The Game Changes

It’s almost hard to conceptualize how much Canadian politics changed in the just 72 hours. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that what started with an announcement mid-afternoon on February 2, 2026 has the potential to fundamentally shift the political order all around us.

While I write almost exclusively about politics and history here in Hamilton, what happened this week will inevitably be felt here. It may take a while for the reverberations to make it down to this end of Lake Ontario, but they’re coming nonetheless.

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On Monday afternoon, Canadian media lit up with reports that Bill Blair, the Liberal MP for Scarborough Southwest, would be resigning, effective immediately. His resignation came after Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed Blair to the position of “High Commissioner” to the United Kingdom (since we’re part of the British Commonwealth and we share a monarch, the High Commissioner is our version of an ambassador).

Blair had served as MP for the lakefront riding since 2015. He was approached by Justin Trudeau’s rejuvenated Liberals to run in that year’s federal election as a “star” candidate. A “son of Scarborough”, Blair had been a household name in the city for a decade as the Chief of the Toronto Police Service (TPS). People across Canada knew him as the man who oversaw the single largest mass arrest of Canadians ever during the 2010 G20 protests and one of the men who went toe-to-toe with the Ford Family during Rob’s crack cocaine saga. A decidedly varied record, but one that was positive enough to not preclude a future in politics (his successor as Chief, Mark Saunders, had a decidedly less positive tenure heading up the TPS, but still tried his hand at politics with far less success).

He became a “lame duck” chief just before the 2014 municipal elections when the Toronto Police Services Board, balking at his host of proposed policing reforms, informed the public very early on that they would not renew his contract and give him a third term as chief during negotiations the following year. This set the stage for his entry into politics and, on the day of his retirement, he announced he would be seeking the Liberal Party of Canada’s nomination to run in Scarborough Southwest against one-term NDP MP Dan Harris. With the NDP in decline after the death of Jack Layton, combined with Blair and Trudeau’s star power, he beat Harris, 52.5% to 24%. Blair bounced between ministries, won re-election with higher and higher percentages of the popular vote in each subsequent election, and stayed out of the brief, messy Liberal Party civil war that resulted in Carney’s capturing power last year. Even though the new PM opted to not appoint Blair to cabinet after last year’s election, rumours abounded that he was destined for a plum diplomatic position as a reward for his service.¹

The dust had barely settled on the announcement of Blair’s appointment when the Liberals revealed that they already had a candidate to replace him in the upcoming by-election. It was later reported by the Star that the whole thing had been coordinated well ahead of time.

The Liberal candidate would be another high-profile name in the community and someone who was already serving in the provincial legislature. The issue is that they weren’t a Liberal.

The candidate announced was Doly Begum, the deputy leader of the Ontario NDP and the MPP for Scarborough Southwest. The Star later reported that NDP leader Marit Stiles got a call from Begum at 9:00 AM on February 3, saying that, two and a half hours later, she would be named as the federal Liberal candidate in the riding. By mid-afternoon on Wednesday, New Democrats across Canada were seething. "When Canadians see politicians betray the values and policies that they claim to believe in, I think it damages our democracy and it breeds cynicism in our politics,” interim NDP leader Don Davies said, before noting “I'll leave it to Ms. Begum to explain to the people of Scarborough Southwest why she's abandoning the progressive policies she claimed to believe in to run for a party that is clearly governing like a conservative party." The outrage was felt across the modest NDP caucus as Begum’s blindside sank in.²

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Before most even had a chance to recalibrate, there was another announcement. Perpetually rebellious Beaches-East York Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith announced he would be seeking the Ontario Liberal nomination for the provincial by-election in Scarborough Southwest created by Begum’s departure for parliament. Beaches-East York borders Scarborough Southwest, making the jump natural for Erskine-Smith. But that announcement also confirmed what many in Ontario had been speculating on for months: that Erskine-Smith would almost certainly be running for the leadership of the ever-rudderless Ontario Liberal Party.³

All of that was more bad news for Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles. The most recent poll of Ontarians has the ONDP at just 18% support with Doug Ford’s Tories at 43% and the leaderless Liberals at 30%. Of all the people who could break the polling logjam provincially, Erskine-Smith best fits the bill. He’s young, outspoken, and has enough progressive cred to lure soft New Democrats to the Ontario Liberal tent. But he’s also a free thinker with plenty of media exposure, meaning he’s one of the few people in Ontario who could seriously threaten Doug Ford’s stranglehold on this province’s politics. If Erskine-Smith wins the leadership and has a seat in the legislature, it isn’t impossible to imagine a world where, over the next two years, the Ontario Liberals ease into first place and the final countdown clock on Doug Ford’s reign begins.

