How do you rebuild a broken political party?

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Jordan Heath Rawlings Even if you live in the province, you probably haven’t thought about the Ontario Liberal Party in a while. Years, probably in the 2018 election. The party. Well, the party got smoked. There’s no other way to put it. They went from 55 seats to seven seats. They lost official party status, and they haven’t won it back since. In last year’s election, Doug Ford’s conservatives won another majority. The NDP finished second and the liberals gained one seat. For a total of eight. This is a party that governed the province from 2003 to 2018. It is hard to imagine a bigger fall from grace. It’s also hard to imagine a tougher job than trying to put the pieces back together again to bring the party back from a distant third to run against one of the country’s toughest campaigners. And to try and offer a vision that can unite downtown Toronto Progressives, the rural small sea conservatives, and the suburban centrist, all of whom want different things. Last week though, the first person to sign up for that gig announced his intention to try it. So, we had to ask him, how exactly do you rebuild a broken party?

I am Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is the big story. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith is the member of Parliament for Beaches East York. We are talking to him today because he has recently volunteered for one of the toughest jobs in Canadian politics. He recently announced his intention to run for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. A bit of background, the Ontario Liberal Party once ran the province for a decade and a half. Not all that long ago, but today, Nate. They don’t even have official party status.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith They don’t. But if you remember 10 years ago at the federal level, the liberal party was in third place. We had a really frustrating conservative majority government that motivated me to leave law for politics and all the same motivations apply to the provincial level right now, and that’s where I think I can make the biggest difference.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Before we talk about that, while I’ve got you here, I should point out that you are, at least for now, still my member of Parliament. So, I want to ask you Canadians don’t often get one-on-one time with their own MPs. When they do, what should they ask you? What are the toughest or maybe just most effective questions you’ve gotten from constituents?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Honestly, the most effective advocacy is less about pointed one-on-one interactions in a single moment of time, but it’s about relationship building. The people who are most effective are those who have educated me on topics that they really care about, explain why they’re passionate about a topic, and then reiterated that support. They check in six months later, they see me at an event and there’s a friendly relationship that’s built and they constantly see themselves as an educator, ensuring that I understand the file and that I’m ready to advocate on the file.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Do you have constituents that you go to regularly for certain files?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Definitely. Yeah. So, and over time there are people you build relationships with who have expertise in a range of different issues that are relevant to federal politics. And I was a lawyer before politics, and I don’t consider myself an expert in, in anything. I’m a pretty good advocate, all things considered. So, to be the best advocate I can be, it depends upon building relationships and leaning on experts.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So, before we talk about what’s next for you, I want to ask, as you mentioned just a minute ago, you know, you joined the liberal party for the 2015 election which was a watershed moment for them. It’s been a long eight years. How do you feel about leaving now and, and how do you feel about the tone of federal politics now compared to when you jumped into it.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith So, on the question of whether I feel good about leaving now over overall, yes. I feel like I’ve made a huge difference in many ways over the last seven and a half years as an elected official for Beaches East York, and whether it is a stronger climate action, whether it is addressing the opioid crisis, whether it is support for paediatric cancer research, privacy protections, animal welfare, increasing benefits for workers. I can run down a long list. Where I think my fingerprints are all over helping to shape the government’s agenda has not been perfect, and the record’s not perfect, but over overwhelmingly, I see positive progress in a number of different areas that are really important. I also look at the provincial level and major frustrations. The lack of competence, the lack of compassion, the lack of integrity, the values that I want to see in our politics, and I want to deliver on those values. Now, in terms of the tone, I, I do worry in leaving federal politics. We have a conservative party right now. That I think is flaming, inflaming some of the anger all over again that, that, that can be really destructive in, in more partisan politics. And I, I do worry about that level of divisiveness in our politics and that people don’t see. People don’t see politics as, how I see it really, which is, it’s the most important way to make a difference. It’s, it’s a noble enterprise to work on behalf of your neighbours and, and constituents and, and to deliver in the public interest as a trustee in the public interest. And I worry that when it becomes about personal attacks, that when it, you know, anyone tunes in into question period. And, it’s a really corrosive sort of culture at the moment and it, it’s problematic because people don’t see politics as a place to trust and, and a place to make a difference.