Scott Stinson: Ontario Liberal leadership race is off to a messy start

After their involvement in a contentious nomination race, Nate Erskine-Smith and Navdeep Bains could bring some more drama to the Ontario Liberal leadership race. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post; Blair Gable/Postmedia; Files

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Navdeep Bains declared his candidacy to lead the Ontario Liberals on Monday with a video that only someone confident of winning would produce.

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The former minister in Justin Trudeau’s federal cabinet doesn’t introduce himself or even say anything, just sits down and rolls up his sleeves before “Let’s get to work” is flashed on the screen.

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His name, helpfully, is flashed at the end of the brief clip, for the benefit of the viewers — presumably a great many of them — who did not immediately recognize the man who left an executive job at Rogers to return to political life.

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And why wouldn’t he be confident? Bains is said to have the backing of some party heavyweights, and his registered opponents so far are rookie Toronto MPP Lee Fairclough and Dylan Marando, a backroom staffer. Ajax MPP Rob Cerjanec, also first elected just last year, is expected to join them.

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The one wild card? That would be Bains’ former colleague in the Trudeau government, current Beaches-East York MP Nate Erskine-Smith. He announced plans to run again for the provincial leadership, having lost to Bonnie Crombie in the 2023 contest, but has not been what you would call welcomed to the party. The Ontario Liberals have treated Erskine-Smith not unlike a bridge troll might regard a weary traveller who lacks the proper coin for passage.

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Erskine-Smith lost a Liberal nomination race for an upcoming byelection in Scarborough by just 19 votes to businessman Ahsanul Hafiz. The MP, who represents the neighbouring riding federally, has said that he faced opposition from party insiders during the local campaign, and he appealed the results of the May 9 vote, citing a host of alleged irregularities, including mismatched vote totals and questionable approval of the eligibility of certain voters. (Hafiz is from Bangladesh and thanked the riding’s large Bengali community for supporting him after winning the race; non-citizens were eligible to take part in the vote provided they lived in the riding.)

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That appeal was dismissed by an arbitration committee on Sunday night after a hearing last week. But interim Liberal leader John Fraser had declared himself satisfied that there had been a “fair, open and transparent” nomination race on the night of the May 9 vote even after Erskine-Smith had raised concerns about elements of it, and Fraser brought Hafiz to Queen’s Park to meet reporters before the appeal period had ended.

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He told reporters that Erskine-Smith had to “prove it” if he suspected unfairness, and suggested the losing candidate was just saying “things in the heat of the moment.”

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The Ontario Liberals did not sound terribly interested in a thorough investigation of Erskine-Smith’s claims, in other words.

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The appeal hearing was not public, but the arbitration committee’s 17-page report was released, and it is a step-by-step repudiation of Erskine-Smith’s claims. Not that his supporters are likely to see it that way.

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On, for example, Erskine-Smith’s allegation that there were 34 more votes than there were names crossed off on the voters’ list, the committee acknowledges this to be the case. But the three-person panel also concluded “that the discrepancy between the number of ballots counted and the number of names crossed off the voters list is not an ‘irregularity,’ but rather an ‘error of record-keeping.’”

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And, where the Erskine-Smith campaign alleged that its observers had seen multiple instances of questionable documentation being used to prove identification and residency — key elements of vote eligibility — such as Amazon orders and travel visas, the panel decided that the on-site officials simply made the best of a tricky situation.