So in the space of one day, Marit Stiles lost her deputy leader to the Liberals, faces the strong likelihood that her caucus will shrink by one member, and has to contend with the fact that her pathways to the Premier’s office have nearly dissolved.

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Then, as the Ontario NDP was dealing with all that, came a slew of articles on Wednesday taking direct aim at federal NDP leadership contestant Avi Lewis. Based on fundraising data and general enthusiasm, it would appear that Lewis is the far-and-away frontrunner for the NDP’s leadership. In the morning edition of the Star, longtime party insider Anne McGrath (who is backing another candidate in the race - MP Heather McPherson), did her best to take some of the wind out of Lewis’s sails. Talking about how McPherson is courting the supporters of another contender, union leader Rob Ashton, McGrath implied that the “anti-Avi” forces are coalescing to ensure he doesn’t win the race. The party uses a ranked ballot for voting, so there are multiple rounds of counting as the lowest-ranked candidates drop off and their support is redistributed to the remaining candidates. McGrath told the Star: “A lot will depend on what happens after the first ballot…If Avi can’t win on the first ballot, it might be hard for him to win.”⁴

Making maters worse, Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi came out swinging on Wednesday, saying that he wasn’t going to be voting in the federal NDP leadership race and that he wants all federal leadership candidates to not screw up his chances of winning the next provincial election out there. The unspoken part of Nenshi’s comments were that an Avi Lewis leadership would likely mean a formal divorce between the federal and provincial wings of the NDP in Alberta. Lewis has been a dedicated champion of a shift away from fossil fuels which the bigwigs in the Alberta NDP believe will ruin their electoral chances. The Alberta NDP has already begun cutting ties with the federal party (allowing members to just be affiliated with the provincial wing) and, given that province’s tendency to push back against anything even remotely federal in nature, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine the provincial wing going off on their own entirely if their desired candidate doesn’t win.

"We don't have the luxury in Alberta to get caught up in ideological battles…within our own party,” Nenshi told the CBC.⁵

Nenshi’s always been very good at setting the agenda and making his ideological positions look like the absence of an ideological position. His remarks to the CBC imply he wants the party to stay above the fray and focus on doing what’s right for the voters. But, ultimately, he’s an active combatant in that ideological war, unsubtly saying he would prefer a McPherson or Ashton-led NDP over one where Avi Lewis is the leader. Combine Nenshi’s comments with those from McGrath and other party insiders, and it becomes clear that there’s a move afoot to undermine the Lewis campaign with whatever they’ve got.

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So where does that leave us?

Oh boy that’s a tough question to answer. But, based on my assessment, there are a couple of major issues.

Issue “1A” is that it’s do-or-die time for the Ontario NDP. A story in the Star cites a “senior New Democrat” who said Begum’s defection “was not a surprise” and cited Stiles’s extremely low approval rating at last Septembers ONDP convention - earning just 68% approval from party members - as one of the reasons. “Right now the momentum is flowing to the Liberals now, federally and provincially, so this is a problem, you know, for Marit and her leadership team,” the insider source told the Star.²

Stiles either needs to change course immediately or take the L and step aside. If the federal Liberals - who are governing like old-school Robert Stanfield-esque Progressive Conservatives (though their recent cuts to Environment and Climate Change Canada make it seem like they’re not averse to governing like modern-day Conservatives) - can entice the deputy leader of the Ontario NDP to their camp, there’s something seriously wrong.

