Liberal MP Erskine-Smith loses nomination battle for Ontario provincial byelection

TORONTO — Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith lost a provincial nomination race Saturday, failing to clear the first of several hurdles toward the leadership of the Ontario Liberals.

Ontario Liberal members in the riding of Scarborough Southwest selected business owner Ahsanul Hafiz as their candidate for an upcoming byelection.

Erskine-Smith, who represents the neighbouring federal riding of Beaches-East York, had indicated he was hoping to run in the provincial Scarborough Southwest byelection to secure a seat in the legislature ahead of a likely bid for the Ontario Liberal leadership.

It is unclear if Erskine-Smith still intends to launch that leadership bid. He is, however, raising the possibility of challenging the results of Hafiz’s narrow win — Erskine-Smith said he lost by 19 votes among more than 1,400 cast.

“There was a ton of scrutineers in there, lots of stories about what’s happened inside, but I’ve got to debrief,” he said in the rainy parking lot of the school where the voting took place, after initially trying to dodge reporters.

“I’ve spoken to a few scrutineers already who said they’ve never seen anything like it, and it’s unreal what happened in there.”

He suggested there was a large number of voters with “ID issues,” though Erskine-Smith’s chief scrutineers signed off on all the results.

Hafiz said he doesn’t want to focus too much on Erskine-Smith’s allegations, noting that the hallways were filled with people wearing Hafiz badges.

“So that is the clear evidence of who is the real winner,” he said, adding he thought the process was fair and that the Ontario Liberal Party did “an excellent job.”

Erskine-Smith had posted an 11th-hour video to social media of him speaking to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who said he hoped to see Erskine-Smith working for the people of Scarborough.

Some of Erskine-Smith’s fellow nomination contestants bristled at what they saw as a candidate trying to use their community as a springboard for the leadership, and Hafiz and Qadira Jackson agreed to put each other second on the nomination race’s ranked ballots.

Jackson, who was the Liberal candidate for Scarborough Southwest in the 2025 provincial election, said most of the time previous candidates don’t face a nomination battle when they want to run again and she would have preferred to continue being the candidate for this byelection.

But if she wasn’t going to win, Jackson said she at least wanted a “local” candidate.

“I don’t want my riding to be used as a tool,” she said.

Erskine-Smith did not let the jabs about him living in the neighbouring riding go unacknowledged, noting that Hafiz had not lived in Scarborough Southwest for most of his life.

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.

He will now have to turn his mind to the byelection Premier Doug Ford will have to call by the summer, in a riding where the Liberals placed third in the last election.

“The game just started, what we played, this is like a semi final,” he told supporters. “Now we have to play final.”

The riding has been vacant since earlier this year when the NDP member of provincial parliament, Doly Begum, resigned to successfully run for the federal Liberals.

The Ontario Liberal leadership race has two official contestants – caucus member and former hospital president Lee Fairclough, and strategist and former political staffer Dylan Marando. Others are also exploring potential bids, including former federal cabinet minister Navdeep Bains, caucus member Rob Cerjanec, and housing advocate Eric Lombardi, the interim leader has said.

The winner will succeed Bonnie Crombie, who resigned earlier this year, and will be the party’s fourth leader since 2018.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 9, 2026.

Allison Jones, The Canadian Press