The nascent Ontario Liberal leadership race is getting an infusion of new blood.

Former Liberal candidate and one-time political aide Alvin Tedjo will formally announce his bid to lead the troubled former governing party on Sunday.

“I’m running for my kids — my kids are 4, 6, and 8-years-old — and everyone else in this province who is worried about the future,” Tedjo, 35, said Thursday.

“We’ve got an unprecedented amount of changes coming up in terms of our climate, in terms of our economy, in terms of our education system,” said the former Sheridan College director of government relations.

“And there are real consequences that we can see every week that this government is completely unprepared for,” he said, referring to Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives.

Tedjo, who lost last June in Oakville North-Burlington to Conservative Effie Triantafilopoulos, was one of scores of defeated Liberal candidates across the province.

“We needed to listen and I’m excited about listening to people, about engaging with them and what their concerns and issues are. That’s where we sort of lost track,” he said.

“I have all the respect for Kathleen (Wynne) and previous cabinet ministers for the last 15 years, who I think did a lot of great things for the province, but we have to face the fact that Ontarians didn’t like the direction we were going.”

He joins front-runner Steven Del Duca, 45, the former transportation minister who was defeated in his Vaughan seat, and Don Valley East MPP Michael Coteau, 46, the former children and youth services minister, in the undeclared contest.

After being in office since 2003, Wynne’s Liberals went from a majority government to a rump of seven MPPs in the 124-member legislature in 2018.

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Tory MPPs regularly mock them in the house as the “minivan party” because the caucus is so small it could travel in one family-sized vehicle.

But they could soon all fit in a sedan — two Liberal MPPs announced this month plans to leave provincial politics.

MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers (Ottawa-Vanier) is becoming principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto this summer and MPP Marie-France Lalonde (Orléans) is seeking the federal Liberal nomination in her home riding for the Oct. 21 election.

Both of those seats could be considered winnable ridings for the Liberals — especially after the government eliminated the French-language commissioner’s post, angering Ontario’s francophone community.

Still, the cash-strapped Liberal party will have to contest two byelections, likely early next year, to keep their caucus at seven.

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More than 800 party delegates gather June 7 for the annual general meeting in Mississauga, where the byelection campaigns and the forthcoming leadership race will be discussed.

A new Liberal leader is expected to be chosen next year and the next Ontario election is in 2022. Until then, John Fraser, the MPP for Ottawa South, will be interim leader.

Currently, there are 73 PC MPPs — including Speaker Ted Arnott, who does not caucus with the governing party — 40 New Democrats, seven Liberals, three former Tories who now sit as Independents, and one Green.

Robert Benzie is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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