Nathaniel Erskine Smith

Early life and career

Erskine-Smith was born on June 15, 1984 in Toronto, Ontario, to two local teachers and was given a hyphenated surname comprising those of his parents. He graduated from Malvern Collegiate Institute. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and a Juris Doctor in 2010 from Queen's University. When he was a student at Queen's, he was an unsuccessful candidate for city council for Sydenham District in Kingston, Ontario in the 2006 municipal elections.

Erskine-Smith studied political philosophy and constitutional law at Oxford, where he earned a Master of Laws (BCL). He also worked pro bono with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. At the time of his election, Erskine-Smith was practicing at Kramer Simaan Dhillon LLP, a commercial litigation firm in downtown Toronto.

Politics

In the 2015 federal election Erskine-Smith ran as the Liberal candidate in the riding of Beaches—East York. He defeated New Democrat incumbent Matthew Kellway by 10,345 votes. Erskine-Smith became the youngest MP elected from the Greater Toronto Area.

Erskine-Smith is a member of the Public Safety and National Security Committee, as well as the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics committee. Over the first six months of the 42nd Parliament, he voted against his governing Liberal party 11 times out of 90 votes, significantly higher than the most rebellious MP of the previous Parliament, Michael Chong, who voted against his party 14 times out of 935 votes.

In January 2016, he was acclaimed as the president of the Canadian group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union for a one-year term. In that capacity, he delivered a speech about youth in politics at an IPU meeting in Zambia.

In February 2016, Erskine-Smith represented the Canadian government's pro-marijuana legalization views to a joint United Nations/Inter-Parliamentary Union conference reviewing how different countries were dealing with illegal drugs. He partnered with Mexican Senator Laura Rojas in a debate against Herman Adranacus, an Indonesian MP, and Ibrahim Omer, the speaker of the National Assembly of Sudan, to argue that countries should seek alternatives to incarceration in cases where individuals have drugs solely for personal use.

On February 22, 2016 he introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-246, that seeks to ban the import of shark fins and make Canada's animal cruelty laws tougher. Critics, such as Conservative MP Robert Sopuck, opposed it on the grounds that reclassifying animal cruelty laws by moving them into the public morals section of the Criminal Code from the property section would hurt groups such as farmers, hunters, and medical researchers. The bill won support from the typically-Conservative leaning hockey commentator Don Cherry. On October 6, 2016, the bill was defeated 198 to 84 at second reading.

Personal life

Erskine-Smith was raised vegetarian, and is now vegan. He has Crohn's disease.

Erskine-Smith is married to Amy Symington, a prominent Toronto vegan chef and nutritionist, whom he met in an undergraduate film studies course at Queen's University. They have one son together, Mackinlay, born in late 2016.