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Councillors Milczyn and Holyday Will Face Off in Provincial Byelection
If either one wins, he'll have to resign his council seat.
Welcome to political Thunderdome: two city councillors enter, one city councillor leaves (to take a new job as an MPP).
Several media outlets are reporting that Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) has agreed to be the PC candidate in a provincial byelection to fill the Etobicoke-Lakeshore seat vacated by former education minister Laurel Broten. Thing is, another councillor, Peter Milczyn (Ward 5, Etobicoke-Lakeshore), has already agreed to run for the Liberals.
The riding hasn’t elected an NDP MPP for almost two decades (Broten was a Liberal), so there’s a definite likelihood that one of these two councillors will win. Whichever one pulls it off will need to resign his council seat. Both men are on Mayor Rob Ford’s executive committee, and Holyday sometimes speaks for the mayor during scandals and sensitive negotiations. Either one would be a high-profile loss for the Ford administration.
The election is scheduled for August 1. Four other ridings will have byelections on the same day, including one other in Toronto: Scarborough-Guildwood.
Interesting side note: Holyday once believed that councillors who accept nominations for other office should have to resign immediately. Maybe he’s glad, now, that he didn’t get his way.