SCOOP: Ontario Liberal insiders are waging a shadow campaign against Nate Erskine-Smith
The Ontario Liberal Cold War continues to spawn drama.
Some Liberals, both federally and in Ontario, really don’t like Nate Erskine-Smith. This certainly isn’t every Liberal—I myself helped him in his first provincial leadership run in 2023 when I was still active in political organizing—but we exist in a very harshly polarized environment, where people either like him or they don’t like him. There is no neutrality when it comes to the topic of Mr. NES.
To draw the clearest parallel, Avi Lewis is to the Federal NDP what Nate Erskine-Smith is to the Ontario Liberals. Those seeking a progressive direction based in grassroots organizing are sympathetic to his desires for change, while the right-wing party establishment seek a leader who will protect the status quo, and the people who benefit from it.
All of this is fine. Ontario Liberals—including myself—will rank their leadership ballots in the contest this fall, and determine which path they want to go upon. But there’s a wrinkle, you see: Nate is accelerating the timeline.
Taking the criticisms of a lack of provincial seat to heart, Nate is currently running in the Ontario Liberal nomination contest for the upcoming by-election in Scarborough Southwest. And on Saturday, May 9th, he’ll either become the official Ontario Liberal candidate for that riding, or his loss will cause him to flunk out of the leadership race early.
Obviously, getting into Queen’s Park as an MPP will help Nate level the playing field with Rob Cerjanec of Ajax and Lee Fairclough of Etobicoke—Lakeshore, his two current rivals for the leadership contest—absent Navdeep Bains jumping in—both of them Ontario Liberal caucus members. On the flip side, if Nate loses the nomination contest, he would naturally lose much of his steam as a leadership race candidate, as it would raise fears of another leader who can’t win a seat.
Luckily for Nate, this by-election is in the riding immediately neighbouring his federal one, where he has community ties he can leverage and avoid being perceived as an outsider parachuting in. Unluckily for Nate, his enemies plot and scheme against him in the shadows.
As Ahmad Elbayoumi has reported at Policorner, Nate’s two primary opponents in the riding contest, Ahsanul Hafiz and Qadira Jackson, have agreed to quietly tell their voters to rank each other second, and push Nate to the bottom of the ballot. This itself is not problematic, as Nate used a similar deal with Yasir Naqvi in his failed 2023 leadership campaign. The operative word, however, is failed; sometimes voters don’t listen to cross-endorsements, and sometimes even if they do it’s still not enough.
Where things begin to get murkier are the rumours that Rob and Lee, Nate’s current leadership rivals, are quietly providing resources to Nate’s riding opponents. It appears they agree with the belief that eliminating Nate here will clear their path more easily, and strategically I can’t fault them, even if I do find it a little underhanded for my taste.
Truly bothersome, however, is information disclosed to me by several sources, indicating that there are Ontario Liberal Party staff providing assistance to Nate’s riding opponents. More explicitly, there are staff employed by the party, funded with political donations, and staff working in the Liberal Caucus Services Bureau, funded by the legislature. Neither of these groups of staff should be anything other than neutral in these affairs, as party staff are supposed to run these contests, and LCSB staff are supposed to serve all caucus members regardless of internal party debates. Individual MPPs can allocate their local staff at their pleasure, but it may also come at their peril.
Ontario Liberal Party President Kathryn McGarry supposedly demanded both party and LCSB staff remain neutral, yet in practice their assistance to Nate’s opponents makes this demand transparently one-sided. Members of the Ontario Liberal Executive Council and Provincial Council, voted in by party membership to manage the party’s affairs, have been told by those that claim to “report” to them that they have no right to even know who works at LCSB, yet members of LCSB are claimed to be interfering in the party affairs they’ve been elected to manage!
Thankfully, through investigative work, I have confirmed the identity of an LCSB employee who indeed was present at the campaign office of Ahsanul Hafiz, one of Nate’s riding opponents. Michael Fontein, an experienced staffer previously employed in high-ranking roles under various Federal and Ontario Liberal bosses, and also a riding executive in the same riding Nate is running in, is currently receiving a salary from LCSB doing regional field work. Coincidentally, and unrelated to this story but worth disclosure, he is also a former acquaintance of mine.
Witnesses can confirm that Michael has been repeatedly seen at the campaign headquarters for Ahsanul Hafiz. Furthermore, LCSB staffers, unlike party staff, would have no reason to visit for any business regarding the race, as administering it is intentionally kept far away from them, and even party staff rarely physically visit a campaign office. We can thus rule out the possibility that Michael might have been there on a neutral basis, although we cannot confirm the exact activities he undertook while there.
Furthermore, whether these staffers are there during work hours or on their own time is moot; we would never expect an Ontario Liberal staffer to be allowed to volunteer in their off-hours for a Doug Ford Tory MPP, so we already accept that their free time can be restricted in order to limit conflicts of interest, and LCSB staff putting their thumbs on the scale is certainly a conflict of interest in the judgment of the Ontario Liberals I’ve spoken with and used as anonymous sources for this piece.
Nonetheless, this race will conclude on Saturday, and either the schemes by Liberal insiders will succeed against Nate Erskine-Smith, or he will overcome them and get one step closer to his goal of party leadership. But even if Nate does win this nomination, I fear that the sabotage efforts will not cease, and indeed that the backroom manipulators could withhold resources during the by-election to spite him.
In any case, while the Ontario Liberals are currently polling well, an election is far-off, and with this self-sabotaging civil war, the Liberal Party may yet still grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. Only time will tell if they’re capable of getting it together.