Another senior member of Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty's cabinet has stepped out to run at the municipal level. Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Jim Watson quit provincial politics to run for the mayor of Ottawa.
His role at the cabinet table will temporarily be filled by Minister of the Environment John Gerretsen, though plans are in place for a cabinet shuffle in the coming weeks. The announcement comes hot on the heels of former provincial Minister of Energy and Infrastructure George Smitherman's widely publicized departure to run for the mayor of Toronto.
Smitherman's mayoral odds received a boost when his biggest apparent rival, former provincial Progressive Conservative party leader John Tory, bowed out of the race in the first week of January.
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