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Crombie said she met with her executive before the vote result announcement.

“I have the support I need to continue,” she said. 

“We still believe that a leadership race at this moment would do more harm than good for our party.”

The announcement was delayed slightly, organizers said, due to the high number of ballots. Roughly 2,500 Liberals attended the annual general meeting, which organizers called the provincial party’s largest ever meeting. Early Sunday afternoon, Liberal organizers said ballots were still being counted. Fewer than half of the delegates attending the weekend event waited in the Sheraton’s Grand Ballroom for the announcement. 

On Saturday, Crombie called those numbers a sign of party revitalization but others wondered if they indicated a push for change.

Critics have been circling Crombie since Premier Doug Ford won his third majority government in a snap Feb. 27 election. Crombie failed to win a seat in Mississauga, where she served as mayor for a decade, but under her leadership, the Liberals boosted their seat count from nine to 14 MPPs and regained official status lost after its dramatic defeat in 2018.

The vote results were announced Sunday afternoon during the Liberal’s annual general meeting, part of a postelection mandatory review on whether to hold a new leadership contest. Ontario’s New Democrats are holding a similar vote at their annual meeting in Niagara Falls next weekend. 

Leading up to the event, the Liberals released a post-mortem of their campaign operations for the February election, findings that echoed many of the concerns raised privately and publicly by party members. Crombie’s Liberals won 30 per cent of the popular vote but it was spread across the province and did not translate into riding wins. The NDP, with just 18.5 per cent of the popular vote, won 27 seats and remain the official opposition.

While Crombie’s presence attracted much interest from political donors, her absence in some ridings during the campaign led to disheartened volunteers who wanted to meet their new leader and were dismayed when she passed through their region without stopping, the report said.

In the big picture, the report said the campaign allowed Ford to define himself during the election, letting him run away with his defender-of-Canada persona that resonated with an electorate afraid of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats against Canada. It also concluded that the delayed decision to choose a Mississauga riding for Crombie to seek a seat — she wasn’t an MPP one year after winning the leadership — led to a “ripple of negative consequences” for other potential candidates hoping to run. 

Crombie’s failure to win a seat in Mississauga, she said, was especially painful.

“It stung. It still does. The city I love. Where I raised my children,” Crombie said in an interview last week. 

She added the short campaign period left her racing across the province without time to meet workers in all ridings and said the campaign did not pivot to focus on the economy, at a time when Ontarians were focused on the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

But, she noted, the report highlighted concerns of unhappy party members and was written with them in mind.

“The work is already underway,” she said. 

Going into the weekend, Crombie rejected the demand of her most vocal critics who said she must win 66 per cent of the vote or resign. 

The Liberal constitution says its leader needs 50 per cent plus one vote to stay on the job. But federal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith — who ran against Crombie for provincial party leadership in December of 2023 — published an anti-Crombie missive last July, insisting she win two-thirds of the Liberal delegates, or resign.

During weekend voting hours, Erskine-Smith, a federal MP who represents the Beaches — East York on Parliament Hill, joined the provincial Liberals, chatting with some near the ballot room. 

The two thirds threshold appears to have been inspired by former federal Progressive Conservative Leader Joe Clark in the early 1980s. Clark managed to win 66.9 per cent in a leadership vote but decided that wasn’t good enough. He called for a second contest, which Brian Mulroney won. 

Perhaps in an effort to avoid a repeat of political history, Crombie said last week that, depending on the outcome, she would reject critics’ demands and follow the party rules.

“I am confident that the membership will embrace those results, as I will.” 

With files from Rob Ferguson