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Ontario Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca holds a rally in Scarborough, Ont., on May 29.Chris Young/The Canadian Press

We can safely predict that the Liberal Party will improve its standing in the Ontario Legislature after the June 2 election. But that may not save its leader, Steven Del Duca. And the party itself could be in serious trouble.

Lets take a look at the electoral landscape in the final days of the campaign.

Pretty much everyone agrees that Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives will form the next government. 338Canada.com, which weights and aggregates polls, had the Conservatives at 38 per cent on Sunday. Philippe J. Fournier, who runs the site, projects a Conservative majority government of better than 80 seats.

The Tories appear likely to dominate in the 905, the band of suburban seats surrounding Toronto, named after their area code. A virtual sweep of the 905 just about guarantees any party a win.

With 27 per cent of the popular vote, the Liberals are ahead of the New Democrats, who have 23 per cent. But the 338Canada projections have the NDP taking 25 seats and the Liberals only taking 15, enough to achieve party status in the legislature, which they lost after the past election, but still a distant third-place result.

Thats because the NDP vote tends to concentrate in city centres and in Northern Ontario, while the Liberal vote is more evenly spread out. This makes things both frustrating and tantalizing for the Liberals.

The NDP vote is highly efficient in the 20-25 per cent range. Thats why it can surpass the Liberals at this point, Mr. Fournier told me. However, the NDP vote is highly inefficient in the 25-30 per cent range, unlike the Liberals.

If the Liberals could manage to win a few more points in the popular vote, vote splits at the riding level could start to work in their favour. They could steal a bunch of seats from the PCs, form the Official Opposition and maybe even deprive Conservative Leader Doug Ford of a majority government.

But unless they can pull off that surge, the Liberals appear doomed to languish in third place in the seat count, again.

There is more worrying news for the Grits. Mr. Del Duca seeks to enter the legislature through the 905 riding of VaughanWoodbridge, which he once held. But he was defeated in the previous election by 8,000 votes, and the 338Canada riding projection has it as a toss-up.

Coming third in the seat count and losing his own riding could cost Mr. Del Duca the leadership.

Since this is Andrea Horwaths fourth campaign as leader of the NDP, both opposition parties might be replacing leaders. If so, which party would be more likely to unseat the Progressive Conservatives could depend on which leader each party chose.

For most of the provinces history, the Liberals have been one of the two governing parties, along with the Progressive Conservatives. Most recently, they governed for 15 years under premiers Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne.

But the NDP formed a government in 1990 under Bob Rae. It is currently the Official Opposition. After June 2, it could be the Official Opposition again. If so, anyone who wants to donate to the progressive political party most likely to unseat the Tories would have good reason to send that money to the NDP rather than the Liberals.

This portrait of Liberal woes may be undeservedly bleak. As my colleague Jeff Gray reports, the Liberal Leader has done a good job of paying down the partys debt and establishing a solid platform. If the Grits win back party status, and if Mr. Del Duca can find a way to get himself into the legislature, he could continue to lead the party and that party could reassert itself as the governing alternative to the PCs.

But the strength of the Liberal Party, in any province or nationally, is also its weakness. It caters to a broad coalition of voters, grouped on either side of the political centre and committed to pragmatic, responsible, mildly progressive government.

But that coalition is always at risk of evaporating, if voters decide they want either a more emphatically progressive or emphatically conservative alternative.

Either with Mr. Del Duca or with someone else, the Liberals need to get back in the game. Otherwise, voters might forget about them altogether.

Want to hear more about the Ontario election from our journalists? Subscribe to Vote of Confidence, a twice-weekly newsletter dedicated to the key issues in this campaign, landing in your inbox starting May 17 until election day on June 2.

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The future of the Ontario Liberals is at stake on June 2 - The Globe and Mail

Pressed on why the Liberal Party had failed to resonate with many female voters, Ley said that women didnt hear much of what we were saying.

Newly elected deputy Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley said she wanted to have honest conversations with women after female voters abandoned the party.Credit:James Brickwood.

They didnt believe, perhaps, that we were focusing enough on them and their lives. But again, many women actually did support us and Ive heard from many of those women and in my regional electorate of Farrer, I had a 7 per cent to party swing towards me.

Labors ranks have swelled by an extra six women, taking their total female-held seats to 35. At the same time, women in the Liberal Party now hold just 9 seats, down from 13 in the last parliament.

The Senate tipped over half female representation during the last term of parliament, but has boosted its ranks further. It will have 57 per cent women once the new senators take their seats in July.

Labor has had quotas for female representation in winnable seats since the mid-1990s with the level ratcheted up over time, while the Liberal Party has had a long-held resistance to quotas.

