Toronto’s deputy mayor is setting his sights on Queen’s Park.
Doug Holyday confirmed Thursday he will run for the Ontario PC Party in next month’s by-election in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. His candidacy sets up a provincial showdown on August 1 between two members of Rob Ford’s executive committee – earlier this week Councillor Peter Milczyn won the Liberal Party’s nomination in the same riding.
Holyday told reporters he made his decision Wednesday night and was running to try to wrest power away from Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government.
“I really feel strongly that we need a change at Queen’s Park, and if people like myself who might be able to do something about it aren’t willing to step up and do it, then who is going to do it? ” Holyday said.
Should Holyday jump to the provincial legislature, Mayor Rob Ford would likely feel his absence at City Hall. The deputy mayor, a longtime friend of the Ford family, has often served as the temperate public face of an administration that has been repeatedly hit by scandals, including allegations of crack cocaine use levelled against the mayor.
But Mayor Ford said Wednesday he would fully support Holyday in a run for MPP, telling reporters he’d be “out there banging on doors” for his deputy.
Asked on Thursday what the mayor’s reaction to his candidacy was, Holyday quipped, “He didn’t cry.”
The announcement of Holyday’s provincial bid was low key. PC leader Tim Hudak spilled the news Thursday morning during a scrum at a campaign event in Scarborough-Guildwood, one of five ridings facing a by-election next month. Holyday was at City Hall chairing a meeting of the audit committee at the time.
Upon hearing that he had entered the race, at least one councillor immediately called on him to resign his council seat. Shelley Carroll argued that to not resign would be hypocritical, considering that he lambasted then councillor Olivia Chow in 2004 when she ran federally for the NDP months after she was elected to council.
“He should stand by his principle. He made the loudest noise that a leave of absence was simply not enough, that you needed to resign right away, and furthermore if you have designs on any other order of government, you should never even run for council,” Carroll said. “That’s his principle.”
But Holyday said his and Chow’s situation’s weren’t comparable because the August by-elections couldn’t have been foreseen.
“This is something not of my choosing, the timing’s not of my choosing, it’s nothing that I’d planned, nothing that I’d even contemplated until two or three days ago,” he said.
“The circumstances are entirely different from someone running municipally, knowing that the federal election is planned and coming.”
The deputy mayor said he will be taking a leave of absence and not accepting any city pay while on the campaign trail, but promised to attend the July 16 meeting of council.
This isn’t the first time Holyday has tried for a seat at Queen’s Park. He ran for the Conservatives in Etobicoke West in 1987, but lost to a Liberal candidate. A veteran conservative politician, he’s been a municipal councillor since 1982, and was mayor of Etobicoke from 1994 to 1998.
