OTTAWA—Julian Fantino, for years Ontario’s best known and highest-ranking cop, will be the Conservative candidate in the Vaughan federal by-election when it’s called by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Toronto Star has learned.

A senior government source said “he’s going for it, no doubt” — even as the Prime Minister’s office tried to douse expectations that the former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner was making the leap to federal politics.

“I was told it was a done deal,” another senior Conservative said.

Fantino would be expected to ultimately land in cabinet if the Conservatives are re-elected.

Getting the retired and often controversial hard-nosed, law and order former Toronto police chief is considered a coup for the federal Conservatives, who have been courting him for some time.

Ontario Progressive Conservatives were also trying to woo Fantino to run at the provincial level.

Fantino, who could not be reached Wednesday, once told the Star he was not interested in municipal politics because he had his sights set on something bigger.

A veteran Ontario conservative said Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty was smart enough to take him out of the mix at the provincial level by making him the head of the OPP.

Conservative Senator Bob Runciman said if the 67-year-old Fantino goes for it, he will undoubtedly get a cabinet post.

“He’s probably the best known police officer in Canada today and highly respected. It would be a coup, there’s no question about it,” Runciman told the Star.

“I don’t think there is any question if the Conservatives are still in power that he’d be immediately in cabinet.’’

The longtime Liberal riding opened up in the summer when Maurizio Bevilacqua, the MP for Vaughan for the past 22 years, decided to call it quits to run for Vaughan mayor.

Harper, who has yet to set a date for the Vaughan by-election, may wait and bundle it together with other by-elections across the country, the Star was told.

Two by-elections must be held in Manitoba, and Harper must call one for Winnipeg North by Oct. 27.

Even Liberals believe that Fantino will be difficult to beat, given his profile.

He was once York Region police chief and he lives in the riding in Woodbridge, home to a large Italian-Canadian community.

In an interview last month with the Star, Fantino downplayed talk of his leap into federal politics but stopped well short of denying an interest.

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“At this point, I am more interested in decompressing from 42 years of very busy public service, and that’s where it’s at,” Fantino said.

“Who knows what the future will bring?”

Over his years as a police executive Fantino has certainly been an often outspoken and controversial figure.

In 1994, gay activists in London, Ont., accused Fantino, who was then that city’s police chief, of turning a child pornography investigation into a witch hunt against gay men.

Fantino denied any such thing, but acknowledged he should have “communicated, sought out and done a little bit more proactive work with the gay community in London before all of this.”

In 2002, when the Star ran a series of award-winning articles exposing racial bias on the Toronto force, then-chief Fantino flatly denied it existed. The police union launched a $2.7 billion class-action libel lawsuit against the Star. It eventually was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada, which upheld a previous decision by the Ontario Superior Court.

Fantino, who presided over the provincial police for almost four years, inherited the complicated Caledonia native standoff from his predecessor Gwen Boniface and his efforts to defuse tensions would land him in hot water.

A local activist, Gary McHale, filed private charges against Fantino, alleging he had attempted to influence municipal politicians, but it took a court in Cayuga a mere 20 minutes to dismiss the allegations.

McHale had alleged that an email Fantino sent to the Haldimand County mayor in 2007 constituted a threat. The court disagreed.

It has been suggested that Fantino would have to change his position on the long-gun registry in order to fit in with the Conservative caucus but, in fact, he was one chief to speak out against the registry, as he did in 2003 when he was Toronto police chief.

A spokesperson for Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair pointed out the registry back then, before the RCMP assumed responsibility for it in 2006, was not the system it is today.

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