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I will ask you this question in as nonpartisan a way that I can one of the complaints we hear from people on the left and the right of various issues on this podcast is the lack of transparency from government, especially compared to what I think the government projected in 2015. I know that you have not in the past, been afraid to be a little bit outspoken in terms of the way the government is acting. How do you feel about the fact that that’s the biggest like nonpartisan complaint on every issue, is that we just don’t hear enough? It’s not open enough?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith I think that’s a fair complaint in many ways. So, we promised to be the most open and honest and transparent government in Canadian history. I have said this before, but I, I think we have failed to live up, live up to the expectations we set for ourselves on that front. You look at democratic reform more broadly, and accountability was a big part of that, that level of transparency, access to information reform, that was a big part of it. We did deliver some reforms, improve the system in some ways. But not enough. And, it’s still a broken system in many ways. If you talk to any serious journalists out there who access the system on a regular basis, yes, you look at the promise around electoral reform, we burn that to the ground in a really unceremonious way. And then you look at the promise of freer votes in the House of Commons. And there I said, I would say, you know, I’ve taken the, the Prime Minister up on that promise, and there has been a level of accountability. From the back bench, there has been a usefulness to committee work working across party lines to deliver change at committee in a way that we haven’t seen from all past parliament. So, I would say there’s been some positive progress, but overwhelming. I think there’s fair criticism. I, I would say there’s still a major difference when I look at, and I’ll use. Two examples. There was this big contract with Volkswagen in St. Thomas, and as an industry committee, conservatives asked for that contract to be public. And there was a process we put in place as a committee to make sure we could all scrutinize that, contract it in camera because of some, you know, confidential information. But opposition MPs have an opportunity to scrutinize that contract in full. Hmm. Whereas you look at the spa contract at the provincial level and there’s been complete stonewalling. So, I, I do think. The government can unquestionably do better. I think it’s even worse at the provincial level when it comes to that question of transparency and integrity. But yeah, I’m not going to go to the wall defending our, the delivery on those promises. Cause I don’t think we’ve delivered as much as we should have.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You’ve alluded now a couple of times to why you decided to run for the Ontario Liberal Leadership. Before you get into why, can you just take me into the moment that you actually fully decided to commit? To this path. Where were you? When was it? What were you thinking?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith I, there was no single moment because I woke up in June after a really devastating provincial election for the second time, and we’d been successful locally. Mary Martin McMahon won a, a closely contested campaign and we were all in her corner helping her out, and it was exciting to see her win. And then you look around the rest of the province and it was devastating. And so, waking up the day after it, I thought. okay, I was turning 38, mid-June. I have seven and a half years of experience under my belt as an elected official, not only helping to shape the government’s agenda, I mentioned a few ways, but also, you know, taking the Prime Minister up on that promise of doing politics differently. Not always agreeing, working across the island a more serious way, speaking my mind at when given the opportunity. And so, I do think there’s a track record that I can lean on now as in 2015, I was promising, sort of, you know, put your trust, put your hope in me. But I didn’t have the same track record I could point to. I also have a track record of winning elections and building a really strong political organization. And so, with all that, I thought, I don’t, I have no connection to what came before. There’s a huge opportunity to build something here and to deliver that generational and grassroots renewal that I think the party and the province needs. Now, I, I didn’t just jump into it in June, I said I was seriously exploring it, and I was asked in September at a caucus retreat in New Brunswick about this, and I said, look, I, I’m interested, I think I make a big difference. I’m only going to do this if I can build a team that reflects the diversity and geographic diversity of this province. And so, I started in October, seriously traveling the province. I’ve been over 55 ridings now. And a few weeks ago, I was in Timmons and I, I was talking about the potential of running, and it became very apparent at that time. The way I was talking and just self, that sort of self-reflection. I wasn’t thinking about running anymore. I wasn’t exploring a run anymore. I was committed. This is, I’m, I knew at that point I, this is what I’m going to do. I’ve traveled enough of the province, the feedback’s been better than I expected. We’ve built a really strong team. It’s going to get stronger and, and this is where we can make the biggest difference.

