Erskine-Smith clarifies his political plans in Q and A with Beach Metro Community News
Beach Metro Community News recently asked Beaches-East York MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith to clarify his plans to seek the provincial Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest and to run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.
Below are the questions we asked Erskine-Smith and his answers:
1.) Critics say you should have stepped down as MP for Beaches-East York once you declared your intention to seek the provincial Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest, why did you choose not to?
I’ve committed to step down as soon as a byelection is called, which will be no later than the summer. The exact timing is in Doug Ford’s hands.
In the meantime, the Prime Minister’s Office asked me to stay on given every vote counts in this minority parliament and I owe it to the Carney government and constituents to do just that. We continue to serve constituents every day, and we’ll manage a transition in a thoughtful way together once the House rises in June so that constituents remain well served.
It isn’t an easy decision to step down as the MP for Beaches-East York. I’ve been lucky to serve this community over the last decade. Thanks to the strong support here at home, I’ve been able to do politics differently in Ottawa and bring a sense of principled independence to the role.
With the track record and experience I’ve gained these last 10 years, I’m convinced that the biggest difference we can make right now is by rebuilding our politics in Ontario and I hope many of you will join me in that effort.
2.) How do respond to those who say you have no connections to Scarborough Southwest or understanding of the riding and how different it is from Beaches-East York?
Anyone who lives here knows that life doesn’t stop at Victoria Park. These are shared communities here in our east end. And Beach Metro serves both for that reason.
I played baseball for Birchmount through high school, as one personal example. My family knows Birch Cliff, Cliffside and the Bluffs all too well. And my kids would live at the Eglinton Town Centre if they could.
As an MP, I’ve advocated for housing, transit, and affordability for residents across our city, and supported organizations that serve both ridings, including BGC West Scarborough, The Neighbourhood Group, and many Bangladeshi, Nepali and other cultural organizations that serve communities spread across our east end.
Every riding has a diversity of communities, of course. I didn’t know every community in Beaches-East York when I first started out, and worked hard to build relationships. We have a great Scarborough team that is representative of that diversity, and I’m committed to earning the trust of residents across Scarborough Southwest and working relentlessly for them.
We will serve Scarborough well as an MPP. And Scarborough would be well served by a Premier who understands our east end communities.
3.) Tell us what you see as key issues in Scarborough Southwest and how can you make an impact on them provincially given that all of your political experience is at the federal level?
The biggest challenges are affordable housing, reliable transit, accessible health care, quality education, and economic opportunity.
Affordable housing and reliable transit are central challenges in Scarborough. We need to drive down the costs to build homes, renew provincial support for non-market housing, protect renters, and connect communities with fast, reliable, and affordable transit. I have experience delivering on these files as Housing/Infrastructure Minister and have consistently made housing and transit a core priority.
We also deserve high quality public education and affordable post-secondary education. My parents were both public school teachers in the Harris years. As a product of the public school system, I was the first in my family to go to law school and Oxford. I’m committed to supporting educators and delivering excellence in public education for our kids and their future.
Ford’s recent OSAP changes disproportionately hurt lower income families, including many across Scarborough. We will fix the system to ensure equality of opportunity in post-secondary education.
On health care, we need to prioritize access to family health teams, quality long-term care, and timely service, at the same time as we take more seriously preventative health care, the social determinants of health, and ending poverty. Everyone deserves to live in dignity.
Of course, as a waterfront community, we should also expect the provincial government to take environmental protection and climate action seriously.
I have a track record of effective advocacy and getting things done at the federal level. I will bring that same approach to the role of MPP.
4.) If you do not win the provincial Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest, will you remain as MP for Beaches-East York?
I plan to resign my seat in the summer no matter what happens in the nomination. If we win the nomination and flip a tough byelection, we have a clear path to win the leadership and deliver serious and overdue change at Queen’s Park. It’s past time for smart, fair, and honest leadership in Ontario.
So many of you have supported me over the years here, and I hope I can count on your support again in this nomination process, where local registered Liberals in Scarborough Southwest will select the Ontario Liberal candidate for the coming byelection.
If you’re reading this and you live in Scarborough Southwest, I hope you’ll register to vote in the nomination. If you live in Beaches-East York, I hope you’ll encourage friends and family who live on the other side of Victoria Park to register to vote. Grassroots politics works and if everyone who has supported us over the years signs up one or two friends, we’ll be in good shape to win what is expected to be quite a contested nomination race.
5.) Win or lose either the provincial nomination race or the actual provincial byelection in Scarborough Southwest, do you still intend to pursue the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party?
I’m squarely focused on winning this competitive nomination race and we’ll make a decision as a team after that.
Ontario Liberals have come in third in Scarborough Southwest over the last three election cycles, so it’s not a guaranteed win by any means. But if our team keeps growing the way it’s been growing, there’s a path to deliver much needed change.
6.) What makes the position of Ontario Liberal Party leader an appealing prospect given it is the third party by number of seats at Queen’s Park and that the last two leaders were both rejected by voters in the ridings they ran in in the previous provincial elections?
How do you make the biggest difference with the time that you’ve got?
I left law for politics over a decade ago because I was frustrated with Harper and helped a third place federal Liberal team deliver renewal. We’ve shown that politics can be done differently, that it’s possible to work across the aisle to get things done, and that our politics can be about ideas.
There’s the same opportunity here in Ontario right now to build a team and drive change. If there’s any takeaway here, it’s that it’s time for smart and serious people to get off the sidelines and join us. Now is the time.
The Liberal Party at its best delivers smart, fair, and honest leadership. It prioritizes equality of opportunity, with lasting social progress built on a fiscally sustainable footing. And it welcomes a diversity of perspectives and reasonable disagreement. That’s the party we’re building and people should join us in that effort.
7.) Some have said you are seeking the Ontario Liberal leadership after being denied a cabinet position in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government and that the provincial bid is a consolation prize. How do you respond to that criticism?
I’ve always been driven to make the biggest difference that I can with the opportunity to serve. And I really do believe that politics can and should be a noble profession. It’s why I left law to run federally in 2015 for the first time, and it’s why I ran for the provincial leadership in 2023.
We came a close second in that race, with 46.5 per cent of the vote. We have a much stronger team this time around already. And we’re just getting started.
I had planned to take a break after the 2023 leadership race, and then my life got turned upside down when Trudeau and team asked me to help on the housing file and to help revive a federal party that was really struggling.
We made a difference in that role in the short time we had. There’s also no doubt that the Premier of our country’s largest province can make a bigger difference on issues affecting people’s lives, from housing to health care to education.
On the question of team dynamics more generally, I’ve had the occasional disagreement with Carney, just as I had my share of disagreements with Trudeau over the years. But I have a great relationship with both, and have always found ways to be collaborative at the same time.
8.) If you do become the provincial Liberal candidate for Scarborough Southwest, what do you think will be the best way to select the federal Liberal candidate to replace you in Beaches-East York given that Prime Minister Carney appointed Doly Begum to that position in Scarborough Southwest?
I’m a product of a grassroots open nomination race, and I believe that local Liberals should decide who our next candidate will be.
There are already a number of interested and capable candidates, and I’ve advised the Prime Minister’s Office and the party that we’d be well served by a competitive nomination process.
