The Ontario Liberal Party will choose its next leader in December. There’s been plenty of speculation about who will enter the race, but, this week, the contest got its first declared candidate. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, federal Member of Parliament for Beaches–East York, launched his leadership bid on Tuesday in Scarborough. Ahead of the rally, I spoke to him about why he’s running, what’s wrong with the party he seeks to lead, and how he plans to address Ontario’s many, many, many problems.
David Moscrop: You have a reputation for not talking bullsh*t. So I want to start by asking you straight up: Why do you want to be the leader of the Liberals? They’re a third-place party without official status in the legislature, in a country where provincial Liberal parties look to be going the way of the Carolina parakeet. What made you think, “This is the job for me”?
Nate Erskine-Smith: Well, I appreciate the optimistic note that you start with [laughs], but it’s not a complicated answer. How do you make the biggest difference with the time you’ve got? And the answer to that question 10 years ago was leaving law for federal politics. And I think the answer today is to leave federal politics for provincial because we have a Liberal party in third place and in desperate need of generational and grassroots renewal. We need more seriousness at Queen’s Park. I don’t see the competence, compassion, and integrity that I want to see in our politics in the province of Ontario.
Moscrop: How important is grassroots renewal?
Erskine-Smith: I have only been successful in my own politics because of an emphasis on grassroots engagement and building relationships and building trust. I was asked at the Liberal convention in New Brunswick, “Are you doing this?” And I said, “I’m seriously considering it, but I’m only going do it if I can build a team absolutely everywhere, with the geographic diversity and the diversity of this province represented in that team.” And I set out travelling. And I wouldn’t say that the team is fully formed by any means, and I would hope that the team grows and becomes even more serious throughout a leadership process, but we have a strong team in every corner of the province now.
We’re ready to do this. And it’s only because I’ve put the time in. I’ve visited over 50 ridings so far, and there are new people who are joining our team who have never been involved in politics before. There are people who have been a long time involved in politics who want to get off the sidelines and make a difference again. And there’s no substitute for that grassroots engagement and that hard work.
Agenda segment, March 2, 2023: Do or die for the Ontario Liberal Party?
Moscrop: Liberal parties sometimes flirt with grassroots politics and sometimes can create quite a groundswell of support. In 2015, Justin Trudeau’s campaign was an example of that, and his leadership campaign was an example of that. But often the grassroots push falls off, and when it comes time to run a general election or to govern, people at the top are less interested in having grassroots involvement. Are you making a deeper commitment than just for a leadership election?
Erskine-Smith: Yeah. I can tell you, if you had attended our riding-association holiday event back in November, there are people there who have been with us, engaged with us, volunteered with us since my nomination election in 2013-2014. If you take that grassroots politics seriously, it’s about relationship building, building trust, and then being a strong voice for the community that you serve. And the kind of culture that I would like to see in provincial politics, in all politics, frankly, is the commitment that the prime minister made back in 2013-2014 around empowering communities by empowering parliamentarians. It’s a commitment that motivated me to participate. It’s a commitment that I’ve honoured in a serious way or have tried to since I was elected in 2015. And it’s a commitment that I’m serious about encouraging others to follow as I build up my own team.
That fundamental commitment is really a commitment to grassroots engagement and grassroots accountability, to the point that, even in this last convention, I had my own resolution. Most of the action was changing how we vote and encouraging grassroots engagement by opening up our party and one-member, one-vote weighted. And those were all really important changes about how we select the next leader. My own resolution, which also passed, requires the next leader — whether it’s me, whether it’s someone else — to meet with every riding-association president on an annual basis through regional meetings. And that’s a small change in some ways, but it reflects what I’ve seen in my travels: a hollowing out of provincial Liberal associations in smaller communities all across this province. We need to rebuild an active presence for this party absolutely everywhere, re-engage absolutely everywhere, listen and speak to people and engage people where they’re at, address issues on the ground absolutely everywhere, and maintain accountability on an ongoing basis — not just in a leadership race, not just come election time, but in an ongoing way.
Moscrop: You have a history of criticizing your party and voting against it when you disagree with it — dozens of times, in fact. If you win, how much dissent are you prepared to allow within the ranks of the Ontario Liberal Party? Is there going to be some equivalent to you in the back seats, and you’ll say a year from now, “Oh, what a pain in the ass that person is”? Or are you going to say, “That was me. I get it.”
Erskine-Smith: I will make the same commitment that got me motivated to join politics, which is there will be free votes in the chamber, and I want strong voices on behalf of their community. If someone’s going leave family, privacy, give up pay to pursue politics — and we want serious people to do so — the commitment has to be “you’re going to be able to keep your own voice on behalf of your community.” You have to encourage people and commit to people that they’re going be able to keep their own voice on behalf of their communities.
