Biography: Bonnie Crombie is the former three-term mayor of Mississauga, serving from 2014 to 2024. She resigned in January of that year to lead the Ontario Liberals. She subsequently stepped down from Liberal leadership early this year, after the party came third behind Premier Doug Ford’s Conservatives and the NDP in the 2025 Ontario election, and after Crombie failed to win a seat in Mississauga East–Cooksville. Before serving in these roles, Crombie was Liberal MP for Mississauga-Streetsville from 2008 to 2011, and before that worked in business. She has described herself as centrist, fiscally conservative, and socially liberal.
As mayor, she advocated for Mississauga to separate from Peel Region, which she said would allow Mississauga’s tax dollars to stay in the city. On housing, she used her strong mayor powers to allow four-plexes to be built on low-rise residential lots, arguing the move would ease the housing crisis. Under her leadership the City of Mississauga signed a deal with the federal government to provide nearly $113 million for housing in Mississauga. However, council still faced criticism from some for its aversion to highrise developments under Crombie, and for rejecting more housing development applications than it accepted in 2023, according to Mississauga News. Crombie fought the Ford government’s use of minister’s zoning orders or MZOs to force high-rise developments in Mississauga that were not supported by city planners.
Crombie’s 2024 budget included a residential tax increase that would go towards increased bus services in Mississauga, among other budget items. Crombie also supported expanded transit in the city and is in favour of increased urban density and a reduced reliance on cars in Mississauga.
During her provincial leadership campaign, criticized the government of Kathleen Wynne for spending too much money on health care, dental care, and child care, and argued these costs should be covered by the federal government rather than the province. However, she has also described health care and education as underfunded by Ford.
Platform: Crombie says Mississauga is struggling with a high cost of living, crime, and a slow-moving municipal government. According to Mississauga publication The Pointer, she wants to reduce city hall departmental spending by 10 percent in her first two years due to “out of control” spending by the city. She aims to keep taxes low. Like her rival candidate Carolyn Parrish, Crombie says Peel Region’s police funding formula needs to change, but she says she is more supportive of police than Parrish, and criticized the sitting mayor for departing the police board over the growth of the force’s budget.
On tariffs, Crombie says she will let businesses that are directly affected defer their property taxes to the city without interest, and make Buy Canadian and Made-in-Mississauga procurement processes permanent. She says she’ll create a tariff response team that will respond within 48 hours to major employers facing significant decisions, and will attract investment to the industrial employment zone around Pearson airport and to the Lake Ontario waterfront.