Jordan Heath Rawlings We don’t usually interview campaigning, politicians, I guess technically you’re not campaigning yet, but aspiring leaders on this show. The thing about your situation that fascinates me, and I mentioned it off the top, is the liberals are barely a factor in Ontario right now, I’m just saying it’s the, this is the way it is. And what’s interesting to me about that is, you know, you’re part of whatever its level of popularity, currently a pretty successful federal governing party. How do you rebuild a party in the situation? The Ontario liberals are from the ground up. Like where do you start?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Well, I don’t think there’s any substitute for building relationships, rebuilding a more grassroots sense of volunteerism to the party, bringing people back into the party who haven’t been involved in the, quite the same way over the last number of years in the last couple cycles, and bringing new people into the party. And, and I think there are, are many lessons to be learned from the federal rebuild around that sense of generational renewal, that sense of positive politics, that sense of really ambitious, what can we, what, what can we do. What kind of a difference can we make together. And a really positive lens about what politics can and should be. I mean we talked about the divisiveness at the federal level, and I mentioned at the outset I see politics for all of its faults as the single most important way to make a difference in the lives of those around us. That’s why I am so committed to making a difference through politics and to spending my time doing this. And I think if people want better from politics as I do, the answer is participation, and I just have to take that message on the road, as I have been doing. That’s on the one hand just sort of the grassroots rebuilding of it. And then I think you’ve got to articulate a really optimistic sense of both values and also how you address big challenges in this province. So, it’s not enough to just say, Doug Ford this, Doug Ford that, and I can run down a list, whether it’s the spa, whether it’s the green belt, whether it’s housing or healthcare, and the incompetence. I could spend a whole episode probably talking about the failing, what I see as the failings, but I think it’s really important. If I want to deliver a positive message, I have to say, here are the values around competence, seriousness, thoughtfulness, fairness and compassion, honesty, integrity that I care about and want to deliver. And then whether it’s access to a family doctor, whether it is mental health and addictions, whether it’s quality public education, whether it is housing, housing, housing. You know, you run down the list of issues that matter in people’s lives. We’ve got to address those issues in a, in a serious, credible way.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How do you get started from where you are right now? And here I’m not talking like all that stuff that you just said is, is great and aspirational and you know, everybody wanting to see a, a difference from Doug Ford hopes you can accomplish them. What do you do practically like between now and the convention or the leadership vote? Like how do you actually achieve that?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Okay, so. It is not dissimilar to when I started out in 2013 running in nomination. I was 29 at the time. I didn’t have, no one was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, you’re the guy, we’re going to make you the candidate. I, I had to, I had to fight for it, and I had to earn it, and I earned it by sitting around kitchen tables by making a million to one phone calls and by expressing to people. Building relationships and expressing to people, here’s what I want to do. Here’s what I think I can accomplish. Come build this with me. And we signed up about 850 people in the course of that nomination over an excruciating long period of time. And we’ve got until September 11th right now to sign up as many members as we can to join the party, to, to vote in this process to help me become the leader. And so, this is about traveling the province and building that membership, rebuilding, volunteerism, getting people involved through those conversations and relationships. And then I would say doing a lot of media. This is about also becoming a, a more household name and I’m, I’m known in a better way across the east end of Toronto. I’ve got to be known in the same way, and I think seen to be. Bringing that sense of serious leadership that I, that I hope, and I, and I do think many people in, in the East end, see, I want everyone across Ontario to see. And so, it’s, it’s, there’s, as I said, there’s no substitute for the hard work. You, you got to sit around those kitchen tables, be in those rooms, delivering speeches. Go ask, ask questions of others about what they care about, answer questions about what you’re going to do, and, and, and be anywhere and everywhere and, and reengage absolutely everywhere you can.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Before we talk about Doug Ford, I’m going to ask you to criticize the party you are now attempting to lead. , how, how did the Ontario liberals find themselves in this position? What do you think went wrong? Well, I mean, you must have studied this. What’s your diagnosis?