As part of that, we’re going make platform promises if I’m successful in this. And we’re going to abide by those promises, and everyone is there to support those promises. We all knock on doors together. We make commitments. We deliver on those commitments together. Similarly, when it comes to confidence matters, it’s really important that, if you sit in a caucus, you’re supportive of the government, because that caucus and those lines of platform promises and confidence in the government are essential. Beyond that, there ought to be a lot of room to disagree, reasonably — to make the disagreement about ideas and not personalities — and to help shape the government’s agenda and add new issues to the agenda on behalf of their home communities.
Agenda segment, June 5, 2023: Can a maverick become Ontario Liberal leader?
Moscrop: Turning to the province itself: Ontario is an absolute, utter, seemingly irredeemable mess. And I blame Doug Ford largely for that, though not exclusively. Look at the state of the province. Look at the past few decades of governance in Ontario. Where do you see the province failing the most, and what are your top policy priorities for addressing those failures?
Erskine-Smith: I started on this path saying, “I’m going to build a team everywhere.” But part of that commitment is about informing the plan that we’re going to deliver on. And it’s obvious there are unique issues — transportation and accessibility in northern Ontario is an example of that. But what I’ve been struck by is how common the issues are across the province. Health care is more than 50 per cent of the budget. The government is incompetently managing our health-care system. It’s causing a distraction around privatization when the core issue is under-investment in a public health-care system where investment would lead to better outcomes. We pay less in Ontario than the national average for our health-care system. We pay nurses less than the national average. There’s an obvious investment that is required in public services, especially health care. There are also deep inefficiencies in the system. We need integration in health care. We need the government to be laser-focused on addressing the fact that 2 million people don’t have access to a family doctor or a family health team.
On mental health and addictions, do you remember when the government first came into office in 2018, they actually cut planned-mental health spending? They subsequently reversed some of those cuts when they realized that there are conservatives who care about mental health. But mental health and addiction is a crisis, and we need more treatment options, and we need on-demand treatment options, and we need harm reduction to save people’s lives before they’re ready to seek treatment.
June 10, 2022: Can the Ontario Liberals recover?
On the housing side: for a time, the government was saying many of the right things on housing — building 1.5 million homes within 10 years, they struck a task force — and then it all fell away. And there’s deep incompetence to how they’re managing one of the most important issues, not only as a matter of generational fairness, but also as a matter of productivity. People are leaving our communities and leaving our province because they can’t afford to live here. And that’s an economic challenge as much as it’s a fairness challenge. And the answer to that is to get governments, municipal and provincial governments, out of the way. Remove all barriers to building supply and adding the density that we need. Get governments back in the game on building social, public, co-op housing, deeply affordable housing, and treat housing as a home first and an investment second.
Third (I’m going cheat and do more than three), I think defending quality public education is important. We are seeing an underinvestment there as well. This past budget, you saw an increase in spending that was well below inflation and is going to lead to cuts and challenges in an already overburdened and underfunded public-education system. I want to defend excellence in our public-education system, support teachers, and support education workers.
Lastly, in terms of top priorities, is climate action. I think we’ve had a very ambitious — it’s not been perfect, but we’ve had a very ambitious, serious, credible record on climate at the federal level. People are increasingly realizing, rightly, that a good climate plan is actually about creating good-paying jobs. And we need to deliver that message at the provincial level in a serious way and own that issue and be the most ambitious, credible party on climate.
So those would be probably my top four, although I could talk to you a long time about strengthening the social-safety net and Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program and the social determinants of health and making sure we’re making preventative investments and supporting those in the greatest need.
Moscrop: You mentioned climate. What’s your position on the recent decision to increase the number of gas-fired plants in Ontario, and how do you feel about nuclear energy as a part of Ontario’s climate action?
Erskine-Smith: On the procurement for new gas-fired plants, it’s wrong-headed. It’s wrong-headed largely because it’s the consequence of improper planning and delay and incompetence by this government. If they had the foresight to procure clean energy, they could have done so.
I don’t know that it’s a situation that is likely to be reversed. I think the best place we’re likely to be able to land is to render gas-fired plants down the road as emergency backup for baseload. And, hopefully, we’ll see a different government down the road that is properly investing in clean solutions.
On nuclear, there is no future without nuclear energy in the short-term and medium-term. It all comes down to cost. So, when you’re looking at making public investments in cleaning the electricity grid and adding to the energy mix we need as everything is electrified, it all comes down to dollars and cents and cost benefit. And nuclear, unquestionably, is going to continue to be part of that mix. But, in terms of new builds, it all comes down to what is most efficient, most economical, and what makes the most sense on that front.
Moscrop: Do you plan on resigning as a federal member of Parliament?
Erskine-Smith: Not yet. I’m going to make a decision over the summer.
Moscrop: Who do you think your biggest competition’s going to be?
Erskine-Smith: I’m not sure. We haven’t seen everyone enter the race just yet.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.