mayor Gary Bennett (11,973 votes) who is well known and ran an active campaign in the 2022 election. Ian’s percentage (22.2%) is down from Gary’s (24.6%) because of the higher turnout. I won by a very large margin, with 62% of the vote, which further underlines how that core Conservative vote was a pretty tough nut to crack.
4. What does the Premier think about elected MPPs?
As I write this note, it’s being reported that Premier Ford will recall the Legislature for April 14th — five weeks from now. If you didn’t already know, Parliament sits when the Lieutenant Governor recalls it, on the advice of the Premier. April 14th makes it about four months since we recessed in December. And remember that we did not sit from June 7th to October 20th, 2024! The Legislature hasn’t met since December 12th and by the time April 14th comes, the Legislature will have been in session for only seven weeks in ten months.
Unfortunately, if voters don’t punish a governing party for hiding from accountability to elected MPPs, that party can go ahead and use their majority to avoid that scrutiny.
5. Who can take seats away from the PC majority next time?
You might have read about the NDP’s vote efficiency.
With 19% of the total vote, they won 27 seats, whereas the Ontario Liberal Party got 14 seats with 30% of the popular vote. Here’s the problem with “vote efficiency”: you can concentrate your vote and keep the seats you have, but to change the government in the next election, you have to challenge the PCs in many many ridings. The Ontario Liberal’s inefficient vote (lots of second place finishes to the Conservatives) is what could, if boosted, defeat the PCs in the next election. This has to happen before any electoral reform can occur.