The interim leader of the Ontario Liberal Party says a nomination race this weekend to select a byelection candidate was fair, and if the unsuccessful contestant — Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith — wants to call that into question, he should “prove it.”
Erskine-Smith was vying to represent the provincial party in the upcoming Scarborough Southwest byelection ahead of an intended bid for the leadership of the party, but he lost Saturday to Ahsanul Hafiz by a slim margin, and cast doubt on the process after the results were announced.
Erskine-Smith said there were voter ID issues and he is raising the possibility of challenging the result. The party is standing behind the integrity of the race and the vote.
“I know it was fair,” interim leader John Fraser said Monday.
“If somebody’s saying that it’s not fair, then prove it … People say things in the heat of the moment, right? Because no one likes losing.”
Erskine-Smith represents the neighbouring riding of Beaches-East York federally, and some of his fellow nomination candidates bristled at what they saw as a candidate trying to use their community as a springboard for the leadership, with Hafiz and Qadira Jackson agreeing to put each other second on the nomination race’s ranked ballots.
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Erskine-Smith suggested the party “establishment” was working to prevent him from winning the nomination.
“They were all out for our opponents, and they were working very hard to prevent us from being successful,” he said.
Not true, Fraser said.
“Nominations are hard fought,” he said. “People get involved, that’s what happens. But no, this party establishment is not against him.”
Erskine-Smith has not yet said if losing the nomination race will deter the leadership bid he has been signalling for months, or if he will still resign his federal seat. When he entered the nomination race, he said he would quit federal politics once the byelection is called.
“We’ve been working hard to build a provincial team that’s ready to run, win, and govern together, and the rules for the leadership race will be announced soon,” he wrote in announcing his bid for Scarborough Southwest after the riding was vacated earlier this year.
“When it comes to Ontario, I’m all in.”
The riding has been vacant since early February, when the NDP member of provincial parliament, Doly Begum, resigned to successfully run for the federal Liberals.
Premier Doug Ford has not yet called the byelection for that riding, but will have to do so by the summer.
Hafiz said he is now focusing on his byelection campaign in a riding that saw the Liberals come third in the most recent provincial election.
“I am very excited to win a very hard-fought nomination race, and now I’m more concentrated on (the) byelection, how we can turn that right riding as red,” he said Monday.
“So that is the main concentration right now.”
Hafiz has been based in London, Ont., for much of his career owning Domino’s Pizza stores but now has a home in Scarborough, where he landed when he first arrived in Canada nearly 25 years ago, he said.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
