Under Bill 9, Ontario municipalities will move from a patchwork of locally designed ethics frameworks to a standardized code of conduct applied across the province’s 444 municipalities. The law would also create, for the first time, a mechanism to remove municipal politicians from office in the most serious cases.

Bains registered Monday with Elections Ontario to run in the Ontario Liberal leadership race, formally launching a bid that had been the subject of speculation for weeks after QP Briefing and iPolitics first reported in April that senior Liberals were encouraging him to enter the contest.

The province, Ford said, would intervene in support of the region. He said that legislation invoking Section 33 of the Charter would only come later, if necessary.

Mulroney, who currently serves as Ontario’s Treasury Board president and minister of Francophone affairs, said the decision followed a period of personal reflection prompted by the death of her father, former prime minister Brian Mulroney, and a major transition in family life.

Erskine-Smith was vying to represent the provincial party in the upcoming Scarborough Southwest byelection but lost a nomination race on May 9 to business owner Ahsanul Hafiz by 19 votes.

The race, won by candidate Ahsanul Hafiz over soon-to-be ex-federal Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith by just 19 votes, has triggered a broader debate inside Ontario politics about how parties choose candidates, who should be allowed to vote in those contests, and whether private political organizations can continue policing themselves.