Liberal MP Erskine-Smith Loses Bid to Represent Ontario Liberals in Byelection

Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is pictured ahead of the announcement of the Ontario Liberal leadership election result in Toronto on Dec. 2, 2023. The Canadian Press/Chris Young

Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith lost an Ontario Liberal nomination race this weekend in the Toronto-area riding of Scarborough Southwest that would have brought him closer to a run for the provincial party’s leadership.

Ontario Liberal members in the provincial Scarborough Southwest riding chose business owner Ahsanul Hafiz on May 9 as their candidate to represent the party in an upcoming byelection.

Erskine-Smith, who represents the neighbouring federal riding of Beaches-East York, announced his intentions on Feb. 3 to transition from federal to provincial politics as the Ontario Liberal Party’s candidate for the byelection and potentially run for the leadership of the provincial party.

After the voting results were announced on May 9, Erskine-Smith told reporters he lost the nomination race to Hafiz by 19 votes and would need to “debrief” with his team about the results, noting he was “not sure” yet whether he would challenge the results.

Erskine-Smith’s nomination race loss makes it unclear whether he will continue to pursue leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party this fall. He told reporters he would figure out how to respond to the nomination race results before deciding on his next steps.

“I really have to talk to the team in detail and get advice from the team as to what they saw happen in there. I’ve spoken to a few scrutineers already who said they’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s unreal what happened in there,” Erskine-Smith told reporters outside the school where the voting took place.

Pressed by reporters to provide more details as to what he believes happened during the nomination vote, Erskine-Smith said he wasn’t in the room but heard there were voters with “ID issues” claiming to have lost their driver’s licence or recently moved to the area.

He said he would speak with his team before deciding if he considers the outcome to be “fair,” noting the vote was “obviously very close.”

Hafiz told reporters he didn’t want to focus too much on Erskine-Smith’s allegations, noting that the hallways were filled with people wearing Hafiz badges.

“That is the clear evidence of who is the real winner,” Hafiz said, adding he thought the nomination process was fair.

The results came after Erskine-Smith posted a video to social media on the evening of May 8 of him speaking with Carney, who said while it “hurts” that the MP was leaving for provincial politics, “I hope” Erskine-Smith would be working for the people in the Scarborough Southwest riding.

Some of Erskine-Smith’s fellow nomination contestants expressed discontent with what they saw as a candidate attempting to use their community as a springboard for the leadership race. Hafiz and Qadira Jackson agreed to put each other second on the nomination race’s ranked ballots.

Jackson, who was the Liberal candidate for the riding in the 2025 provincial election, said that if she wasn’t going to win, she at least wanted a “local” candidate to win and didn’t want her riding to be “used as a tool.”

Meanwhile, Erskine-Smith had argued that Hafiz had not lived in Scarborough Southwest for most of his life, as he spent most of his career in London, Ont., owning Domino’s Pizza stores, but now lives in Scarborough where he initially settled after arriving in Canada nearly 25 years ago.

‘I’m All In’

When Erskine-Smith first announced his intentions to run as the Liberal candidate in the riding, he said he was changing his focus to provincial matters because he believes “the biggest difference I can make is rebuilding our provincial Liberal party to deliver for Ontarians.”

“We deserve smart, fair, and honest leadership here in Ontario,” he said in a Feb. 3 blog post titled: “When it comes to Ontario, I’m all in.”

The Ontario Scarborough Southwest riding became vacant after Ontario NDP MPP and deputy party leader Doly Begum stepped down in early February in a bid to join Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government in the federal Scarborough Southwest riding.

Begum did succeed in winning the April 13 federal byelection in Scarborough Southwest, becoming the new MP for that riding.

The federal riding had become vacant when former cabinet minister Bill Blair vacated it on Feb. 2 after Carney appointed him as Canada’s new high commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has yet to set a date for the byelection in the provincial riding, where the Liberals placed third in the last election.

Erskine-Smith’s potential bid for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party came a month after Bonnie Crombie officially resigned as the party’s leader in January.

Crombie announced her intention to resign last September after she received just 57 percent support in staying on as leader during the Ontario Liberal Party’s annual general meeting. The party did not secure enough support during the 2025 provincial election to establish itself as the official Opposition and Crombie failed to win a seat in the legislature, leading some party members to call for her resignation.

Erskine-Smith placed second in the 2023 leadership race and suggested to his supporters last summer that he might consider another attempt at the leadership, adding that he would decide once Crombie’s leadership was voted on.

Since the 2025 spring election, Erskine-Smith has expressed discontent with some of Carney’s decisions, including dropping him from cabinet last May. He said at the time it was “impossible not to feel disrespected” by Carney’s decision.

Jennifer Cowan and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.