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| Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith |
Undoubtedly, he seems to inspire strong reactions from certain people who might be described as "centre-right" or "insider" Liberals.
Why is that the case?
"He's not a team player," some have claimed.
"He's only interested only in promoting himself," many have also claimed.
Of course, I'm not familiar with any politicians of any stripes who don't try to incessantly "promote themselves". That is the nature of this game, after all.
Why Nate doing the exact same thing that all politicians do makes him the target of this particular criticism, while these critics seem to have no problem with other politicians who also promote themselves, says a lot about those critics.
It says that this main criticism of NES is total bullshit and a facade masking something else.
When Nate takes one for the team, like remaining in Ottawa as an MP when he clearly wanted to quit already in order to keep the precarious federal Liberal minority government with one extra seat to count on, this was ignored by Nate's critics.
All of the evidence of Nate's decency and many considerable strengths are routinely ignored by these same critics. His strong local connections forged after 10 years in office are ignored because "he's not a team player". His ability to represent his riding right next door in Beaches-East York effectively, responding well to the needs of local residents, being present when it counts, was totally ignored by his critics when he sought the nomination in the riding right across the street in Scarborough Southwest. His local experience was dismissed while controversial nominee Ashanul Hafiz (who had only bought a mansion in the riding in the fall of 2025 after living in London, Ontario for decades) was embraced as a local Scarborough guy. What gas lighting!
These are the same Liberals who applauded the appointment of Evan Solomon in Toronto Centre last year, even though he hadn't lived in Toronto for 30 years. Few Liberal MPs or MPPs in Toronto actually live in their ridings. Few OLP candidates across Ontario actually lived in their ridings in the 2025 Ontario election.
Politicians in parties at the provincial or federal levels are expected to play within a set of certain rules or expectations - to put the team ahead of themselves. This system mimics the structure and discipline we see in many corporations and other top-down organizations. It sets up a system of accountability for those who have earned the leadership at the top.
But of course, this assumes such organizations have due process and decent policies designed to best utilize the strengths and skills of their members, so they are all rowing in the same direction, with the same goals and priorities in mind. In the case of the Liberal Party, those goals should include governing well in the interests of all Ontarians.
For me, the hatred I've seen thrown at Nate is the worst kind of gas lighting.
Yes, he's provided healthy skepticism and sometimes has spoken out to support his sincerely held principles on key issues. Those interventions have been important including on MAID, on democracy, on the genocide in Gaza. Nate's goals have always been about seeking a better result for people, not himself. He's a progressive trying to be pragmatic within the Liberal Party, pushing it towards better positions on issues. He's been unafraid to speak truth to power, perhaps naturally skeptical of authority to ensure due process, fairness and dignity are maintained in society, in government, and in the economy. That's the kind of person I'd like as Premier of Ontario.
Most if not all of the Nate hatred has come from "Liberals" I would characterize as closet conservatives: Neo-liberals who call themselves "centrists" or "pragmatists" but merely favour token liberal policies designed with the true intent to simply bolster the conservative agenda afflicting most of the Western world. Tax cuts, more deregulation, doing little to anything to actually transform our oil-dependent economy into a diverse economy with sustainable and viable energy options. Leaving housing policy completely up to the private market, which has shown itself to be a total failure when it comes to providing housing for all, or even adequate housing for most.
These corporate Liberals, along with all Conservatives, have promoted policies on housing, for example, that have destroyed accessibility to the basic building block of our economy. Middle class families used to be able to afford to buy a house in this economy, on the strength of one partner's income. Eventually, the cost of housing skyrocketed forcing both partners to work to afford the basics of life. But we're long past that reality now.
Most of this new generation knows they'll never be able to afford a house in Ontario. This is tragic since the previous generations now sit on the most "fake" wealth ever accumulated, their housing stock now "valued" in the millions after they bought it 30 years ago or more for well under $500,000 CAD.
The cost of living has literally moved beyond what most people can afford anymore. Pay rates haven't kept up with this reality.
How did this happen? Neo-liberals in both the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservative Party did little to promote housing equity, and instead let the top of the heap continue to see their home values rise to scandalous levels. Canada is broken in many ways. They set up an economic and political climate where someone as toxic and noxious as Pierre Poilievre almost succeeded in using these issues to grab power and destroy what is left of this country.
But for Donald Trump's verbal threats against Canada's sovereignty, as well as his real economic attacks on our important industries, paving the way for Mark Carney to ride in and save the day with his deep experience managing and attempting to transform economies, as well as his levelled demeanour and nuanced understanding of climate change.
Nate is more on the progressive side of the Liberal Party. Like Carney, he's done the hard work in the trenches and worked his way up through the political ranks to win his riding.
