Ontario Green Party leader Mike Shriner says he is obligated to speak to his constituents in Guelph, Ont., after a letter encouraging him to run for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party circulated online .
Several high-ranking officials of the provincial Liberals released an open letter on Sunday calling on Shriner to step away from the Greens and run for the leadership of his own party.
But Shriner has repeatedly said that he will talk with residents and Green Party supporters before making a decision.
“I want to do this in an open and transparent way,” Shriner told CJOY and Global News on Tuesday. “I think I owe it to people to think about this letter and to respond to it.”
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After initially turning it down, Shriner stated that there were a few factors that prompted him to consider the offer.
“When I received the letter, it challenged me to think about whether I could do things differently to advance the issues I’ve been working so hard to advance.”
Shriner became leader of the Ontario Green Party in 2006. He was first elected as the MPP for Guelph in 2018. Shriner was re-elected in the 2022 provincial election last June and remains his party’s only elected member of the Ontario legislature.
The Liberals finished third for the second consecutive election behind the victorious Progressive Conservatives and the second-place NDP. In that election, then-Liberal leader Steven Del Duca stepped down after being unable to win a seat in a Toronto-area riding.
A former Liberal leadership candidate who lost to Del Duca wrote an open letter to Schreiner.
“A group of people shared a feeling that they should enter the race and we want to say that publicly,” said Kate Graham, “It is not part of a master plan.”
Shriner says he has already heard from some people about getting behind the Liberal leadership while others are not entirely convinced.
“I’ve told some people, ‘Don’t do it,'” Schreiner said. “I’ve had a lot of people say to me, ‘This is something you should think about because we need something bold to push back against the Ford government.’
No timetable or criteria have been set by the Ontario Liberal Party to name its next leader.
— With files from Isaac Callan and Colin D’Mello
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