An Ontario Liberal leadership candidate is calling on party members to put substance over spectacle as they consider who should be given the reins of the third-place party and take on Premier Doug Ford in the next provincial election.

Dylan Marando, the first candidate to sign up as a leadership candidate, is betting his experience as a policy adviser to former prime ministers and premiers, along with work on consequential national programs, will set him apart in a race that typically boils down to a popularity contest.

“Ontario Liberals are smart, and they know that we’re in the fight of our lives and that when you’re in a fight for your life, you have to abandon the spectacle and get to substance,” Marando told Global News in a recent interview.

“You need a plan, you need a team that can execute that plan, and you need the leader who has experience getting big stuff done. So I think policy is going to be really, really important in this leadership race.”

Marado, who boasts a Masters degree in public policy and a PhD in political science, spent years working in the back rooms of Queen’s Park and Parliament Hill, shaping policies for former premier Dalton McGuinty, Kathleen Wynne and former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

“I was at the table when we built the national housing strategy, when we built the national child care program, when we built the Canada Child Benefit, and when we built the Canadian dental care plan,” Marando said.

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“So I’ve been part of some of the biggest Liberal policies of the last decade. I know what it takes to get the big stuff done.”

Those programs appear to have shaped Marando’s approach to how the provincial government should spend the $232 billion it is estimated to bring in, according to the 2026 budget.

“I think achieving solidarity through economic policies, through social policies ought to be a priority for a Liberal leader,” Marando said. “Universal programs reinforce that message that we are all in it together.”

Most of those programs would be geared toward younger Ontarians, who Marando calls a “forgotten generation” in need of a “new deal” from the province.

“Queen’s Park is nickel-and-diming our university and college students. They’re not allowing young workers and young families to save fast enough to pay rent and pay for groceries and buy that first home,” Marando said.

Marando is proposing to reverse the Ford government changes to the OSAP loan-to-grant formula, to eliminate interest on student loans and make tuition more affordable.

Marando would also eliminate income taxes for anyone earning $50,000 or below and add mental health care to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, which he said would make treatment “universal.”

Some of the programs, which would potentially add billions in new spending to the province’s books, would “pay for themselves,” Marando said.

“Education, in my view, is not a cost; it’s an investment. If you have the world’s best education system, you’re going to have the world’s best workforce, and if you have the world’s best workforce, your economy’s going to boom,” Marando explained. “So I think that measure pays for itself.”

During the interview, Global News asked Marando whether his time spent working for deeply unpopular politicians would be counted against him during the leadership race.

“I don’t think Liberals will see it that way,” Marando said. “I think Liberals are very proud of the legacies of Kathleen [Wynne] and Justin [Trudeau]… It might be more politically expedient for me to distance myself and say I’m my own man, but at the end of the day, I’m not that kind of guy.”

Marando added that both Trudeau and Wynne simply reached their “best before date” and that voters seek change when the “milk sours” on a politician.

“What’s important to recognize right now is that the milk has soured on Doug Ford,” Marando said, referencing Ford’s recent 21-per cent approval rating noted in a recent Angus Reid survey.

“So our job as the Ontario Liberal Party is to be a credible alternative come the next election.”

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