For a variety of reasons irrelevant to his character or experience (he was one of too many white males from Toronto in Justin Trudeau's caucus, who was looking for symbolically diverse cabinets who mostly did nothing but repeat PMO talking points), Nate was kept out of Trudeau's cabinet until near the end, when he ascended to Housing Minister, and got a taste of governing a major portfolio at a time of immense crisis.
Sadly for him, it didn't last long and while he wrote a two-page note congratulating his colleagues on their appointments to cabinet on the day he found himself outside cabinet again, his one line in that note saying he couldn't help but feel "disrespected" by being dropped so quickly was pounced on by the media and those nasty critics as further proof he's not a "team player." (NES has since said he regrets using that term, but again critics love to forgive other politicians for their mistakes, but never Nate).
His comment reflected Nate's instinctive honesty, perhaps honesty to a fault. He is open about his thoughts in ways most tight-lipped insiders who constantly seek favour from the bosses, whoever the bosses may be, cannot understand. This is why Nate threatens them so much. They know he's honest, while they, deep down, know they are not.
Furthermore, Nate's progressive tendencies, like actually doing something about housing to fix our cost of living crisis, also offend them because, deep down, these centrist-do-nothing Liberals want to merely tinker around the edges of our problems rather than do something for the people. Like most Liberals always have done in government behind closed doors.
Nate's devotion to fairness, due process, justice for all, integrity also offend his critics who don't give a crap about any of that "leftie" stuff.
Witness the actions of Liberal insiders Tom Allison and Milton Chan at the recent Scarborough Southwest OLP nomination where they came to ensure Nate was stopped so they could "save the party".
Why were they so scared of Nate's possible leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party? Because they know Nate can't be bought and manipulated like most previous Liberal leaders and insiders. Bonnie Crombie promised change, but then hired the exact same "D" team of folks who had driven the party right into the ditch of non-party status in 2018 after failing on so many issues during the latter Kathleen Wynne years. Wynne herself ran on a platform in 2013 on mixing things up and refreshing the party from the rot that had started to set in under McGuinty, but she quickly jettisoned all of those ambitions and again hired the same damn insiders like Allison. Nothing changed.
This Emperor has no clothes.
Like many grassroots Liberals, I want the party to cut from the past and embrace a leader who we can count on both to clean up the party, and fight hard to clean up and fix this broken province. I've had enough of housing policy designed only for the wealthy. I've had enough of health care dysfunction. I've had enough of transportation policies that keep us trapped in our neighbourhoods, cities, towns and villages because the neo-liberals who ran this place the last 60 years didn't bother making the tough but necessary decisions we needed.
Nate is no Messiah. But we need someone like Nate Erskine-Smith to lead the Liberals now, to get rid of this corrupt Doug Ford administration which is the definition of pointless ego and corruption.
The collapsed middle class and struggling working class can't afford to live in our economy anymore. I don't want some centrist-do-nothing who thinks being a "team player" means you just go along to get along with everybody, regardless of their malfeasance or bad intentions. I don't want some corporate Liberal who can always be counted on to do the right thing for wealthy shareholders, to the detriment of the rest of us, while lying to us that he's fighting for "working folks."
I support Nate for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party because he stands up for the ordinary person without a voice in all of this chaos. He's honest. He's a hard worker. He's a good communicator. He's charismatic. And he's not about to betray his principles when the corrupt forces that have run this province for too long come to try to buy him.
This is why the recent fiasco in Scarborough Southwest was so heartbreaking. But it laid bare the clear intentions of sleazy insiders like Tom Allison and Milton Chan (who both really need to be given a one-way ticket out of this province forever, quite frankly) who will do anything to stop a good man from taking power in the party they consider their personal property, including cheating out in the open to stuff ballot boxes, hand ballots to ineligible voters with no permissible ID, and buy votes to ensure Nate couldn't win.
I hope Nate decides to regroup after this setback, regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's adjudication of his appeal of the May 9th nomination results, and stays in the provincial game. I also hope the arbiters rule the nomination result void, and call for a new nomination and candidate not sullied by these shenanigans (and as NES has stated, it won't be him. Rather than benefit from this appeal, he's falling on his sword to ensure a fair process, which is unusual for someone who only "cares about himself".)
I'm not aware of any other leadership candidate who we can count on to speak truth to power and do the hard work of ridding this party of its past corruption, to make it into something worth electing again. One or two of them currently in the mix have some potential, but I honestly believe those in real contention will in the end let us down too.
Ontario Liberal members' democratic rights were undermined by the insiders at the May 9th nomination fiasco who were ironically doing what they always accuse Nate of doing: they were looking out just for themselves.
I want Nate to run for leader this year on a platform to fix housing, fix the cost of living crisis (or at least take effective action to help out people who are struggling), fix public health care, fix public education, take on the corrupt interests that for too long have run this province. And to take on the corrupt forces currently dominating the OLP. They have to go. And Nate is the person to do it.
