Ontario Liberal MPP Adil Shamji is officially stepping into the race to lead his party, hoping his health-care credentials and criticisms of the Ford government will give him the edge in the five-way contest.
The government’s seemingly unpopular health-care decisions gave Shamji — an emergency room physician who still picks up hospital shifts during the Legislature’s downtime — the platform to offer a critical view of private delivery of health care and the opportunity to build more name recognition in the province.
“When Doug Ford’s Conservatives started picking away at our public institutions and making backroom deals to undercut the fabric of Ontario, he thought he could get away with it,” Shamji said on his campaign website which was registered in late February.
Earlier this year Shamji began amassing a campaign team, including Quito Maggi, president of polling firm Mainstreet Research; Natalie Hart, general manager of the Malton business improvement area; and Patrick Smith, who has managed multiple campaigns in Don Valley East.
Ahead of his official launch, Shamji also began rolling out platform pledges for health care, education and inclusion issues.
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On health care, Shamji is pledging an $875 million, six-year plan, to speed up credentialing of physicians and boost the number of family doctors to ensure patients province-wide have access to family medicine.
On education, Shamji is proposing to create mandatory student-teacher ratios and eliminate standardized testing, while keeping in place changes made to the education system by the Ford government.
Shamji is also proposing a “floating” provincial holiday, giving Ontarians access to a paid statutory day off that can be taken at their choosing.
Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Liberal MPs Nate Erskine-Smith and Yasir Naqvi and Liberal MPP Ted Hsu have all declared their candidacies.
The Ontario Liberal Party executive said candidates must pay a $100,000 entry fee and a refundable $25,000 deposit.
Liberals will pick the next leader using a ranked ballot vote Nov. 25-26; the party says it will release round-by-round results on Dec. 2, the weekend after the vote.