Eric Lombardi is a housing policy advocate and civic organizer who has never held elected office — but is now testing the waters for the top job in Ontario politics.
The 31-year-old has launched an exploratory campaign for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party, just as it moves to formalize the rules and timeline for its next leadership race.
In an interview with Canadian Affairs, Lombardi lays out his case for generational change and a productivity-driven growth agenda, and why he believes Ontario needs a different kind of leadership.
SF: You’ve been involved in a range of civic endeavours in Ontario, but you have never held public office. Why does now feel like the right time to enter politics?
EL: Because I believe, one, Ontario needs a growth agenda; two, I don’t see anyone putting that agenda forward; and three, Ontario deserves a much greater conversation about its future and its current trajectory.
So I’m called to do this because I believe that I can raise the bar of our dialogue.
SF: Housing policy has been a central focus of your career. Is it fair to say you see that as the defining issue of our generation? And if so, how would you make housing more affordable?
EL: Yeah. Housing is the issue that got me into politics, and I don’t say that lightly. Fundamentally, I believe that a couple under the age of 30, if they’re working, should be able to afford a home to start their lives and their family by the age of 30.
I think people can agree or disagree on any particular policy, but to me that’s the goal, and that’s what we need to set our housing market up to successfully deliver for people.
There are soft costs, whether it’s permitting, architecture, etc. And then there are hard costs. And where we’ve seen the explosion in costs for new housing is actually on the soft costs and taxes.
What are the solutions? We need to help municipalities change their approach to capital and infrastructure planning. There are so many solutions to this that it’s actually unbelievable we haven’t addressed it already.
Another issue is we have to make our permitting system work. Too much has been pushed down to the municipalities, and it’s not working. We need a greater provincial system when it comes to how policies are set. Municipalities need to see their role as applying policy, not creating the same rules in different jurisdictions.
We need to bring down the cost of approvals, and that means we need our system to default towards ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’ when it comes to building housing. In places like Denmark, permitting speeds are 64 days on average. In Toronto, they are more than 25 months. The gap there needs serious scrutiny.
SF: One conservative pundit recently said that if you became the Ontario Liberal leader, you could ‘build a coalition of moderate liberals and Red Tories that could finally topple the Ford government.’
What’s your message to people who have historically gravitated toward the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, and even people who might have voted for Premier Ford in 2025?
EL: If you care about good government, the rule of law and fair, simple taxation, you should consider an Ontario Liberal Party led by Eric Lombardi.
SF: What do you see as the biggest failure of Premier Ford’s tenure thus far?
EL: It’s hard to name just one. I think housing obviously is a huge issue in the province.
This is Doug Ford’s MO in general, and he does not get enough blame for this: if the problem seems big, he makes it the federal government’s problem. If the problem seems like it can be made the municipality’s fault, it’s made the municipality’s fault. There has been almost no accountability on any major file, and almost every portfolio is heading the wrong way.
We are taxed higher than we were under Kathleen Wynne. Our health-care system is not working as well as it did even under the previous Liberal government, and we still had a lot of work to do back then. It feels like traffic is worse. Our spending on infrastructure? Look, I’m glad things like the Ontario Line are going forward, but my God, is it expensive.
We have seen, frankly, insider-ism like there is no tomorrow. We have seen Doug Ford’s government give themselves permission to exempt themselves and connected interests from rules, instead of having a system that is fair that people can trust.
SF: In a recent interview, you said, ‘People are tired of politics defined by division, sloppy populism and short-term thinking.’ What is ‘sloppy populism’?
EL: Sloppy populism is when the premier goes on TV, pours out some Crown Royal and his elbows go up, but he knocks out Manitoba. We need to be serious when it comes to our economy.
If we are not attracting investment, it means we’re not creating jobs.
The role of premier is to take a look at the big picture. And here’s the truth: We have almost doubled the number of people who are unemployed and looking for work compared to 2018. We are not seeing the level of investment we need in the economy to create great jobs, and that’s why Ontario has actually seen its unemployment rate go up far more than any other province since COVID.
And I know it’s easy to blame things on Donald Trump, but Ontario’s problems very much predate that.
SF: You were born, raised and educated in Canada. But like many Canadians, you’ve also spent time working in the United States. How do you think that experience shaped your perception of our southern neighbour?
EL: Look, I lived in San Francisco. It’s a very open-minded, very advanced place, and it’s a beautiful city. I count some of my best friends as Americans. I even dated a lot of Americans. I think the love between Canadian [and] American people is still there.
I think we’re all shocked and disappointed with what’s happening. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of people in both countries are good people. When we look at our conflicts, we need to understand that they are political, not interpersonal.
SF: To what extent do you think the current class of leadership in this country has mismanaged that relationship, and how might they correct course?
EL: I think Mark Carney is actually doing quite a good job.
There probably isn’t much of a trade deal that’s worth its signature when it comes to how the Trump administration is behaving. I think taking a longer period of time to recognize the dependency that many American supply chains have on Canada is an asset.
I don’t think that we should be trying to poke American industry in the eye so much, because I think that they are ultimately our allies in putting pressure on the Trump administration to do the right thing. I also don’t think that we need to be deliberately provocative to the American administration.
I do think that Doug Ford’s video earlier this year was cute for a domestic audience, but it ultimately didn’t serve any real purpose other than to piss off the president, and I don’t think that we should be doing those types of things either.
When it comes to how Ontario manages its relationship with the United States, we should focus on our relationships state to state, and we should stay out of the federal-government-to-federal-government relationship, outside of what our federal government is telling us we need to be doing.
We need to swim in the same direction as a country, and that does not work if the premier is putting his own personal agenda and populist antics over the interests of the country.
SF: Steve Paikin recently described you as ‘a policy wonk who has none of Premier Doug Ford’s easygoing people skills.’ On a scale of one to Doug Ford, how would you assess your level of personal charisma?
EL: If people want to find out what my personal charisma is, they can sign up to meet me on my website. Tell me what issues matter to you, and you can judge my people skills for yourself.