Issue “1B” is that, making matters worse, Begum’s departure has cleared a path for Erskine-Smith to ride into Queen’s Park and take what little spotlight Stiles has left. With Ontarians growing weary of Doug Ford as we slog toward the 10 year anniversary of his accidental ascension, having a fresh and compelling new leader at the helm of the Ontario Liberals is the absolute last thing Stiles needs. Erskine-Smith has the potential to repeat the Trudeau leap, catapulting his party into government and relegating the NDP to third-party status once again.

Issue “2” is that the campaign against Lewis works in the favour of the Liberals at all levels. By undercutting his support through stoking fears of separatism, political calamity, and economic chaos, NDP insiders and skittish provincial politicians are putting their thumb on the scale in the hopes that McPherson can eek out a victory. If that happens, the insiders keep their positions, western leaders stand a chance of keeping official opposition status, and, ultimately, the enthusiasm that’s been bubbling under the surface of the NDP leadership campaign for Lewis can be neutralized. That helps the Liberals keep the NDP at bay federally and ensures there isn’t a host of energetic and optimistic provincial-level New Democrat candidates, volunteers, and voters in Ontario (where Lewis has been absolutely cleaning up donation-wise) when the next provincial election comes.

Issue “3” is that, on the ground here in Hamilton, this all has the potential to, in essence, keep things the same or make things even worse for New Democrats.

Provincially, the NDP is down to two ridings. A revitalized Ontario Liberal Party might be able to win some ridings with compelling candidates. An Erskine-Smith-led OLP may very well push the NDP back to the beachhead that is Hamilton Centre, in essence sending the party back to where it was back in 1999.

Federally, if the NDP fails to generate any momentum after the leadership race because of infighting or a solidification of the power of party insiders, the chances they take back Hamilton Centre drop dramatically, keeping the party off the map in the city and enabling the Conservatives more opportunities to eat into the working class with their relentless strategy of convincing working people to support anti-working class policies.

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I’ve already made it clear that I’m backing Avi Lewis in the federal NDP leadership race. But, after the past 72 hours in Canadian politics, I’m also coming around to the idea that we need an Ontario NDP leadership race as well. That could be a chance for the reset the party needs. There are three years worth of runway until the next election (four, if Doug decides to drag this term out to an excruciating, albeit legally allowed, five years), which means there are plenty of opportunities to turn the plane around.

With Avi at the helm federally and a compelling new Ontario NDP leader taking the fight to the Ford government for the next few years, we might be able to beat back the tide of right-wing extremism and start to rebuild a progressive political base in this city, in this province, and in this country.

This week in Canadian politics has made it evident that the game is changing. A savvy player, one with a real shot at winning, knows that, when the game changes, so too must the strategy. To keep playing the same old game - by sticking with leaders who aren’t making a dent or by reverting to the same old infighting we are so known for or by pulling out all the stops to ensure the party’s consultant class remains comfortable - is to admit you’re not in it to win it. That, by itself, should be disqualifying.

1  _{Bruce Campion-Smith. “Bill Blair wants to run for Liberals in fall election” Toronto Star, April 25, 2015 (Star link - Paywalled); Laura Payton. “Justin Trudeau, Bill Blair defend record over handling of G20 protest” CBC News, April 27, 2015 (Link); Darren Major. “Former minister Bill Blair appointed to diplomatic post, resigns as MP” CBC News, February 2, 2026 (Link).}

2  _{Ryan Tumilty and Moira Welsh. “How one defection to Mark Carney’s Liberals set off a political earthquake at Queen’s Park” Toronto Star, February 3, 2026 (Spec/Star link - Paywalled); Peter Zimonjic. “Federal NDP torches Ontario NDP's Doly Begum for joining Carney's Liberals” CBC News, February 3, 2026 (Link).}

3  _{Sean Boynton. “MP Nate Erskine-Smith ‘exploring’ Ontario Liberal leadership, seeks seat” Global News, February 3, 2026 (Link).}

4  _{Mark Ramzy. “Is it everyone against Avi Lewis in the race to lead the federal NDP?” Toronto Star, February 4, 2026 (Spec/Star link - Paywalled).}

5  _{David Thurton. “Nenshi's 'blunt' message to federal NDP: Don't mess this up for Alberta” CBC News, February 4, 2026 (Link).}