Nate Erskine-Smith, a former Canadian Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities who served under both Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney, was supposed to be a shoo-in for the nomination for a by-election in Ontario for the left-wing Liberal Party.
Instead, the open-borders advocate got beaten by a Bangladeshi immigrant pizza shop owner — and he’s complaining about ID issues while voting. Whoa, pal, getting into a bit of denialism there, aren’t you?
Erskine-Smith, who had been a member of Parliament for a neighboring seat — or “riding,” as they’re known in Canada’s idiot nomenclature — had meant the nomination in the Scarborough Southwest riding to be “a first checkpoint en route to the party’s leadership,” according to the Oakville, Ontario, News.
One hopes he has an alternative checkpoint to start off his journey there, because he got beaten by Ahsanul Hafiz.
“After a full day of ranked ballot voting to select the riding’s Liberal candidate in the upcoming provincial byelection, Hafiz emerged victorious with 718 votes, followed by Beaches-East York Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith with 699 votes by the third ballot of the ranked count. Other candidates seeking nomination were Qadira Jackson and Mahmuda Nasrin,” Beach Metro reported Saturday.
“I’m honored to have the support of Scarborough Southwest Liberals and I’m ready to get to work,” Hafiz said after the win.
“This community deserves a strong voice at Queen’s Park that understands the challenges people are facing and is focused on delivering real results for local families.”
Hafiz came to Canada roughly 25 years ago on a student visa and is now “a businessman owning about 30 Domino’s Pizza shops across the province,” Oakville News reported. This might have actually been a good outcome otherwise, since, you know, he works for a living, as opposed to having spent most of his 40-odd years on this planet Earth just mindlessly climbing the rungs of the Liberal Party hierarchy.
However, this whole thing is rich on a number of levels, beginning with Hafiz telling his supporters that certain opportunities “do not exist” for immigrants to Canada. What, they might only have to settle for 15 Domino’s franchises?
“Like many of you, I came here as an immigrant,” he said before the voting. “Ontario is not moving forward. I want to help build the same opportunities that were available to me.”
However, Erskine-Smith is crying foul. According to the CBC, Hafiz and fellow candidate Qadira Jackson apparently struck a deal to play the ranked-choice system, urging their supporters to put the other candidate as No. 2 so that the guy who used to be in the Trudeau and Carney governments wasn’t back there.
He wasn’t leftist enough for the Liberals. Let that one sink in.
And then there’s Erskine-Smith, who said he would need to “debrief” with his team about possible fraud after the loss.
“At one table, it was 50 per cent of the people that had ID issues, saying they lost driver’s licenses and that they lived in the area, so I don’t know,” Erskine-Smith said. “It’s unfair for me to specifically speculate.”
Hellbound and Down 