OTTAWA—Veteran Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis is stepping down after more than a quarter-century of representing Scarborough-Agincourt in the House of Commons to run in the upcoming municipal election.

The resignation is immediate, which means yet another byelection will need to be called in the GTA this year. Trinity-Spadina is also vacant, after NDP MP Olivia Chow resigned her seat to run for the mayor’s job in Toronto.

Karygiannis said he will run for the Toronto Council Ward 39 seat held by Mike Del Grande, who announced he won’t be running again. Karygiannis says he doesn’t have a favourite mayoralty candidate, at least not yet.

“I’m going to concentrate on my riding — sorry, ward. I’ve got to get used to the word,” Karygiannis told reporters. The big issues for him will be subways, hospitals and the state of rooming houses.

“Scarborough Sheppard line is a must, period, full stop. I’ve got a hospital which is going to be turned into a part-time hospital, Scarborough Grace. That has to be a full hospital,” Karygiannis said.

Question marks had been hanging over Karygiannis’s future since he stopped being the veterans’ affairs critic for the Liberals last month. Though he said at the time he intended to run again in 2015, he announced his resignation in the Commons after question period on Tuesday.

Pausing occasionally to weep, especially when he talked about his mother and his family, Karygiannis told his fellow MPs: “It has been over 25 years since I walked into this place, and I still get goose bumps every time I walk in here.”

Recalling a Toronto Star article written about his arrival in Ottawa in 1988, he said: “I have to admit that over those 25 years, I have had the time of my life. This is a place where one can make a difference. I think I have made a difference.”

The departure of the veteran MP contributes to an emerging pattern around Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau — a shedding of the old guard, whether they’re senators or experienced politicos. Since the beginning of 2014, Trudeau has taken some heat for expelling senators from the Liberals’ parliamentary caucus and blocking two-time candidate Christine Innes from running in the Trinity-Spadina byelection.

In the Commons, Trudeau said Karygiannis “embodied what it means to be a constituency MP,” and was recognized for that hard work with eight re-election victories after his first win in 1988. Trudeau also hailed the Scarborough MP’s work abroad with disaster relief in Pakistan, China and Haiti, among many other countries.

Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, one of the few MPs on the Conservative benches who was also in the Commons in 1988, said Karygiannis made a mark for himself as a politician with “enthusiasm and determination.”

Karygiannis, 59, acquired a reputation as a hardball political player in the 26 years since he was first elected and his deep connections to immigrant communities made him a formidable organizer throughout Liberal leadership dramas of the past decades.

Known as “Jimmy K,” he could often be found in the thick of the nastier struggles within the fractious Liberal party, famously accused once of jamming gum into payphones to sabotage his rivals at a delegate-selection meeting.

He told reporters on Tuesday he may have mellowed somewhat over the years, but he was still proud of his fighting reputation. And he rejected suggestions he was leaving politics because he hadn’t worked on Trudeau’s leadership campaign or because he didn’t want to face an open-nomination fight under the Trudeau rules.

“Anybody that wants to outgun me or anybody that wants to outrun me, although I’m getting a little bit older, they’re more than welcome. They’ll be left behind,” he said.

The Greek-born Karygiannis immigrated to Canada with his parents when he was 11. The family settled in Toronto and Karygiannis went on to receive an industrial engineer’s degree from the University of Toronto. Married with five daughters, Karygiannis worked in the family shoe store before he embarked on his political career.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

He said that for all his embrace of the rough sport of politics, he regrets how “toxic” things have become since he was first election. He blamed Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.

“Unfortunately, the toxicity has come from the side of the government,” Karygiannis told reporters. “These people have not understood that it is not personal. You go home at night, you put your pants on, you put them at the same way as everybody else. . . . And some of the ministers, unfortunately, have brought the toxicity so much that has undermined what the institution is all about.”

Read more about: