The Legislative Assembly of Ontario (OLA; ) is the legislative chamber vested with the law-making authorities and the oversight of the Government of Ontario, the provincial government of the Canadian province Ontario. It consists of 124 members, known as members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs), elected by Canadian citizens residing in geographical divisions known formally as electoral districts. The assembly meets at the Ontario Legislative Building, its home since 1892 located at Queen's Park in the provincial capital of Toronto. Most of the current members of the assembly were elected in the most recent general election held in February 2025.
Formally, the Legislature of Ontario, as in the institution formally vested with the relevant legislative and oversight authorities, is a unicameral legislature consists of two elements: the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario as the representative of the King of Canada in Ontario, and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Bills passed by the legislative assembly come into effect when they are given royal assent by the lieutenant governor. Given the legislature's unicameral design and the lieutenant governor's limited formal discretionary authority over government matters, the assembly in office is in practice the legislature, and therefore is often referred to as such. It is also often referred to as the Ontario Provincial Parliament due to the members' formal title as MPPs.
The Government of Ontario operates as a Westminster-style parliamentary government in which voters indirectly elect the government through the MPPs elected for individual electoral districts using a first-past-the-post system. The premier of Ontario (the province's head of government) holds office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the assembly, by convention (but not necessarily) sitting as an MPP themselves and leading the largest party or a coalition in the assembly. The largest party not forming the government is known as the Official Opposition, its leader being recognized as the Leader of the Opposition.
The legislative assembly is the second largest Canadian provincial deliberative assembly by number of members after the National Assembly of Quebec.
Owing to the location of the Legislative Building on the grounds of Queen's Park, the metonym Queen's Park is often used to refer to both the provincial government and the legislative assembly.
Membership
Electoral districts Members of the legislative assembly are democratically elected to represent residents within defined geographical areas known as electoral districts, or more colloquially, "ridings". Section 4 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom requires that provincial general election be held no later than five years after the previous election. Since the end of World War II, elections have usually been held every three to four years. Like other Westminster-style parliamentary governments, Ontario voters exercise their democratic franchise indirectly by electing local MPPs, via plurality voting (or the "first-past-the-post" system).
The 124 members currently in office together make up the 44th Parliament (or 44th Legislature) of Ontario. Each member represent a single-member electoral district, though some members in previous parliaments have been elected from duo-member districts. For two elections in the late 1800s, voters in Toronto were given two votes each to elect three-members. No member have been elected from multi member district since the 1926 election.
The members of the Ontario assembly are the only provincial legislators in Canada that use the title of Member of Provincial Parliament. The working title was formally adopted via a resolution of the assembly in 1938 though members have been informally (though with little consistency) referred to as MPP in the press for much longer. The initially were used along with MLA or MHA (as the assembly of Upper Canada was known as the House of Assembly) interchangeably, leading to much confusions. Toronto MPP Frederick Fraser Hunter introduced a private member's bill to address the matter but it failed to pass, and the resolution was adopted in its stead to adopt the use as a practice. The elected members remain however formally Ontario's members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), the working title used by provincial legislators in most other provinces, in references by legislations including the Canadian constitution.
The membership of the legislature grew from eighty-two in 1867 to as many as 130 members between 1987 and 1999. The Fewer Politicians Act, 1996 brought the number back down to 103. More importantly, it ended Ontario's redistribution processes and simply adopted the federal electoral boundary in a provincial election following the completion of the federal redistribution process. That was later modified to maintain representation level for Northern Ontario and to increase representation of indigenous communities residing in the sparsely populated far north of the province. For more than 90% of the province however, provincial representation had consistently followed federal representation between 1999 and to 2025. The process of adopting federal boundary stopped at the 2025 election as the incumbent government declined to adopted Representation Order 2023. As of June 2026, the Ford ministry had not indicated when or whether it would resume the adoption of federal boundaries, nor had it proposed any alternative retribution mechanism or plan. Accordingly, representation in the provincial legislature continues to be based on population statistics from the 2011 census.
Qualification and Eligibility To sit as a member of the assembly, a person must meet four requirements: be eighteen or older, a Canadian citizen, a resident of Ontario, not otherwise disqualified to sit or to be elected. A person may be disqualified for a variety of reasons, before or after they were elected. and how their disqualification would be effected is dependant on the reasons for their disqualification. For example, Members of the federal parliament (both MPs and senators) are not eligible to stand for election to the legislative assembly. Any MPP elected to the House of Commons or appointed senators automatically have their seated in the legislative assembly vacated. Members of municipal council in the other hand may stand for election, but their municipal seat would be automatically vacated if they are elected. A member is not disqualified by any criminal conviction, but would be by prison sentence of two years or more.
Speaker The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario is the MPP elected by the assembly to preside over the assembly and to head the Office of the Assembly, the independent administrative body that provides for the administrative functions of the legislative assembly and the legislative precincts. The formal authorities of both roles, now mostly formalized in legislations, are augmented by many long held customs, constitutional conventions and past adherence to parliamentary sovereignty. Similar to the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ottawa (but unlike their counterpart in Westminster) , the Ontario Speaker refrains from participating in party caucus and in partisan activities, but is not required to resign their party membership. Only one Ontario Speaker, Liberal Nelson Parliament who was nominated in 1920 by the then newly formed United Farmers government to be Speaker in the 15th Parliament, resigned from his party upon taking the speaker's chair. He was also the first Ontario Speaker not from the governing party.
Speakers prior to 1990 were generally named by the government. While the office was subject to election, the elections were conducted via recorded votes on motions tabled in the house usually by the Premier or a senior minister, and were therefore invariably uncontested. Secret ballot was introduced for Speaker election for the first time in 1990. While the only candidate from the governing party, David Warner prevailed, he faced competition from three other candidates. Just six years later, the legislature elected Chris Stockwell, for the first time declined to elect the candidate with the expressed backing of the Premier. The legislature again declined to elect the candidates preferred by the Premier in 2011 and 2018. In all three instance the candidates backed by the Premier were women, though in the two latter instances, the Premiers backed candidates seeking to oust incumbent Speakers they deemed too independent, and the legislature opted to re-elect the incumbents.
The current speaker is Donna Skelly. Her election in April 2025 made her the first woman to serve as Speaker, though her election and the election of a woman as speaker was a virtual certainty as her only competition was a woman MPP from the opposition bench, Jennifer French. Speaker Skelly is supported by four other MPPs who served as her deputies. Two of the deputies are members of opposition parties, one of them being Ms. French.
Caucus MPPs with the same partisan affiliation form parliamentary caucuses. Caucus with more members than ten percent of the total number of seats are formally recognized in the legislature. Recognized opposition party caucus are entitled to a budget for caucus office, additional salary for their caucus officers, receive certain information and notification from the government and place topics for debate on the order papers. Most operational and procedural decisions, from consequential matters such as entitlement to move for want of confidence to routine procedural matters such as allocation of time and committee membership to mundane administration matters such as office space allocation are determined based on the relative sizes of the recognized party caucuses. Members of caucus lacking recognition are mostly treated as independent members and are afforded with very limited access to such entitlements.
Lawmaking
Formal exercise of authority Like the Canadian federal government, Ontario government operates as a Westminster-style parliamentary government. As a fundamental principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy, the concept of responsible government is at the core of the government's legitimacy. The Premier of Ontario, their cabinet as a collective and ministers individually are accountable to the legislature, and may only remain in office with the support of the legislature. In most cases, a new premier emerges to form a new government, formally called a ministry, by nature of being the leader of the party that have won the largest number of seats in the legislature in a general election, or by having secured the leadership of the largest party midway through a parliamentary term. Only twice in Ontario history, in 1871 and 1985, did transition of power occur immediately following the adoptions of motion of no confidence. In both instances the incumbent governments failed at the earliest opportunity available to opposition to test the government's command of confidence after a general election.
The British North America Act assigned jurisdiction over specific policy areas exclusively to either the federal government or the provincial government. On matters under provincial jurisdiction, the Government of Ontario exercises its authorities independently from the federal government of Canada and is accountable only to the legislature.
Governing in practice Most laws originate in the provincial cabinet (government bills) and are passed by the legislature after multiple rounds of debate and decision-making. Backbench legislators may introduce private legislation (private-member bills) or amend bills presented to the legislature by cabinet, playing a role in scrutinizing bills both at the debate as well as committee stages.