One of the five candidates vying for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party will be making a stop in Chatham-Kent this weekend.
Nate Erskine-Smith will be in Chatham at Turns and Tales Board Game Cafe on Saturday at 10 a.m. to meet with local Liberals and address questions and concerns from area residents. The current MP for Beaches-East York and former litigation lawyer is visiting the municipality as part of a cross-province tour.
He said he sees the meet-and-greet as a fantastic opportunity.
“The Ontario Liberal Party is rebuilding. It doesn’t have an active presence in too many parts of this province and there’s a huge opportunity to build it together,” said Erskine-Smith. “Whether or not a community has a Liberal MPP representing them at Queen’s Park, every community should have a strong voice in our party and that’s the kind of party that I want to build.”
Erskine-Smith said the biggest issues currently facing the local region are housing affordability, transportation, access to family doctors, mental health and addictions and their impact on downtown areas.
“If we had the competence, the compassion, the integrity that we deserve at Queen’s Park, we would have a government that has the ambition to address these serious challenges that are in communities all across the province,” he said.
While the Liberal Party currently only holds seven seats in the Ontario Legislature, Erskine-Smith said he believes the party is poised for success in the next provincial election.
“I’m confident that we can not only deliver a win in 2026, but we’re setting ourselves up for success in a long-term way,” he said. “What I think marks [the Ford government] in particular, like with licence plate giveaways… they’re marked by short-term electoral interests rather than the long-term public interests and we need the opposite in our politics.”
Erskine-Smith currently faces four other candidates in the leadership race — Bonnie Crombie, Ted Hsu, Yasir Naqvi, and Adil Shamji.
The Liberal leadership election will take place November 25-26, with the winner to be announced on December 2.