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith So, others have I smartly diagnosed this and there was a full debrief that people crisscross the problems talking to writing associations that any government over time accrue barnacles and their increased challenges. No government governs forever. And so, I think that was just simply part of the equation that McGinty win, that era had come to an end. I, it came to an end in quite a spectacular fashion. Though most parties don’t, most parties don’t fall that far, especially parties, which to be fair, have a very long-standing brand like the Ontario Liberals. I don’t think the brand is as challenged though. If you look at this past election, 24 or so percent of people voted for the, for the liberal party. The efficiency of the vote was quite poor though. And so, we only have six, six and a half percent of the seats in the legislature. So, you know, we could talk about electoral reform, but on the question of what went wrong, especially this past election, I’ve intimated in some ways the answer already, but I mean, I think we were the not Doug Ford party. The choice is yours. I don’t think we stood on our own two feet. I think we seated an economic agenda in a serious way. And that’s a problem. We, we’ve got to be the party that wants to build things and we’ve got to articulate a sense of purpose around building infrastructure, building housing, and, and delivering a strong economic message. And we’ve got to make sure that we don’t, you know, buck Ride might have pulled well at one particular time, but it’s not a serious credible policy when you speak to experts. And so, we do have to deliver a level of seriousness that we don’t see in politics, and we have to embody that seriousness. I think that’s actually one thing that we are going to, if. If I am successful in leading this party, we are going to, there’s going to be a really sharp contrast, obviously with Ford, but there’s also going to be a really sharp contrast with the NDP and Greens just around the seriousness and credibility of the plans that we put together to deliver on some shared priorities. And so, I do think there was some challenges there. And then, and then, let’s be honest, this wasn’t a change election. In fairness people were coming outta the pandemic. It was warm and people didn’t want an election and Ford was the front runner and people shrugged their shoulders and any people didn’t participate. So, I think there’s a, you need a sense of excitement and real generational renewal and excitement away from, you know, we were running a cabinet minister from the Wynn McGinty era and people felt it was a bit more of the same. So, I think we got a break from the past in a serious way on that front. And then lastly, it’s about rebuilding that sense of grassroots and that sense of volunteerism, because over time, and all parties I think suffer this fate in some ways. But people leave, they go back, they go to the private sector and staff do the jobs that volunteers tend to do at the beginning of any political rebuilding. And so that sense of volunteerism had atrophied and, and we need to rebuild it.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So, let’s turn to Ford. We’ve spent a lot of time around this podcast studio reporting on the Ford’s. We did an eight-part series on the saga of Rob Ford. Doug was obviously a big part of that. One of the things I’ve always thought when studying them is a lot of progressive people and even progressive politicians look at Doug Ford and they did this with Rob Ford too, and they wonder how can this guy possibly succeed because he seems to be so antithetical to what they believe in, but obviously he does. What are those people missing about Ford and how he campaigns?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Oh, I’m not at all surprised at their success. Are they serious people that should be in the business of governing? Not at all, but they are remarkably good campaigners. And I’ll use an example. My brother called Rob Ford. When Rob Ford was the mayor, my brother’s not overly political in any way, and Rob Ford called him back. They talked about the leafs for 15, 20 minutes, and my brother liked the guy. And, and wanted to vote for the guy. And I think that personal touch, that retail sense of politics is massively important. And you know, you need a bit of Rob Ford’s retail, and you need step ion’s, policy intellectualism, and the perfect politician has both and some people have one, some people have the other. But I think if you really want the most serious, you know, whether it’s Premier, whether it’s Prime Minister, this serious leadership that I think we deserve, you got to have a bit of both. And I, I think people underestimate Doug Ford, they underestimate Justin Trudeau at the federal level for the same reason, that ability to connect with people. But when Doug Ford says, I’m not so conservative, I’m Doug Ford. I, I mean, I hope I can operate in a similar space by saying, look, yeah, we do need to be less partisan. We do need to work across the aisle to get things done. Doug Ford is a caricature of that though, and he might be, you know, a friendly uncle when he swallows a bee or he gets a bad haircut and he’s charming enough when all that happens, but the province is 14 and a half million people. We have major challenges, and we deserve a level of competence, compassion, integrity, level of seriousness that I don’t see. Do you see it? So, I mean we’re not picking a real estate agent here. We’re picking a premier.

