Nate Erskine-Smith urges Liberal rivals to step aside in Scarborough Southwest byelection

Nate Erskine-Smith has been pressing them to step aside and climb aboard his presumed bandwagon.

The federal Liberal MP for neighbouring Beaches—East York knows that losing the upcoming byelection nomination could derail his campaign for the Nov. 21 provincial leadership.

Hence his drive to clear the decks in Scarborough Southwest.

“When I had a conversation with Nate, it was cordial — he did ask me to join his team and drop out of the race,” said Qadira Jackson, a lawyer and long-time party activist who is the Liberal candidate of record in the riding because she ran in last year’s provincial election.

“Not going to happen,” she added, firmly.

Erskine-Smith, runner-up to Bonnie Crombie in the 2023 provincial Liberal leadership and an MP since 2015, makes no apologies for his outreach.

“I’m not shy about my desire to make change all across the province,” he told the Star.

“My only concern is building a strong local team to then build a strong provincial team and to take on (Premier) Doug Ford, because it’s past time for change, and change begins in Scarborough,” emphasized Erskine-Smith. 

“So if I’m serious about delivering that change, then I have to be equally serious about getting in the house, and the nomination is important to do that.”

Another candidate who recently met with Erskine-Smith had a similar experience to Jackson.

“He did not tell me directly I should stay out of the race, but he was indicating that, you know, eventually he will become leader of the party, and then potentially could be premier,” said Ahsanul Hafiz, a native of Bangladesh who came to Canada as a university student and now owns 30 Domino’s pizza franchises.  

Hafiz had been signing up members to win the federal Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest until Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed former New Democratic MPP Doly Begum as his candidate.

The April 13 federal byelection is to replace former MP Bill Blair, who left to become Canada’s high commissioner to the United Kingdom. 

Erskine-Smith has pledged to resign as an MP when Ford calls the provincial byelection in Scarborough Southwest, an ethnically diverse riding without an MPP since Begum resigned Feb. 3.

The Progressive Conservative premier said recently he would set a date “when the time comes” — likely this summer — and shrugged off the threat of the possible future Liberal leader.

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you. He could be sitting in this crowd, I wouldn’t know who this guy is,” Ford said of Erskine-Smith.

“I say good luck to whoever they pick and let the rubber hit the road,” he said.

Having a leader with a seat at Queen’s Park is a factor in the race for the Liberal crown.

The party hasn’t had a full-time leader in the legislature since Ford’s 2018 defeat of Premier Kathleen Wynne ended an almost 15-year Grit dynasty.

“That’s made it incredibly hard for us to hold the Conservatives accountable,” leadership hopeful and MPP Lee Fairclough (Etobicoke—Lakeshore) said recently.

Other Scarborough Southwest nomination rivals paint Erskine-Smith as an outsider even though his federal riding is next door.

“The people living here in this community have their own choice,” said Mahmuda Nasrin, an immigration consultant originally from Bangladesh and an elected director of the federal Liberal riding association.

“They are conscious enough to choose between the person who is not just thinking about himself or herself,” she added, stressing deep ties with the riding’s substantial Bengali population through her job and community work. 

Hafiz, an Ontario vice-chair of the federal Liberal party, is blunter though he has no qualms with Erskine-Smith’s leadership ambitions.

“He’s from the Beaches, right? So it’s a different ball game.”

Erskine-Smith pushes back against such portrayals, noting his family regularly shops in Scarborough Southwest and he’s run into old friends while going door-to-door helping Begum’s federal campaign.

“I spoke to someone who taught with my dad … there are old classmates, there’s my old baseball coach,” recalled the MP, who was raised in the Woodbine Avenue-Gerrard Street area and attended Malvern Collegiate Institute.  

“This is a shared community in many ways across the east end. There are people who know my advocacy and have seen my advocacy over the years.”

Jackson, meanwhile, has decried “foul play” in the nomination, pointing to a fake fundraising appeal that went out under her name just before her vetting interview with two party officials earlier this week.

“The text went out to random people … that I was soliciting money with a statement just saying ‘send Nate back to the Beach,’” she said, emphasizing she “would never do that” because it would undermine her credibility with fellow Liberals.

“My team knows I have a vetting interview. It doesn’t make any sense. I would focus on the fact that I live there (in the riding, unlike Erskine-Smith), that I’m a mother and a lawyer, social worker.  Even if I commented about Nate, I would say something about myself first.”

Jackson said she has no idea who was behind the mass text and stressed that Liberals must rally together after the nomination to win a riding in which they placed third behind the NDP and Tories last year.

Interim Liberal leader John Fraser said the vetting of candidates — a process aimed at making sure there is nothing contentious in their backgrounds — was taking place so the party can schedule a nomination vote soon.

“You want to make sure you give your candidate — the candidate who wins — enough time. If you get two months to go and knock on doors or three months before a byelection, that makes a big difference,” he said.

“So that’s why we’re going to get this done.”

Also seeking the Liberal nod is Sharmina Nasrin, a former constituency office worker for Progressive Conservative MPP Lorne Coe (Whitby). She calls Scarborough Southwest “my home” in a campaign video.

She could not be reached for comment, but Coe said she left his office last year to work for a not-for-profit community organization and noted constituency staff are “public servants.”