Editor’s note: This article was written in early February 2025, before Ontario’s provincial election later that year. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority government in the 2025 election.
The winter sitting resumed in February 2025, and the rhythm at Queen’s Park is the same as it always is under a majority government: the PCs move legislation, the opposition tries to slow it down and get clips, and a handful of MPPs on both sides do work that nobody covers until it matters. Amendments drafted to fail. Private member’s bills tabled for the record. Committee questions that plant seeds for stories months later. Here is who stood out.
Stiles Sharpens Her Game
Marit Stiles (NDP, Davenport) inherited a tough hand when she took over the party leadership in 2023. The NDP had just been reduced to third-party status, the Liberals were rebuilding, and Doug Ford’s polling numbers made him look untouchable.
Two years in, she has managed something Andrea Horwath never pulled off: reaching voters outside the NDP base. Housing costs, hospital wait times, grocery prices. More disciplined than anything the party has run in years.
Her Question Period style has changed too. Gone are the long, multi-clause questions that give ministers room to pivot. Shorter. Pointed. They force either a direct answer or a visible dodge.
But good QP clips do not fix the NDP’s structural problem: competitive in downtown Toronto and northern Ontario, squeezed out everywhere else.
France Gélinas, Still at It
Fifteen years. That is how long France Gélinas (NDP, Nickel Belt) has been asking health care questions in the legislature. She might be the most effective opposition critic in any provincial legislature in Canada, and not because she’s theatrical.
She does the reading. Her current focus is surgical wait time data: specifically the gap between what the government reports and what patients are experiencing.
Over a year. That’s how long some Ontario patients waited for non-urgent surgeries in 2024, according to provincial data the NDP obtained through freedom of information requests. Health Minister Sylvia Jones has largely deflected by pointing to procedures that did happen faster at independent health facilities (true, but it doesn’t address the wait list for patients who don’t qualify or can’t get to them).
Gélinas is also tracking staffing at private surgical clinics and what effect that’s having on hospital OR capacity. That data is harder to get. She’s asking for it anyway.
Liberals: More Seats, Same Problem
The Ontario Liberal caucus is now 14 seats, up from 8. Under a PC majority, that mostly means more people to take up QP time. Adil Shamji (Don Valley East) has landed some hits on affordability, particularly housing and utilities. Lucille Collard (Ottawa-Vanier) has kept pressure on French-language services. Both are punching above their party’s weight. The Liberals are not trying to outflank the NDP on the left; Bonnie Crombie’s leadership platform is firmly centrist, betting that moderate PC voters who are tired of the government’s style (not its ideology) will park a vote with them. Whether that is a real coalition or just a vibe remains to be seen.
Private Member’s Bills Nobody Expects to Pass
Private member’s bills from opposition parties almost never become law in a majority government. Everyone knows this. They get introduced anyway: to build a record, give advocacy groups a rallying point, or plant a flag.
A few worth tracking. Green MPP Mike Schreiner (Guelph) has reintroduced a local food procurement bill that would require hospitals and other publicly funded institutions to source a minimum percentage of food from Ontario producers. No chance of passing. But it has gotten enough attention that a Liberal MPP introduced a similar version, which tells you something about where the politics of the issue are going.
Several NDP MPPs have introduced tenant protection bills targeting the “renoviction” loophole: evictions dressed up as renovations that are really about re-renting at market rates. The government says existing legislation covers this. Anyone who has tried to get a hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board lately knows better.
On the government side, a cluster of PC backbenchers have introduced constituency-focused bills (streamlining specific municipal permit processes, establishing small grant programs for rural communities, that sort of thing). Low-profile work. These occasionally make it through when the government needs to fill a legislative slot and the bill is genuinely uncontroversial.
Who’s Missing Votes
Attendance at division votes varies widely. Cabinet ministers miss more votes than backbenchers (partly unavoidable), but a few MPPs have absence patterns that scheduling conflicts do not explain.
Nobody wants to name names. But you can pull the attendance record for any MPP on this site. Worth checking before the next election.
Sources and verification: This article was written in early February 2025 based on the winter sitting. MPP names, ridings, and caucus sizes reflect the 43rd Parliament composition at that time; verify current caucus makeup against the Ontario Legislative Assembly member directory, as the 2025 election changed seat counts. The surgical wait time data cited by France Gélinas is from NDP FOI requests to the Ministry of Health, 2024. Mike Schreiner’s local food procurement bill was a reintroduction of previous-session legislation. The Liberal caucus seat count (14 seats, up from 8) reflects the 2022 election result.
Find your MPP and see their full voting record at Ontario Pulse.