MP Yasir Naqvi officially joins Ontario Liberal leadership race: ‘My mission is to defeat Doug Ford’

Yasir Naqvi is finally making it official — he’s a candidate for the Ontario Liberal leadership.

The Ottawa Centre Liberal MP will formally enter the contest Saturday with hopes of guiding the Grits back to power by toppling Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives in 2026.

A former provincial attorney general, he is mindful of the daunting task facing the next leader of a party that governed Ontario from 2003 until 2018 but now lacks official standing in the legislature.

“I’m focused on transforming our party in all 124 ridings,” Naqvi, a one-time Ontario Liberal Party president, told the Star on the eve of his launch.

“We need to get ourselves where Ontarians are. I don’t think it’s a matter of left or right. I want to build a big-tent party … a party that is always listening and always learning,” he said.

“We need to be a practical party again. I didn’t get into politics to tell people how to live their lives. My aim is to make their lives easier.”

Haunted by the Tories’ effective attacks on previous leader Steven Del Duca as former premier Kathleen Wynne’s “right-hand man,” some Liberals believe the party should downplay ties to the past.

Naqvi — who, like Del Duca, is a former key Wynne cabinet minister — doesn’t buy that.

“I’m the most experienced candidate. I know how government works. I’ve helped to make big decisions. Experience matters,” said the Ottawa lawyer, a single father of two.

That means telling Ontarians about “the good things we did, but also the lessons learned,” he said of the Liberal dynasty of Wynne and her predecessor Dalton McGuinty.

It will also entail reminding voters how things have been going since the Tories took office five years ago.

“Doug Ford is failing people on the promise of Ontario — on family medicine, crowded classrooms,” said Naqvi, who first broached his return to provincial politics in an interview with the Star last December.

“My mission is to defeat Doug Ford in 2026. Things can be better.”

Naqvi, who stepped down as a parliamentary secretary in March, plans to remain an MP until the leadership race is decided on Dec. 2.

In contrast to the official opposition New Democrats, who acclaimed leader Marit Stiles in February, the Liberal field is getting crowded and generating buzz for a party with only seven seats in the 124-member legislature, five shy of official status.

Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith (Beaches-East York) and first-term Liberal MPP Ted Hsu (Kingston and the Islands) registered for the contest last month.

Both have touted the fact that they had no role in the Wynne or McGuinty governments — and therefore no political baggage the Tories could exploit in 2026.

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie made headlines launching a leadership exploratory committee two weeks ago.

Crombie, whose potential candidacy has preoccupied Ford, will decide soon whether to officially enter the race. A former Liberal MP, she also wasn’t at Queen’s Park in the Wynne-McGuinty era and has said the provincial Grits veered too far left in their final years in office.

Others considering bids are rookie MPPs Stephanie Bowman (Don Valley West) and Adil Shamji (Don Valley East).

The next Liberal leader will be decided using a new one-member, one-vote ranked-ballot system similar to how the Tories elect their leaders.

Candidates must pay a $100,000 entry fee plus a $25,000 refundable deposit.

Naqvi will kick off his campaign Saturday with a pancake breakfast for supporters in Ottawa before an ice cream whistle-stop at Reid’s Dairy in Belleville, and then will end the day with a banquet rally in Mississauga.

The Dixie Road banquet hall for his evening event was selected long before Crombie expressed interest in seeking the Liberal leadership, he said.

“I have a lot of support in Peel — and in Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo and Durham and across the province,” the veteran politician said, noting he has been criss-crossing Ontario for months meeting with current and potential members.

If he wins, Naqvi, who moved to Canada from Pakistan when he was 15 years old, would make Ontario political history as the first person of colour to lead a major provincial party.

“I’m someone who’s always challenged the status quo — in everything I’ve done in my life.”