Rookie Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie has eclipsed her target of raising $1 million in a month for the third-place party.
Crombie, who won the Liberal crown on Dec. 2, said the Grits brought in more than $1.2 million during her inaugural weeks at the helm.
"On my first day on the job as Ontario Liberal Leader, I set an ambitious goal: to raise $1 million by our 2023 year-end deadline," she said in an email to contributors being sent out this week.
"Well, thanks to thousands of donors like you … I am so thrilled to announce that we exceeded that goal, raising $1,213,181!"
The Mississauga mayor, who steps down from her municipal duties Jan. 12, emphasized the Liberals have their work cut out for them if they hope to topple Premier Doug Ford's two-term Progressive Conservatives in the next election.
"Ontario Liberals are back, and we're putting in the hard work necessary to defeat Doug Ford in 2026 and replace the scandal-plagued Conservatives with a government that will put the people of Ontario first," said Crombie.
"We know we have to close the considerable fundraising gap between us and the Conservatives, and I'm so grateful to everyone who contributed to doing exactly that last month," she said.
"We still have a lot of work to do between now and 2026 to grow our team, catch up to the Conservatives’ fundraising and offer Ontario voters a plan they trust. This year-end fundraising total represents a strong start on our path to victory."
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Her announcement comes as the Tories are stepping up a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz attacking the new Liberal chief.
The governing party, which views her as a threat in the seat-rich Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, hopes to negatively define Crombie for voters using TV, radio and online spots.
In an interview with the Star two weeks ago, she said the Tory ads are to "distract people" from problems like the $8.28-billion Greenbelt land swap scandal that is now under RCMP investigation.
Two of Ford's cabinet ministers and a pair of senior aides have resigned or been forced to quit in the wake of the debacle triggered by the premier's since-reversed scheme to open up 7,400 acres of environmentally sensitive land to housing development.
Last August, separate watchdog reports from the auditor general and the integrity commissioner concluded certain developers with PC connections were "favoured" in the land swap that ended up being scrapped in September.
The latest Abacus Data poll for the Star suggested Ford's party is weathering the Greenbelt fiasco after a rocky summer.
According to Abacus, the Tories were at 39 per cent support last month compared to 27 per cent for the Liberals, 24 per cent for Marit Stiles's Official Opposition New Democrats and six per cent for Mike Schreiner's Greens.
Using online panels based on the Lucid exchange platform, Abacus surveyed 1,000 Ontarians Dec. 7-12. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
In the previous poll in November, the Tories were at 42 per cent support, the NDP at 24 per cent, the Liberals at 23 per cent and the Greens at seven per cent.
The Liberals, who governed Ontario under premiers Kathleen Wynne and Dalton McGuinty from 2003 until Ford's 2018 victory, now have only nine MPPs in the 124-member legislature.
That's three shy of official party status, meaning the Grits don't get regular questions to the government during the daily question period and have no standing on legislative committees.
The Tories have 79 MPPs, including Speaker Ted Arnott who does not caucus with them, while the New Democrats have 28 and the Greens have two. There are five Independents and one vacancy.Â
Nor do the Liberals receive public funding for staff and research, which is why Crombie, who is not an MPP, has made raising money a priority.
"This is the party's strongest year-end fundraising result ever under the new fundraising rules," she wrote to donors. "In fact, it triples our usual year-end fundraising results."Â
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