Jordan Heath Rawlings How do you plan to take that message to forge should you win the leadership? Without being dragged down into the muck, because I can already see, listen, I know Beaches East York, we are East End Toronto liberals. There’s a really lovely latte place down the street from me. You know exactly what’s coming for you. How do you fight back against that without making yourself just the anti Ford party?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith By building a really serious team all across the province. I’ve done six tours in Northern Ontario. We’ve got a really strong northern team. I’ve made a point of building everywhere I can outside of the GTA and having a really strong set of voices who are going to build this with me, part of it’s about, as I say, delivering a serious, incredible plan. There are people who vote for me in beaches East York, who are progressive, conservative minded, they don’t like Justin, they don’t like all the spending, but they really care about climate change, and they want a serious, credible party to deliver on climate change. And there’s no serious credible party other than the federal liberals on that file. And we need to occupy the same space. When you’ve got young people who are really frustrated about housing, we’ve got to own that file entirely. And then we look, there are sharp contrasts that we’ve got to draw because you know, when whether it’s my father-in-law who is a retired farmer in Cam Lackey, or whether it’s my former law colleagues who are on Bay Street. Whether or not they are always liberal, is beside the point. They are frustrated with the lack of competence and the lack of seriousness at Queens Park, and we need to give them a strong, serious alternative, and we got to stand our own two feet. It can’t all be about attacking Ford. Look, I, anyone who’s seen me at committee with Facebook or PornHub, or Rogers or Bell or the grocery store CEOs, I can be a commercial litigation lawyer and cross examine and elbows up, and all that, but I think a lot of this is about delivering a really positive alternative and a really serious, credible alternative.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Okay. Be positive for a second. You’re looking at Ontario right now. You’ve obviously, as you mentioned, traverse the whole province fairly recently. What do you see that it can be that it’s not right now?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith I see a really interesting opportunity based on how common the issues are across this province, and there are many regional divides. You look at Northern Ontario and are the transportation issues the same as Peel? No, congestion matters in Peel and in Northern Ontario they talk about expanding highways and if one highway goes down, they can’t move around at all. And so, the accessibility issues are even more acute and unique in Northern Ontario. But what I’ve been struck by in my travels is how common the challenges are. And housing comes up absolutely everywhere and access to family health teams comes up everywhere. And whether it’s here on Bruce or Beaches East, people care about the environment. I was in Dufferin-Caledon last night. They really worried about the Green Belt. When you look at, the idea of helping our neighbors. I don’t think this is a, you know, whether or not one strolls down Main Street here in Beaches East York sipping a latte, or whether one is at the Wyoming Lions Club, people care about helping their neighbors and I think there’s just a huge opportunity to rebuild bridges, rebuild common ground, and to build a team—focus on those big challenges that we all face, mental health and addictions. The mayor of Timmons, the mayor of Sue St. Marie, raised it as their top issues. Outgoing counsellor in Windsor raised us. As he said, the party needs to move back to the centre. And I said, okay. What’s your top issue? Mental health and addiction? PS and the former executive director of the London Economic Development Corporation. I want to talk about economic development in southwestern Ontario. He wants to talk about mental health and addictions. I think, I think there’s just a huge opportunity to say, here are the big challenges facing so many of us all across this province, no matter where we live, big communities, small communities, north and south, and let’s address these challenges together.