Asked whether she would advocate for quotas for women, Ley said it was a matter for the partys state divisions as she indicated she was open to discussing quotas with merit.

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Quotas on their own sometimes overlook the issue of merit. You only have to look at the women in our party to know that merit played a very strong role in all of their presence in this building, she said.

Senior Liberal senator Anne Ruston said the partys wide-ranging review into its election loss would examine why voters abandoned the party but said more could be done to support women to run for office.

Affirmative action to make sure that weve got broad diversity in the party is very important as we rebuild because we are the alternative government, she said.

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Record number of women in the 47th parliament, as female voters shun Liberals - Sydney Morning Herald

It has become a tradition for the Trudeau government: Whenever a mass shooting occurs, it immediately announces more gun-control measures.

It did it in 2020, when in the days after the murder of 22 people in Nova Scotia, it announced a ban on ownership of many semi-automatic assault-style rifles, and said it would bring in a mandatory buyback program for those weapons.

The Liberals did it again last week, in the heightened emotional aftermath of the killing of 19 children in a Texas elementary school, when they announced their intention to take new gun-control steps.

On the plus side, hey, at least in Canada we have a government that responds to mass shootings by talking about preventing more of them unlike the United States, where it is preordained that yet another slaughter of children will not change American gun laws.

But using such episodes to sell Canadian gun-control policies overlooks the fact that the biggest and most persistent gun-violence problem in Canada is not mass shootings. Its the daily tally of individual violent crimes involving firearms, especially handguns. And the Liberals have done little to stem the growing number of these less-newsworthy crimes.

A Statistics Canada report released last week says that, since 2009, the per capita rate of firearms being pointed at someone in the commission of a crime has nearly tripled, and the rate at which guns are fired with intent to kill or wound is up fivefold.

In rural areas, there were notable spikes in firearms-related crimes in 2019 and 2020, mostly involving long guns. But its in cities and suburbs where crime is most likely to involve a firearm usually an easy-to-conceal handgun. Statscan says 63 per cent of firearm-related violent crimes in urban areas involved handguns in 2020.

These trends are starkly reflected in Canadas largest city, whose rate of gun crime is about average for the country (and lower than Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon and Calgary). The Toronto Police Service reported this month that 286 people have been killed in shootings, and 1,185 people have been injured, since 2015.

The Liberals, quick to rush to the podium after mass shootings, have mostly offered half-baked measures in response to the much larger number of Canadians harmed by mundane, day-to-day gun violence.

Their most talked-about plan involves passing the buck to municipalities, by giving them the right to ban handguns. Toronto could ban handgun ownership and sales, while municipalities next door do not. Its nonsensical. A more sensible proposal would be for the federal government to ban handguns nationwide, as this page has argued before.

There should also be increased penalties for smuggling and trafficking illegal guns, and tightened border controls. Canadas rules to screen legal gun owners are necessary and effective, but theres a large and growing problem of illegal guns flowing in from the U.S. Thats why, as we recently wrote, those who want tougher gun control and those who want to go after criminals with illegal guns are both right.

The Liberals should also listen to an idea from the Toronto Police Service. It proposed this month that the federal government require bail hearings for people charged with the most serious firearm offences be heard by judges, instead of by justices of the peace. Its a move the police say would clearly convey Parliaments view of the seriousness of these offences.

Toronto police also suggest that Ottawa amend the Criminal Code so that someone who opens fire in a busy public place can be charged with first-degree murder if they kill an innocent bystander.

There is no one magic bullet that can make gun crime disappear. But Canada has done a few things right, and the way forward includes more of the same: smart gun control that screens owners while respecting law-abiding hunters; a focus on the flow of smuggled and illegal guns; criminal laws that target gun crime; and a society with a strong economy, education system and social safety net, to minimize the incentive to turn to crime.

More proposals from the Liberals to, for example, limit the magazine capacity of long guns may be welcomed by the public especially in light of the Texas tragedy. But they would be, once again, ignoring this countrys most deadly and widespread gun crimes.

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Globe editorial: Canada has a real gun violence problem, but it's (mostly) not the one the Liberals want to talk about - The Globe and Mail

At the big house itself, Nationals and Liberals were gathering to elect their new leadership teams but struggling to find refreshments. The ACTs Reconciliation Day public holiday meant that the buildings two eateries, The Aussies and the Trough, were shut and, leaving only Queens Terrace, the cafe bar that is, quelle horreur, open to the public.

Former member for Higgins Katie Allen (right) and current member Michelle Ananda-Rajah, were seated together on their flight to Canberra.

