A bad night for rogues: Notable riding battles from the 2022 Ontario election

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Glengarry—Prescott—Russell
A floor-crosser humbled

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Amanda Simard ditched Doug Ford’s caucus before it was cool. The Progressive Conservatives would famously fire MPP Roman Baber (now running for the federal Tories) after he publicly registered dissent with the government’s COVID policies. But Simard bowed out only a few months after her 2018 election in order to protest with Ford’s decision to cut funding to the province’s French language services commissioner. Although she initially sat as an Independent, Simard joined the Liberals in 2020. The riding was pretty Liberal to start with (Simard was the first PC elected there since the 1990s), but on Thursday night it swung for PC candidate Stéphane Sarrazin. Poetically for Simard, who crossed the floor to defend French language rights, Sarrazin is Franco-Ontarian.

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Don Valley West
A cop in Kathleen Wynne’s riding

In 2018, Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne may have overseen the most ignominious Liberal defeat since Confederation, but she at least dodged that uniquely Westminster humiliation of losing her own seat. When the results were counted in the affluent Toronto riding of Don Valley West, she held it by only 181 votes. Wynne isn’t running this time around (the Liberal candidate is corporate accounting vete
ran Stephanie Bowman), but the Progressive Conservatives brought in a star candidate to make extra sure it went blue. Mark Saunders is former chief of the Toronto Police, and was one of a wave of North American police chiefs to abruptly resign in 2020 at the height of “defund the police” rhetoric. But it wasn’t enough; the riding went for Bowman.

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York South-Weston
Another Ford at Queen’s Park

The next generation of the Ford dynasty, Mike Ford, has already dipped his toe into politics by serving time as a school trustee and a Toronto city councillor. The premier is his uncle, as is former Toronto mayor Rob Ford; Mike’s mother is the pair’s sister Kathy Ford. But they didn’t put the Junior Ford in a particularly easy riding; it basically went for a three-way tie in 2018 that ended with an NDP victory. The three-way split essentially happened again on Thursday night, albeit with Ford in the top spot. For those counting, that makes three generations of Fords at Queen’s Park; Doug and Kathy Ford’s father, Doug Sr., was the MPP for Etobicoke-Humber for four years in the 1990s.

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Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston
The Randy Hillier adventure comes to an end

When this riding decisively voted in Randy Hiller in 2018, it would have been easy for them to imagine that they were opting for a relatively conventional Progressive Conservative. He’s been an MPP since 2007 and had even run for the PC leadership in 2009. But then, he got booted out of caucus for misconduct in 2019, ended up became a hardcore supporter of Freedom Convoy and wound up with criminal charges after he openly called for protesters to gum up 911 lines as police cleared Ottawa anti-mandate blockades back in February. On Thursday, the riding’s constituents showed they aren’t really fond of rogues: They soundly elected the PC candidate, John Jordan, and gave only token vote totals to the Populist, Ontario and New Blue parties, respectively.

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Parry Sound–Muskoka
Conservativeland (almost) goes green

As ridings go, the cottage country riding of Parry Sound – Muskoka is pretty darn conservative. This was the riding of PC Premier Ernie Eves, and their federal MP, Scott Aitchison, is currently running for the federal Tories. So it was somewhat unexpected that final polls were showing that the riding could end up going to Green Party candidate Matt Richter, who was running for the fifth time. One big reason is that the Liberals dumped their Parry Sound – Muskoka candidate, Barry Stanley, after it emerged that he had published a book with weird claims that homosexuality was caused by a deficit of oxygen at birth. And, fun fact, on the rare occasion that Greens do flip ridings, they usually fl
ip conservative ones. That was the case with Canada’s first elected Green MP, Elizabeth May, and B.C.’s first Green MLA, Andrew Weaver. But the stars didn’t appear to align for Richter, who had to content himself with a solid second place.