A rookie MPP who stood up to Premier Doug Ford and quit his Progressive Conservatives over cuts to French-language services is bolting to the Liberals, which she dubbed “the party of the future.”

The delayed defection of Amanda Simard (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell) came Thursday. She had been sitting as an Independent for the eastern Ontario riding since leaving the government caucus in November 2018.

Simard told a news conference with interim Liberal leader John Fraser that the French cuts outlined in the government’s first fall economic statement 14 months ago were the last straw.

“It’s not just about French-language services. It’s really about, generally, the direction and position on education, climate change,” she said in a reference to the government’s axing of the previous Liberal government’s cap-and-trade program to fight carbon emissions.

“That’s not the party that I signed up for,” she added, taking a shot at the way Ford took the party to the right after winning the leadership three months before the June 2018 election and has since backtracked on several other cuts after a public backlash.

“That’s not the way to run a province.”

Simard made headlines across Canada after renouncing the Tories over the government’s controversial decision to eliminate the independent French-language services commissioner post, putting it in the ombudsman’s office, and scale back plans for a French university.

She was furious that, as parliamentary assistant to Caroline Mulroney, the minister responsible for francophone affairs, she was not informed of the cuts in advance.

The first-term MPP has maintained there’s a “disconnect” between the PC government and Ontario’s 622,000-member Franco-Ontarian community. Quebec Premier François Legault even raised his concerns about minority language rights in Ontario during his first meeting with Ford.

Simard’s announcement came as a new Pollara Strategic Insights poll in the Star shows the Liberals on top for the first time in years.

According to Pollara, the Liberals are at 33 per cent, the Tories at 29 per cent, the New Democrats at 27 per cent, and the Greens at nine per cent. That’s despite the fact Liberals will not elect a new leader until a March 7 delegated convention in Mississauga.

MPPs Michael Coteau and Mitzie Hunter, former minister Steven Del Duca, past candidates Kate Graham and Alvin Tedjo, and lawyer Brenda Hollingsworth are in the leadership race. Simard says she has not joined any of the camps but is looking forward to helping the Liberals “rebuild.”

Fraser welcomed Simard into the party, which governed Ontario for 15 years before being trounced by Ford’s Conservatives, and downplayed concerns her long-expected defection is causing a rift in the Glengarry-Prescott-Russell Liberal riding association.

“It’s not as though this was something that people should be really surprised at,” he said, noting it will be up to Simard to “heal those wounds.”

Pollara surveyed 2,198 Ontarians on an online panel between Jan. 6 and Jan. 11. While online samples aren’t randomly selected and cannot be assigned a margin of error, a probability sample of this size would have a margin of error of within 2.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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With Simard aboard, the Liberals now have six seats in the 124-member legislature while the governing Tories have 73, including Speaker Ted Arnott, who does not caucus with the government.

The New Democrats have 40, the Greens one, and there are two Independent MPPs. Two vacancies previously held by the Liberals — in Ottawa-Vanier and Orleans — will be filled in byelections expected next month.

Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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