Outspoken NSW Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg seemed particularly confused, asking press gallery journos, twice, how he got to Queens but once he got there he joined a mass of sad Coalition types forced not only to contemplate life in opposition but to sit among the great unwashed to sip their coffees.

Coffees at Queens with Eric Abetz, Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie.Credit:John Shakespeare

Beaten contenders Eric Abetz and Tim Wilson joined survivors Andrew Hastie, Stuart Robert, Alex Hawke, Hollie Hughes, Nola Marino and Melissa Price over a cuppa.

A small group of Labor types from WA; Josh Wilson, Matt Keogh and Patrick Gorman, who got quite a shock when a press pack - at least 20 strong - arrived at Queens direct from newly crowned Liberal leader Peter Duttons lengthy press conference in desperate need of caffeine.

The newbies escaped the encounter gaffe-free.

Dumped dissident state Liberal MP Bernie Finns defiant response to his expulsion from the parliamentary party last week included the claim that he had already been approached by six or seven other parties with offers to join their ranks.

Finn blurted the Lib-Dems as one of the outfits in the chase, before reeling it back in and refusing to name more names.

But when CBD called a senior Liberal Democrat figure, who didnt want their name in the paper next to this matter, an approach to Finn was news to them although thats not to say it hadnt happened.

There might be some philosophical issues, the Lib-Dem told CBD.

We also put in a call to Clive Palmers United Australia Party, whose approach to COVID-19 public health measures is not far removed from that of Finn. We havent heard back.

Pauline Hansons One Nation shares some of Finns trademark anti-abortion views, so we called them too. Nothing doing, at least so far, according to a party spokesman.

The man himself, in response to CBDs enquiries, was giving little away.

Discussions are well advanced, Finn said on Monday, but he wouldnt say with whom.

Labor and Greens can be safely ruled out, we reckon, but Bernie has the power to surprise.

We were intrigued to learn, for example, that Finn was about to embark on a regular segment on Neil Mitchells breakfast show on Melbournes radio 3AW (owned by Nine News and Entertainment, publisher of The Age), teaming up with Reason Party (formerly Sex Party) leader Fiona Patten.

Its true that Finn has taken a flexible approach to his hardline Catholic principles in the past, but taking to the airwaves with the woman he has dubbed Satans Little Helper is news indeed.

SPOTTED: After his big sporty weekend new PM Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie Haydon caught the final performance of Wayside Bride at the Belvoir Theatre on Sunday. Albo came in a private capacity to the 2pm matinee to support his friend actor Sasha Horler and, when the COVID-safety address announced there was a PM in the room, he got a round of applause before the actors had taken to the stage. The drama which centres around Wayside founder Ted Noffs heresy charges which he ultimately won against the church, in his fight to make Australia more compassionate was was right up Albos alley.

Also Sam Kerr, spotted briefly in Spike Lees directors cut ad to celebrate Nike 50th anniversary. The soccer star was the only Australian athlete to appear.

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Liberals keep it in the family with Stones new gig - The Age

Labor has had better success in choosing good candidates, as shown in recent state byelections. Well-known South Coast obstetrician Michael Holland, who had long links to the community, seized Bega from the Liberals while Jason Yatsen-Li, a second generation Chinese-Australian, held Strathfield for Labor.

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Of course, Labor does not always get it right. You need no more proof than Les win in Fowler in the federal election on Saturday. Kristina Keneally, the former premier who led NSW Labor to a crushing defeat in 2011, was parachuted into Fowler to sort out Labors internal squabbles over the partys Senate ticket. The voters saw straight through Labor and turned to the local candidate who was far more representative than Keneally of the diverse community. The result? Labor lost a safe seat to an independent (who the Liberals had failed to keep).

Labor may have a slight edge in picking suitable candidates but its path to victory in March is far more complex than simply choosing good representatives. The federal result also reveals an ominously low primary vote for Labor in the area too low, if it translates to the state election, for the party to win in western Sydney, where it will matter.

Federal Labor went backwards in Lindsay, which encompasses the ultra-marginal state Liberal seat of Penrith, and the result in Fowler spells disaster for the newly created state seat of Leppington, which is notionally Labor but by a wafer-thin margin.

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There were mixed results for Labor in Banks on Saturday, and in what would worry party strategists, the ALP took a hit in booths in East Hills and Revesby exactly in the areas where it needs to be picking up votes, not losing them, if it has any hope in the state election.

The federal election showed that the rule book has been rewritten for both the Liberals and Labor. Votes have fragmented, and with an optional preferential system in NSW, primary votes have never been more important. The task ahead is huge for Perrottet and Labor leader Chris Minns.

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Dai Le, the perfect female Liberal candidate - rejected by NSW Liberals - Sydney Morning Herald