Nathaniel Erskine-Smith has worn a target on his back for the last several months. Now a new frontrunner will be under attack and the Ford team is already working hard to build attack ads against whomever wins the race.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 18, 2026.

OTTAWA—The leaderless Ontario Liberal Party is currently polling ahead of Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives.

That is tough news for the provincial government, but even tougher news for the Ontario New Democratic Party. The Liberals have landed in third place in the last two elections with NDP leader Marit Stiles performing well in the legislature as the leader of the official opposition.

One election loss was considered a fluke. Two elections is a trend. So the prevailing wisdom was that the NDP would replace the Liberals as the government in waiting.

But for many reasons, that has not happened. Instead, the Liberal brand is holding steady in Canada’s most populous province, and even without a leader, looks poised to potentially form government.

Ford’s stumbles have been rare, but the latest reversal of his decision to purchase a $29-million jet to travel to Timmins and the north seems to have caught voters’ attention.

The explanation of the plane purchase was dubious as the premier claimed that he would use it to move more efficiently across the province and get more work done.

The runway length required by the Bombardier Challenger 650 meant the plane could only land in 19 of the province’s 179 operational airports.

The purchase reversal came quickly, with Ford’s usual statement that he was simply listening to the voters, but the fiasco hurt. The Liberals quickly shot two points ahead in the polls.

And then a Liberal leadership candidate shot himself in the foot.

In a pitched nomination battle, Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith lost the race in Scarborough-Southwest by 19 votes to Ahsanal Hafiz.

Erskine-Smith took a huge chance in running in a riding across town from the seat he currently holds in the House of Commons. He has been elected in Beaches-East York since 2015, and announced last week he would be stepping down at the end of the session.

Had he followed the example of NDP Leader Avi Lewis, he would have waited for a seat that was much safer, but Erskine-Smith has always been a risk-taker.

He plans to contest the nomination results, which saw more than 1,000 members ruled ineligible to vote. But he has also said the outcome has forced him to reconsider his ambitions.

Only one current sitting provincial member has announced her intention to run for the Liberal leadership race which has been called for November.

Last week, Ontario MPP Lee Fairclough announced her candidacy. The rookie MPP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore was a surprise victor in Ford’s home area in the last election, and has a deep background in medicine, including managing a hospital during COVID.

In her youth, she was a member of Canada’s national women’s rugby team, so she knows how to fight.

Fairclough already has the support of three senior Liberals: MPP’s Lucille Collard, Ted Hsu, and former deputy leader Deb Matthews. She is the only current MPP who has declared her candidacy although Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec has been actively organizing behind the scenes.

Other names being bandied about include Navdeep Bains, a former minister in the federal government with strong organizational ability. It is widely believed within the Ontario Liberal Party that Bains is one of the two people, along with Erskine-Smith, who organized an active campaign to damage former leader Bonnie Crombie at the leadership review convention last fall.

Lacklustre support prompted Crombie to step down back in January, citing the new year as a chance for new beginnings.

Some believed she should have had another shot at electoral victory, and they blame Erskine-Smith and Bains for her exit.

Until the weekend, Erskine-Smith was widely viewed as the frontrunner in the leadership.

But the Scarborough nomination battle was filled with acrimony, with last week’s defeat capping off a month of negative headlines for Erskine-Smith.

He questioned the results, and blamed party brass for smoothing the way for his opponent. But he also faced criticism for a last-minute endorsement from Prime Minister Mark Carney that ruffled local feathers.

Even leaderless, the provincial Liberals are ahead. But once a leader is chosen, that could quickly change.

A frontrunner starts with a target on their back. Erskine-Smith has worn that target for the last several months. Now a new frontrunner will be under attack. Candidates for the Ontario Liberal leadership must enter the race before July 31.

The Ford team is already working hard to build attack ads against whomever wins the race.

Bains has experience, but that comes with baggage. Cerjanec and Fairclough have no experience. In politics, that could actually work in their favour.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps

First published in The Hill Times on September 17, 2018.

OTTAWA—Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s municipal hijack is likely to be just the beginning of a tumultuous four-year ride.

It matters little that he will throw Toronto municipal elections into a tailspin because the majority of the people will not even bother to vote.

The rest of a province will shrug and mostly smirk over the chaos that is being visited upon their “love to hate” capital city.

The notwithstanding clause is another tool King Ford will use to punish disloyal subjects, like the mayor who beat him and some councillors he would like to get rid of.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is wise to avoid weighing in on this one.

This is a mess solely of Ford’s making. Had the prime minister stepped in, the story would quickly become that of a power game between the two. That is exactly the kind of confrontation that Ford would love to provoke.

But the long-term implications of the premier’s unilateral political heist cannot be ignored. The haste with which the premier is moving to override the courts via the use of the notwithstanding clause is a risky ploy which will create other problems. Some see it as a blatant misuse of power.

Bill Davis, a highly-respected Ontario premier for more than 14 years, told TVO’S Steve Paikin the clause was never meant to permit dominance over the rule of law.

“The sole purpose of the notwithstanding clause was only for those exceptionally rare circumstances when a province wanted to bring in a specific benefit or program provision for a part of their population—people of a certain age, for example—that might have seemed discriminatory under the Charter.”

“The notwithstanding provision has, understandably, rarely been used, because of the primacy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for all Canadians. …That it might now be used regularly to assert the dominance of any government or elected politician over the rule of law or the legitimate jurisdiction of our courts of law was never anticipated or agreed to.”

Clearly, a decision to halve the number of councillors in only one city in the province does not align with the initial reasons for including the clause in Canada’s new Constitution back in 1982.

Ontario has never used the clause and initially opposed its inclusion. Ultimately, it bowed to the wishes of Saskatchewan and Alberta who proposed the amendment.

Notwithstanding the original intention of the drafters, the clause apparently can now be used by any premier in any circumstance.

No one included an interpretation guide to the Charter so Ford will likely get his way in the short term. In the long term his move creates two problems which he will live to regret.

The first was his attack on the judiciary. When the courts overturned the initial seat cuts, claiming the change was unconstitutional, Ford ignored the substance of the decision to attack the judge.

He wrongly claimed Edward Belobaba was appointed by Kathleen Wynne. In fact, Belobaba was named federally in 2005 with a stellar list of legal credentials.

He began his career as a law clerk to chief justice Bora Laskin at the Supreme Court of Canada in 1973. He subsequently served as associate professor and associate dean at Osgoode Hall Law School.

As a partner at Gowlings, for almost 20 years, he specialized in litigation and international business law and co-founded the Supreme Court Law Review, where he served as an editor.

Belobaba was not the kind of judge who received his appointment because of any connection to the political system. Ford’s personal attack will raise hackles in the legal system.

If his use of the notwithstanding clause is appealed, Ford can expect to have some pushback from the judiciary.

Likewise, mayors across the province are raising questions about where they stand and whether they are safe from the ire of the premier in another round of municipal council cuts.

At the recent Association of Municipalities of Ontario meeting in Ottawa last month, the buzz revolved around who would be hit next.

Ford’s behaviour reminds us of another politician south of the border who also listens to no one.

When Ford was running for office, his predecessor was attacked for comparing him to Donald Trump.

Last week, it was beginning to look like Wynne was right. Ford had few defenders of his use of the notwithstanding clause.

Even the father of Attorney-General Caroline Mulroney spoke out against the move, at the very moment she was defending it.

Notwithstanding everyone, Ford steamrolls ahead.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.