Deadline day for candidates to enter Ontario Liberal leadership race

It is deadline day Tuesday for candidates to enter the Ontario Liberal leadership race to replace former leader Steven Del Duca.

So far, there are five people running, including Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Toronto MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Ottawa MP Yasir Naqvi, Don Valley East MPP Adil Shamji, and Kingston and the Islands MPP Ted Hsu.

The leadership campaign was launched following the resignation of Del Duca, who stepped down after the Liberals didn’t secure enough seats in the 2022 provincial election to have official party status in the legislature, for the second campaign in a row. He has since been elected mayor of Vaughan.

At the time, the Liberal caucus selected Ottawa legislator John Fraser as the party’s interim leader. Fraser has previously said he wouldn’t run for the Liberal leadership.

Party members will cast their votes by ranked ballots on November 25-26, and party officials will announce the new leader on December 2.

Back in March, the party voted for a one-member-one-vote system for selecting their next leader. Proponents say the process is more democratic, and that delegated conventions put too much power in back rooms.

“It’s part of renewal,” Fraser said at the time, adding that the vote represents change.

“(Delegated conventions were) something we did for a long time, a few decades and now we’ve decided, let’s do something different.”

The party will be holding five debates for the candidates, starting in Thunder Bay. A debate will also be held in Toronto on October 24.

All candidates must pay a fee of $100,000 to enter the race and a refundable deposit of $25,000.

A brief look at who is running in the leadership race

When Crombie launched her leadership bid in June, Premier Doug Ford said it would be a “slap in the face” to Mississauga residents for her to remain as mayor while running for Liberal leader.

She later explained that exploring a leadership bid with the Ontario Liberal Party while remaining mayor would not present any conflicts.

Crombie was first elected as Mississauga’s mayor in 2014 after longtime mayor Hazel McCallion retired and has since been reelected in 2018 and 2022.

Erskine-Smith was the first person to officially announce a bid for the leadership race. The Liberal MP for the riding of Beaches-East York has been elected at the federal level three times since 2015.

Naqvi, the Ottawa Centre MP, had stepped down from his role as parliamentary secretary to run in the provincial leadership race. He was elected federally in 2021 but had served for nearly nine years at the provincial legislature, including turns as Ontario’s attorney general and labour minister.

Shamji, an emergency room physician at Michael Garron Hospital, became an MPP in the last provincial election. He currently serves as the Liberal critic for health, northern development, Indigenous affairs, and colleges and universities.

Elections Ontario shows Hsu officially registered his name as a candidate back on May 20. He has been the MPP for Kingston and the Islands since the provincial election a year ago and is one of only seven Liberal MPPs.

With files from CityNews staff