All is not right in Ontario Liberal land. Well, things haven’t been right for a while, considering the party was decimated in 2018 and hasn’t been able to recover in the two elections that followed. But things look especially dicey after the fallout from a nomination contest in Scarborough Southwest.

Last Saturday, Ontario Liberals from the riding descended upon a local high school to vote for their candidate in the upcoming provincial byelection. While there were four candidates on the ballot, the contest was really between Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith and Ahsanul Hafiz, a successful Domino’s Pizza franchisee who had the backing of the Ontario Liberal Party (OLP) establishment. One veteran OLP figure even went so far as to tell the media that he was working with the Hafiz campaign to “save the party” from Erskine-Smith.  

It remains unclear exactly why the old guard of the OLP is so threatened by Erskine-Smith, though as reporter John Michael McGrath recently noted for TVO, “I can’t tell you for certain why [party insiders] consolidated around the campaign of Ahsanul Hafiz, but I can tell you what it seems like: They disliked Erskine-Smith and wanted to see him lose.”

The OLP old-guard seemed to get their wish. After leading on the first ballot, Erskine-Smith ultimately lost by 19 votes on the second ballot. 

Part of what Erskine-Smith discussed with reporters as he was leaving after the loss was that he was going to talk to his team in detail about what went down. “I’ve talked to a few scrutineers already who said they’ve never........

© National Observer