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 November 13, 2023.

OTTAWA—The Ontario Liberal Party race went nuclear last week.

Just after a spirited candidates’ debate in Ottawa, two campaign teams announced they were joining forces in an attempt to beat front-runner, former Liberal MP and Mississauga Mayor, Bonnie Crombie.

Former Ontario Attorney-General and now Liberal MP Yasir Naqvi joined forces with fellow federal Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith in an attempt to deliver a one-two punch to Crombie.

On Nov. 9, just two weeks before voting begins, the pair held a press conference in front of Queen’s Park to deliver their message.

Each is calling upon his supporters to choose the other as their second choice in the single-person ranked ballot system. Both MPs believe they have much in common, and that either would make a better choice to beat Premier Doug Ford than Crombie.

Their agreement announcement said that the “Ontario Liberals will be best positioned to beat Doug Ford by electing a principled, pragmatic and Liberal leader.”

The statement about a “Liberal leader” was designed to remind prospective voters about an early error in the Crombie campaign, when the candidate said she would open up certain areas of the environmentally protected Greenbelt to developers. Crombie has since recanted that position, and promised to leave the protected areas untouched.

But throughout the lengthy campaign, opponents have attempted to portray the front-runner as Ford lite, noting that some of the same developers who are supporting her mayoralty race have also donated to Ford.

The Naqvi and Erskine-Smith’s statement characterized Crombie (without naming her) as “leadership … vulnerable to the same criticisms as the Ford Conservatives—their political baggage, priorities and donors.”

One other candidate has already left the race. Adil Shamji, a provincial Liberal MPP and former physician, threw his support behind Crombie.

A fourth candidate, Ted Hsu, is the only one who currently sits in the provincial legislature. He said on social media that he was approached about the deal, but turned it down because he believes members should have free votes and the party should be beyond deal-making.

For her party, Crombie said she was hoping to be Liberals’ first choice because she has the fundraising and organization skills to help the party win in 2026. She was turning the fundraising questions into a positive as the party is currently in third place in the legislature, and needs cash to be competitive in the next election.

Crombie has already raised more than double the amount of money donated to the combined campaigns of Naqvi and Erskine-Smith.

Full disclosure: I have publicly supported Crombie as leader. The move to join forces was not unexpected. Most leadership campaigns evolve into an anybody-but-the-frontrunner towards the end of the race. The election that saw Stéphane Dion become federal Liberal Party leader was an ‘anybody-but’ movement. In that leadership it was anybody but Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff, the two front-runners.

Negative karma drove a lot of voters into the arms of Gerard Kennedy and Dion. Dion started the race with only 16 per cent of the vote, but he ended up winning by making a deal with Gerard Kennedy for support.

Deals are usually made quietly in the background. Last week’s announcement was intended to garner maximum media attention.

The public strategy is risky for Naqvi and Erskine-Smith as too much internal fighting could cost them politically. Some Liberals won’t appreciate the attacks on Crombie’s weaknesses, and others may not like being told how to vote. The public nature of the deal may hurt both candidates’ future if Crombie does win.

But in one sense, it was a risk they had to take. As the sale of new memberships is now over, all the candidates have a pretty good handle on their standing in the pack.

And it is highly likely that Crombie is outpacing all of them by a good margin. Last week’s coalition was a do-or-die move for both men. It may not deliver them the leadership, but doing nothing would be equally costly.

If Crombie has enough support to win a majority of votes on the first counting of the ballots, it is a moot point.

If not, the ranking of candidates does have an impact as this will be a vote by all in a preferential ballot. Once the first vote is counted, the candidate with the fewest supporters drops off, and voters’ choices for second and third are then reallocated for a second count.

This Liberal duo is counting on ranked ballots to take one of them over the top.

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