Ontario election 2022: Steven Del Duca and the Liberals’ hopeful return to party status

First-time Ontario Liberal Party leader Steven Del Duca has crawled back the party from its poor showing in the 2018 election, but will it be enough to beat Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives?

Del Duca, who currently lives in Vaughan with his wife and two daughters, was first elected during a byelection in 2012. He held onto his seat in 2014 and served as transportation minister in former premier Kathleen Wynne’s cabinet between 2014 and 2018. He was among the Liberals who lost their seat during the 2018 election.

The Liberals won just seven seats in the election, losing official party status.

He was named leader of the party on March 7, 2020, with 58 per cent of the vote from delegates right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, making it tough to make his name known to voters.

In this election, he’ll be running in his former riding of Vaughan–Woodbridge, hoping to unseat the incumbent PC candidate Michael Tibollo. He lost to Tibollo by by 18 percentage points.

RELATED: Ontario Votes 2022

Under his leadership, the Liberals, if polling remains accurate, will likely take the official opposition party status from the Ontario NDP, but their swing back more than likely won’t be enough to take down Ford.

Pollster and the president of Forum Research Lorne Boznioff said Ford has benefitted from the Liberals and NDP attacking each other, something Del Duca called out against Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath during the recent leaders’ debate.

“The other two parties are really just mesmerized with themselves and who’s going to be in second and third. They really haven’t prosecuted the case against Doug Ford,” said Boznioff.

The Liberal leader said he was “disappointed” that the New Democrats were attacking him rather than solely targeting the Tories, which is something he said his party was focused on.

“Every time the Ontario NDP attacks me and attacks Ontario Liberals, Doug Ford and his team smile,” Del Duca said.

CityNews has been reviewing all of the four major parties’ platforms. The platform of the Liberal Party is focused on framing Ontario as “a place to grow” and details how they plan to improve the cost of living while recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. They also raised ideas like bringing back Grade 13 and stealing a phrase from the Ford with “buck-a-ride” transit.

Key promises from the Ontario Liberal Party

Economy and taxes

• Balance the budget by 2026-27, but making room for “unforeseen circumstances” and not if it comes at the cost of health or education investments.
• Remove provincial HST on prepared food (e.g. restaurant meals, to-go meals) under $20
• Charging one per cent surtax on businesses that had profits over $1 billion
• Two per cent income tax increase for people who have earn more than $500,000 annually
• Create package of health benefits for all workers in Ontario who don’t have coverage, including people self-employed, gig and contract workers, opt out available to employees
• Banning employers from requesting sick notes to access leave
• Require employers to provide 10 paid, job-protected sick days for workers
• Give businesses up to $200 a day to compensate for costs of workers taking more sick days
• Work with businesses, unions to design and evaluate four-day work week model
• Suspend corporate income tax for small businesses hardest hit by COVID-19 for two years, relief scared to losses and eliminated if more than 50 per cent of revenues were lost
• Drop incorporation fees for new businesses, launch 311-like service for businesses to navigate government supports
• Work with the federal government to give Ontario more control over immigration to the province, appoint a dedicated immigration minister to help newcomers work in their areas of expertise, strike a northern immigration advisory panel of regional municipal leaders and economic development officers to ensure a new immigration system is “in the best interests of the north”

Education and schools

• Provide free tuition for early childhood education college programs
• Cap class sizes at 20 students for all grades
• Hire more than 10,000 teachers, one new special education worker for every school
• Optional Grade 13 for students at all schools
• Introduce new credit courses in mental health, financial literacy and taxes
• Give “significantly more grants” for students who accessed OSAP, eliminate interest payments for current and future loans, increasing support for trades apprentices

Enviornment and climate change

• Cut greenhouse gas emissions 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, net-zero emissions by 2050
• “Making electric vehicles more affordable”
• “Preparing our homes for climate change”
• Expand Ontario’s Greenbelt, designate 30 per cent of land as protected by 2030
• Create five new provincial parks
• Plant 100 million trees a year for eight years, focusing on restoring ecosystems and protecting drinking water

Health care and COVID-19 recovery

• Put $1 billion over two years toward clearing a surgical backlog, and put the additional funding into allowing hospitals to operate “significantly” above pre-pandemic volumes and expand operating room and diagnostic procedures into evenings and weekends
• Create maximum wait times for surgeries, return to pre-pandemic wait times by end of 2022
• Home care guarantee for seniors, increased financial support for caregivers and home safety retrofits
• Boost number of family doctors and increase funding for family health teams, community health centres, nurse practioner-led clinics
• Train 3,000 new mental health and addictions professionals, hire 1,000 more workers for children
• Have mental health responders at 911 centres, emergency rooms
• Expand, reduce publicly covered mental health and addiction care wait times

Housing and affordability

• Reinstate rent control as it existed before the 2018 election (landlords could only raise rent at a set rate each year during a lease, usually between 0.5 and three per cent. That’s still in place for units built before 2018, but those created after are not subject to rent control)
• Ensure everyone can access a family doctor or nurse practitioner within 24 hours, regardless of where they live. Cover tuition costs for medical and nursing students who commit to working in a rural or remote community
• Build 1.5 million homes over 10 years and work with municipalities to expand zoning options
• Establish the Ontario Home Building Corporation to finance and build affordable homes, build 78,000 new social and community homes, 38,000 supportive housing homes and 22,000 new homes for Indigenous people
• Opening up provincial land by burying electric transmission lines, using underutilized strip malls for affordable housing
• New taxes on vacant homes in urban areas, for developers holding onto land
• Raise minimum wage to $16 and create living wage for different parts of the province
• Add an extra $1,000 a year to boost seniors’ pensions, increase income eligibility threshold to $25,000 for single seniors and $50,000 for couples

Transportation and infrastructure

• Cancel Highway 413 project, use $10 billion from that toward building new schools
• Ensure the completion of several northern highway projects, including the four-laning of highways 69 and 11/7 between Thunder Bay and Nipigon, and the reconstruction of Highway 101 in Timmins
• Introduce a refundable tax credit of $75 per winter tire and $100 per studded tire in northern Ontario
• Restore service on the Northlander rail line from Toronto to North Bay within two years and plan for passenger rail further north, including extending the Polar Bear Express south to Timmins
• Construct new roads to access the Ring of Fire
• Give northern municipalities a rebate of five per cent of the provincial mining tax

Advanced voting will occur until May 28 and the general election date is June 2. You can find full coverage of the 2022 Ontario election here.

To read the full Liberal platform, click here.

Read more on the other three major party leaders and their platforms here:

• Ontario election 2022: Doug Ford and the PC Party’s plan for 4 more years 
• Ontario election 2022: Andrea Horwath and the NDP’s pitch to oust Doug Ford and PCs
• Ontario election 2022: Mike Schreiner’s push to get more Green Party MPPs at Queen’s Park

With files from Nick Westoll and The Canadian Press