Is Eric Lombardi a Liberal?
Let's put this one to rest.
On Sunday I opined on Eric Lombardi being the centre of the Twittersphere. I even posited that he could be the next Dalton McGuinty.
Two days later, and the discourse continues to rage on. It’s actually picking up. Prominent writers of all political stripes are weighing in. A popular narrative that has emerged is an idea that Eric Lombardi is not really a Liberal. Critics are saying that he is actually clearly a conservative and should therefore not be considered to lead the Ontario Liberal Party.
So the question became obvious: Is Eric Lombardi a Liberal?
I wanted to know the answer so I took to Twitter and asked 3 questions that would hopefully solve the matter:
1. What exactly does the Ontario Liberal Party stand for? (The starting Point)
2. How is that different from the Ontario NDP and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives? (What makes them unique, ie “Making Ontario Better” can be ignored)
3. Does Lombardi fit into that box?
I tagged many Canadian pundits but obviously don’t yet have the Twitter following to get responses. So I did what no one else wants to do: I looked for myself.
I spent hours pouring over the websites and platforms of the Ontario Liberals, their rivals, the PCs and the NDP. I even looked at the Ontario Liberal Party’s election laws. You can check em all out for yourself hyperlinked above.
Here is the summary of that analysis:
Question One: What Do the Ontario Liberals Actually Stand For?
For this I looked at two sources: the Ontario Liberal website and the Bonnie Crombie 2025 platform.
The party’s own self-description is, to put it charitably, broad. “Strengthen public health care. Deliver quality education. Grow a stronger economy. Protect the environment.” These are the four tent pole issues. They seem great. They also appear, in some form, on every party’s website.
Bonnie Crombie’s platform got more specific. Some of the big ideas included:
No tax increases
Cuts on development charges
Guarantee every Ontarian a family doctor within four years
Permanently double ODSP.
Add mental health professionals to be part of OHIP
These are concrete commitments, and taken together they point toward something specific: fiscally cautious social liberalism. As a matter of fact, that is what Crombie was known for as mayor of Mississauga. Her wikipedia page calls her a “Blue Grit” on the centre-right. In other words, Socially Liberal but Fiscally Responsible.
So all this being said, the Liberals, in their own words stand for expanding the safety net (things like mental health), but paying for it through restructuring rather than new spending. Finally, they want to make things more efficient so that they work better. These principles, are, more or less, what we might call classical liberalism.
Question Two: How Are The Liberals Different?
Comparing the three parties, it is actually difficult to find large ideological daylight. The NDP want to protect jobs, build affordable homes, and strengthen public health care. The PCs, under their 2025 winning “Protect Ontario” plan, want to build the economy, protect jobs, and invest (strengthen) in health care and education. The Liberals want to do all of the above, with perhaps a fiscal responsibility overlay. So we have to dig a little deeper.
To get into individual policies, the NDP are arguably the most distinct of the three — they support electoral reform, anti-scab legislation, a provincial luxury tax on homes, and a grocery subsidy. They are more structurally interventionist, which makes sense for the left wing of our spectrum.
The PCs, as the incumbents responding to the tariff crisis, leaned into economic nationalism and promises for law and order. The PCs have actually moved considerably toward the centre under Doug Ford — they hand out subsidies, which is not traditionally conservative.
Relatively speaking, the Liberals sit in the middle, taking some policies from each side.
So what we are really talking about, at the provincial level, is not hard ideology. There was and is no single wedge issue that sets the Ontario Liberals apart from the other parties. They borrow from both, and disagree with both. Each party seems equally concerned about Donald Trump, tariffs, jobs, and healthcare. This lack of differentiation is a huge contributor to why voter turnout was so low in 2025.
That being said, given the above, the Liberals fit closer to the PCs as is, but definitely are in the middle. The range is just compressed. We can therefore say, they are still centrists. Moving into the future, we can say that their angle for differentiation will have to be policy changes.
Beyond that, the Liberal difference is really going to be the personalities leading the way. What will have to set them apart is trust and management. When the policies are not all that different, trust is the only thing left to tell you.
Question Three: Where Does Lombardi Fit?
Well, Eric Lombardi listed these as his core values:
Each of these is a classically liberal value. Lombardi you can see in the above tweet notes that “our” ie, “Liberal” politics have wandered far from them.
His policy positions have not yet been officially released, but he spoke about them in a fantastic conversation with Andrew Miller here. Please read it if you want to be able to speak intelligently about Lombardi.
On my read, the biggest takeaways are that Lombardi subscribes to the “Housing Theory of Everything” and an “Abundance Agenda”
The “Housing Theory of Everything” is the idea that everything flows from the cost of rent and housing. His solution to this: YIMBYism (Yes in my back yard) which is typically seen as the progressive approach to this problem. Ok, so we can say he’s not conservative on that matter.
The “Abundance Agenda”. This is referring to ideas popularized in the book “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Abundance is about something called Supply-Side Progressivism. Ie, the notion that building and producing more options is better for everyone. That’s the “supply” in the economic “supply and demand” equation. The key term there is “Progressivism”. Klein and Thompson you may have heard of, are known progressives. So I think we can safely say he’s not a hard right guy at the very least. Conservatives don’t typically jibe with Ezra Klein.
While both of these ideas are not necessarily pro-Ontario Liberal Party, they certainly aren’t antithetical to the group. More importantly perhaps, neither fits in with the Ontario NDP or the PCs. So I think that calling Lombardi a conservative can be ruled out. Doug Ford is not talking about Ezra Klein.
The Verdict
So, does Eric Lombardi have the characteristics that make a Liberal a Liberal?
We mentioned Bonnie Crombie’s “Blue Grit” approach; socially liberal and fiscally responsible. That seems to be exactly what Eric Lombardi stands. This makes sense, given that he literally advised her on the housing file in the 2025 election. A good start towards "Liberal”.
None of his policies align with any opposition parties in any meaningful way. So he definitely would not be a better fit to join the NDP or the Conservatives.
Finally, the point that should really put this discussion to rest, is that the party itself has authenticated Eric as a Liberal. The party has a “Green Light Committee” that explicitly exists to vet potential candidates. It is made up of the top brass of the party, those who you figure would know best as to whether or not a candidate would be suitable for party leadership.
In other words, the Ontario Liberal Party’s establishment vetted him and approved him. This candidate was actively in the trenches supporting the previous leader as an advisor on one of the most important files.
Given all of this, we cannot reasonably say that Lombardi is not a Liberal. He’s got new ideas, and they’re intriguing to say the least, but they certainly haven’t been claimed by any of the big 3 parties in Canadian politics at this point.
Ideas change. Tastes changes. Lombardi is definitely challenging some norms, but upon investigation, he is doing it in ways that seem like a natural evolution for the party.
The critics calling him a conservative masquerading as a Liberal either misunderstand the man, or more likely, are concerned he will upset their apple cart. The Liberal party is the Centrist party.
If Lombardi isn’t a Liberal, if Lombardi isn’t a Centrist, then no one is.