Smart. Competent. Nice.
All are labels The Trillium has heard multiple Liberals bestow upon Ted Hsu. Usually complimentary, the last — nice — is meant to bite, with Hsu being all-but-ready to run for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party.
The Kingston and the Islands MPP says this trait of his isn't something he plans to hide. So don't expect no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy Ted Hsu any time soon.
Instead, he sees it as a strength.
The province's Liberal Party needs to regain Ontarians' trust, Hsu said. By being amicable, but still criticizing the government fairly, the Liberals — with their eight-member third-party caucus — have a better chance to get things done, while regaining Ontarians' trust in the process, according to the former one-term MP.
Hsu spoke with The Trillium on Wednesday, days ahead of the kickoff of what's viewed widely by Liberals as their most consequential annual general meeting in decades.
The convention that's attracting 1,500 or more Liberal diehards to Hamilton this weekend also serves as a unique opportunity for Hsu — along with his fellow leadership considerers — to pitch himself to party power-brokers and members alike as their best option to take the reins and drive them to 2026.
Hsu's been working away at preparing a leadership run since shortly after last spring's election. He told this Trillium reporter about two weeks after the June 2 vote that he was considering running.
According to Hsu, he's built a team since then of about 90 volunteers, including a policy team. It's zeroed in on two focuses: housing/cost-of-living and health-care capacity. "If voters don't trust us on those two things, then there's no point in talking about anything else," said Hsu, who unsurprisingly won't be releasing any policy specifics before the start of an official leadership campaign.
The parameters of the race, along with its timeline, have yet to be set. The party's incoming executive council will be tasked with pulling those together. That group will be elected this weekend. Same goes for whether delegates or, for a change, members will elect the new leader. Whether the vote is decided this year, or next, is something the party's mostly novice new executive will decide.
The race will almost certainly include Hsu and Liberal MPs Yasir Naqvi and Nate Erskine-Smith.
MPPs Stephen Blais and newbies Stephanie Bowman and Adil Shamji haven't ruled out running, but trail Hsu—Naqvi—Erskine-Smith by months of organizing. The excitement around Bonnie Crombie, Mississauga's mayor, jumping to provincial politics has ramped up in recent days, but she's said she is "entirely focused" on her city, even as she's set to join Liberals in Hamilton.
So what does Hsu have that Naqvi, former provincial attorney general, and Erskine-Smith, the federal Libs' maverick, don't?
For starters: a seat at Queen's Park.
Hsu said he feels it's difficult to compare the absence of his party's former leader, Steven Del Duca, from the legislature during his two-and-a-half years heading the party to the circumstances its future leader will face, because of the anomaly that was the COVID-19 pandemic. Del Duca's lack of a seat was also not something the Liberals' 2022 campaign review cast blame on.
However, Hsu did say the next Liberal leader should "be working very closely with caucus to take advantage of the capabilities of the talent that we have here (at the legislature)."
Along with Hsu, Blais, Bowman and Shamji, the Liberal caucus also includes MPPs-since-2013 John Fraser, the interim leader, and Mitzie Hunter, who's considering making the jump to municipal politics to run for mayor of Toronto, fellow 2022 electee Mary-Margaret McMahon and Lucille Collard, who was elected in a 2020 byelection on the same date that Blais was.
Hsu also highlighted the fact that he has plenty of opposition experience, unlike Naqvi and Erskine-Smith. Hsu's federal MP stint was from 2011-2015. He kept Kingston and the Islands under Liberal control with roughly the same vote share as his predecessor, Peter Milliken, Canada's Speaker for 10 years, in an election that saw his party's seats reduced by more than half to 34, the worst outcome in history for the Liberal Party of Canada.
"It's a lot harder to get heard when you're in opposition. It's a lot harder to raise money when you're in opposition. So, I think that experience is valuable," Hsu said.
Naqvi was Ottawa Centre's MPP from 2007-2018, the last 11 of the 15 years that the Liberals were in power in Ontario before Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives were elected. He was a cabinet minister from 2013-2018. Naqvi was defeated by the NDP's Joel Harden in 2018.
Erskine-Smith has been Beaches—East York's MP since 2015, coming into office when Justin Trudeau's Liberals swept into power. Hsu forwent a re-election attempt in 2015 to spend more time with his family, including his two daughters, who were four- and 11-years old at the time.
Hearkening back to one of his sticking points — the importance of holding constituents' trust, Hsu said his experience as an MP in the third party in parliament shaped that thinking. "Voters are looking for trust. They're looking for somebody who's authentic, which is connected with trust, and being true to that brand is important."
"One of the hurdles we have is that people still remember the previous Liberal governments... and so I think there's still work to be done to rebuild trust, and that's something I worked on a lot as an MP."
Another thing Hsu says separates him from Naqvi and Erskine-Smith is the constituency he's accustomed to representing. While Ottawa, downtown Toronto and Kingston are all Liberal strongholds, unlike Beaches—East York and Ottawa Centre, Kingston and the Islands has urban, suburban and rural parts. "I have this diverse riding, and I think if the Liberal Party wants to be relevant in all parts of Ontario — rural and urban — I think my riding is much more representative of the voters we need to earn the trust of."
Hsu's work as the Liberal caucus liaison for Ontario's central east and central north regions, two of its nine, has also brought him to "60 to 70" events with various riding associations, both virtual and in-person, over the last few months, which he says has been "a little bit sobering."
"I've learned precisely how weak and non-existent some riding associations are, and how much they need to be fixed," Hsu said.
Regional disparities and certain ridings' weaknesses were two things spotlighted in the Liberals' 2022 election campaign. "The majority of participants we heard from in rural areas felt the platform completely disregarded non-GTA ridings," it said, along with that "82 per cent of local campaign executives said volunteer recruitment was the biggest challenge faced in their riding."
"I think everybody who's been talking to different riding associations has realized how poor the situation is in the party and how much work is needed to rebuild them," Hsu said.
Another differentiator is his almost-unbelievable pre-politics career path.
Before Erskine-Smith and Naqvi were elected, each was a lawyer — one of the more-common pre-politics careers.
After growing up in Kingston and graduating from Queen's University, Hsu completed his PhD in physics at Princeton University, studying under the supervision of a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. A few years later, he switched to finance, which took him to Paris and eventually Tokyo, where he worked as the executive director of Morgan Stanley's office in the Japanese capital. After leaving Tokyo and returning to Kingston, Hsu became involved with the local Liberal riding associations and later joined SWITCH, a not-for-profit sustainable energy association, based in the city he grew up in, before running to be an MP in 2011.
Still, there's that whole nice guy thing.
Calling back the lead-up to the 2015 federal election, Hsu said "Tom Mulcair did a great job of attacking the Harper Conservative government in the House of Commons, but in the end people were looking for hope, (and) they were looking for somebody they believed would change things, and get something done."
"That's what I want to do, and I think that's what I represent," he added.
"It's more important to be in a position to get something done, to get the political will, to work with other parties... than it is to score some points and clap loudly and cheer."
