This op-ed contains descriptions of graphic and disturbing social media content involving themes of sexual assault and incest. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
I know the stench of the Scarborough Southwest Liberal association firsthand because I lived it. In January, I published an account of being groped by federal riding president Edward Nixon at a political event. He was drunk, aggressive, and fixated on a friend for more than fifteen minutes while touching my thigh uninvited.
When I confronted what had happened, the party met me with silence. No investigation. No discipline. That silence told me everything I needed to know about whose interests the Ontario Liberal Party actually protects. The answer was again confirmed this weekend in spectacularly ugly fashion.
Ahsanul Hafiz just won the Ontario Liberal nomination in Scarborough Southwest by 19 votes over federal MP Nate Erskine–Smith. It was a race the party establishment openly rigged—purging nearly 1,800 memberships and then, according to credible allegations, stuffing at least 30 more ballots into the count than were handed out.
In a race decided by 19 votes, there were more ballots cast than voters present.
As if outright electoral fraud were not enough, Hafiz's decade‑old Facebook posts surfaced the morning of the vote. Those posts, on a verified account bearing his name and photograph, linked repeatedly to videos described as depicting incestuous sexual assault.
This wasn't a youthful mistake. These were public endorsements of material so vile that any ordinary workplace would have terminated an employee on the spot. Yet the Ontario Liberal Party's vaunted vetting process—the same process that demands credit checks and a declaration that a candidate will not be “detrimental to the best interests of the Party”—waved him through without a second thought.
And that's before we get to the known sex offender reportedly operating inside Hafiz's campaign infrastructure. I don't say that lightly, I say it because multiple sources have confirmed it, and because the party that shrugged off a federal riding president sexually assaulting me is the same party that looks the other way when sexual predators attach themselves to winning campaigns.
The Ontario Liberal code of conduct is a fucking joke. If it meant anything, Hafiz would have been disqualified before a single ballot was cast. Instead, the establishment circled the wagons around a candidate whose online history makes him radioactive, because the one thing this party cannot tolerate is a threat to their control. Nate Erskine–Smith represented exactly that threat.
I have a few friends in Team Nate, and from what I was told, Nate was furious after the incident in Janurary he made it known that this kind of rot had to be rooted out of the party, and that he'd be cleaning house. That righteous anger is precisely why the OLP establishment threw everything—money, membership purges, a “Scarborough First” alliance—into blocking him.
Now interim leader John Fraser is pouring gasoline on the fire. With Team Nate having filed an appeal based on the ballot‑stuffing evidence, Fraser has effectively dismissed the challenge before it has even been fully heard. His posture is that Nate is making things up and that the 19‑vote margin is settled.
This is the response of a leader who has decided protecting the OLP establishment is more important than protecting women and young people. Fraser now has both a moral and political obligation to disqualify Hafiz and order a fresh nomination. The ballots were stuffed. The candidate's conduct violates any reasonable interpretation of the party's own rules. The rightful nominee was sabotaged.
I don't need to hear another hollow statement about “zero tolerance” from Liberal officials who have repeatedly shown us exactly how much they tolerate. The proof, preserved in ballot counts and Facebook screenshots, shows that the party's code of conduct would be more useful if I wiped my ass with it.
If John Fraser cannot see that, then he isn't fit to lead this party—and the Scarborough Southwest Liberals should be placed under trusteeship until every person who enabled this culture is removed. The corruption isn't an accident. It's a feature. And it has to end now.
This piece was written by an individual contributor and reflects the editorial position of The Provincial Times. Read our Content Policy here.
