Scott Stinson: With Liberal ‘spy’ controversy, Ford’s Ontario PCs kick another ball into their own net

Former Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie in Mississauga in February 2025. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk /Postmedia

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The story, as it understood at this point, is this: Shortly after winning the Ontario Liberal leadership in early December 2023, Bonnie Crombie took a brief vacation to a resort in Jamaica with her partner.

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The Ontario Progressive Conservative party also sent someone to the same resort to “spy on” her.

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A report this week in The Trillium, which had first reported that the PCs used party funds at two Jamaican resorts in the same 2023 time period, quoted unnamed sources in a follow-up as saying someone was there to scrutinize Crombie as part of opposition-research work.

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Asked about the story at an unrelated news conference in Guelph on Thursday, Premier Doug Ford said the first he heard about any of it was on Wednesday.

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“Talk to the party,” the PC leader said. Ford said he didn’t approve of such a thing, but also did not apologize for what opposition MPPs have called “creepy” and “deeply disturbing” behaviour for a party staffer.

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The premier also stressed that the money spent — about $3,000 at two resorts — was from party funds, although much of that budget comes from the public in the form of a per-vote subsidy.

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While Ford said he didn’t agree with such tactics, he also shrugged them off, saying “it’s politics” and “stuff happens” in response to questions about whether he was responsible for the actions of his party.

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All of it fits what has become a familiar pattern at Queen’s Park. The governing Tories, fresh off a third straight election win, are caught in a scandal of their own making. Ford tries to change the channel quickly, but at the same time avoids speaking in detail on the matter. The opposition parties, having scarcely believed their good fortune that such a scandal has fallen into their laps, gets to stretch out the story for days by demanding answers to questions that the government — or, in this case, the PC party — is not particularly inclined to answer.

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It happened with the government’s brief ownership of a $28.9-million private jet to support Ford’s travels. It happened with revelations that more than a dozen PC MPPs billed taxpayers for overnight stays at Toronto hotels despite representing ridings that were within normal commuting distance to Queen’s Park. And it is happening again with the Crombie spy caper.

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The third-place Liberals quickly called a press conference at the provincial legislature on Thursday to defend the privacy of their former leader and to demand answers on the Jamaican operation.

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Calling it “an absolute violation of someone’s privacy” and the “lowest of the low,” MPP Stephanie Smyth said Ford and the PCs should acknowledge who approved the trip to the Caribbean and admit whether any type of report was produced as a result of it. Was Crombie photographed on her vacation? Do those photos exist anywhere?

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(A spokesperson for Ford told The Trillium that the people involved do not currently work for the government or the PC party.)

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The PCs spent aggressively in the early days of Crombie’s leadership to try to brand her as a wealthy “limousine Liberal” while also tying her to the unpopular Trudeau government of the day. (She had formerly been a Liberal MP.)