Jordan Heath Rawlings We don’t have time to get into every big challenge and every big policy. But I do want to ask you, because it’s the one that comes up constantly when we talk about it on this show housing and tangentially to that, just the affordability of the province in general. What do you have in your policy bag that you think can actually reign that in?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith So, at a high level, it’s interesting. I for a time thought Doug Ford was really headed in the right direction, and it’s an odd thing to say, but they set a really ambitious target of one and a half million homes over 10 years. They put a really smart expert task force together that made a series of smart recommendations, and then they walked away from it all. And so, I think there’s a real opportunity here to pick up those recommendations and say, instead of encouraging sprawl and building over the green belt, we can end restrictive zoning. We can, you know, Toronto just did a good thing, but there are many other good things that both Toronto and other municipalities can do and end restrictive zoning. Add the gentle density and, and the density we need from a market basis. That’s one. Get governments out of the way. And end barriers so we can build the, the supply we need from, from a market perspective. Two, get governments back in the game on public social co-op housing and delivering those support for, for those in need in a deeply affordable basis. And there’s some small things in my, in, in our writing, you look at Metrolinks just sold land right close to the GO station and 0% affordability commitment. If that was a federal or a municipal government and they were selling off public land, there would be a 20 or 30% affordability commitment and there’s 0%. So, the Fed, the provincial government, there’s a small thing around the margins that could make a huge difference there. And lastly, I think, overwhelmingly we needed to treat housing as, as a home first and an investment second, and it’s look, population growth, especially on the immigration side being what it is and being really important. On the economic growth side, it’s really important that all governments lean in at the provincial level, municipal level, and with federal support through CMHC to build the housing, we need to build the infrastructure. We need to keep up with population growth, and if I am lucky enough to lead this party and, and certainly lucky enough to be premier, we are going to deliver. On ending restrictive zoning and building supply in a way that this government isn’t. And, and I think other governments are really showing the way. I think BC as a provincial government is doing some things that, that we should be copying.

Jordan Heath Rawlings The last thing I’ll ask you is about your personal style. As we’ve mentioned, you know, as a back bencher you’ve been known as outspoken, you’ve had private members bills, you’ve disagreed with your own party. You even did it a little earlier in this interview, you are now running to be the person that has to wrangle the herd and keep them in line and be the leader who can convince a coalition to follow you. How do you change your style to be less an outspoken maverick type of attitude and more follow me?

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith I’ve thought a lot about this, and I was 416 caucus chair for a time, and when we were delivering a budget submission, was everything in that submission that I wanted to be in there? No. Were there some things in there that I didn’t fully think should be in there? Yes. And that’s the nature of compromise when you’re wrangling in that case, 24 members of Parliament to all agree, and find consensus so that there will be a bit of that, that is required. There’s no question. I think though there’s a really important emphasis you define common issues and team and unity by platform promises and where there are confidence or budget matters. And beyond that, you’ve got to empower your team as far as it goes, and your caucus and your candidates to have the freedom to add new issues to the agenda, help shape the agenda on behalf of their communities, be strong voices on behalf of their communities and to disagree at times. And I hope if in in any party that I lead, in, any government that I lead, people will have, feel that freedom and I think it’s not only about having sort of a rule that you’ve got in place, but also changing the culture. So, you really do encourage others to embrace what I’ve been able to embrace over the last seven and a half years. I think that’s how democracy ought to work. I also think, and this is more selfish, I think it’s a really good way to build a serious team. If I’m going to ask you or other people to give up pay, give up family, give up privacy to leave whatever they’re doing for politics to make what I think would be a much bigger difference are they going to do it if I tell them exactly what to say, exactly how to vote, and exactly how to act? I think not that you’ve got to allow people to be their own person to have their own voice on behalf of their community. If you want serious people to leave what they’re doing, didn’t make a difference with me in politics.

Jordan Heath Rawlings  This was great and I wish you luck. It ain’t going to be easy.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Yeah, I appreciate it. Yes, it won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding no matter what.

Jordan Heath Rawlings  Nathaniel Erskine-Smith MP for Beaches East York, and the first official candidate for the Ontario Liberal Party Leadership. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can find us on Twitter @thebigstoryfpn. You can write to us. The email address is hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca, and you can call us at (416)-935-5935 and leave us a voicemail. You can listen to this podcast anywhere you like, including on our website, including in podcast players, and including smart speakers by saying play the Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.