Six cabinet members and a former Liberal leadership candidate will contest bellwether ridings in the 2025 federal election, with more than half the seats based in the southern Ontario regions that helped deliver majorities for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2011 and Justin Trudeau’s Grits in 2015.

Following the redistribution of ridings, there are currently 34 seats that have been held by whichever party has been in power since at least 2011. That does not include former bellwethers that have been abolished or split up into new ridings.

“Bellwether” is a term used to describe ridings that tend to vote in members of the governing party, switching between parties only when the national government changes. For the purposes of this story, bellwethers are any ridings that have elected a representative from the governing party at each election since 2011: the Conservatives from 2011-2015, and the Liberals ever since.

Half of those ridings have only been bellwethers since the 2011 election when the Conservatives made substantial inroads in the Greater Toronto Area and southwestern Ontario to secure majority government. Those gains were largely reversed in 2015 when the Liberals secured their only majority government under Trudeau. 

Following the 2019 and 2021 elections, the Liberals have retained 17 of the seats that first began as bellwethers in 2011.

Among the Liberals contesting the bellwether ridings are five ministers.

Environment Minister Terry Duguid is reoffering in Winnipeg South, Man., a bellwether since 1988; Democratic Institutions Minister Arielle Kayabaga in London West, Ont., which has backed the governing party since 2008; Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson in North Vancouver—Capilano, B.C., also a bellwether since 2008; and Treasury Board President Ginette Petitpas Taylor in Moncton—Dieppe, N.B., chief government whip Rechie Valdez in Mississauga—Streetsville, Ont., and Public Services and Procurement Minister Ali Ehsassi in Willowdale, Ont., all bellwethers since 2011.

Industry Minister Anita Anand, meanwhile, will run in the newly-formed seat of Oakville East, Ont., one of two ridings to be created from her erstwhile seat of Oakville, Ont. The former riding had been held by a governing party since 2008—first by Conservative MP Terence Young from 2008-2015, then by Liberal John Oliver from 2015-2019. Anand succeeded Oliver when he opted not to reoffer after a single term.

Anand initially announced in January that she planned not to reoffer in the next election, but changed her mind in February. When announcing her decision to reporters in Toronto, she described the new riding as a bellwether.

“Thousands of Canadians have written to me, texted me, called me, spoken to me and asked me to stay, given this existential economic threat we are facing,” she told reporters. “My goal has always been to serve our country, and if I can do more for our country during the time of potential Trump tariffs and in terms of my ability to reduce interprovincial barriers to trade, I want to do that.”

Anand will face Conservative candidate Ron Chhinzer, a former police officer who previously ran as the party’s candidate in the 2022 Mississauga—Lakeshore, Ont. byelection. Based on transposed results from the 2021 election onto the 2025 boundaries, Anand has a slightly higher margin to defend—while she had a 6.1 percentage point margin in Oakville in 2021, her margin is 6.78 points in Oakville East.

Further west along Lake Ontario, Karina Gould, who placed third in this year’s Liberal leadership contest and who sat in cabinet between 2017-2025, will reoffer in Burlington, Ont. Burlington is one of the longest-standing bellwethers in the country, having elected a member of the governing party in every election since 1984.

The 2025 election in Burlington will be a rematch of the 2021 contest between Gould and Conservative candidate Emily Brown, a mathematics professor at Sheridan College’s Pilon School of Business. Gould won the riding in 2021 with 45.7 per cent of the vote to Brown’s 37.3 per cent. 

Burlington is one of 15 Ontario ridings unchanged by the 2022 redistribution, meaning that Gould’s margin is also unchanged.

The Conservative Party is bringing current and former MPs to Brown’s aid in an attempt to flip the seat. Last week, the Burlington Conservative Association advertised a March 29 campaign office grand opening and barbecue featuring former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, former Conservative Burlington MP Mike Wallace, and ex-Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who is currently the president of oil and gas lobby group Canadians for Affordable Energy.

Polling aggregator 338Canada’s district-by-district projections last week showed the Liberals ahead in all 34 bellwether ridings. The party is most vulnerable in:

• Cambridge, Ont., where former parliamentary secretary Bryan May is seeking a fourth term; 
• London West, Ont., contested by Kayabaga for a second time; 
• Eglinton—Lawrence, Ont., the riding of departing MP and current PMO chief of staff Marco Mendicino, which does not have a Liberal-nominated candidate at the time of publication; 
• Mississauga—Lakeshore, Ont., where Charles Sousa will face his first general federal election after winning a 2022 byelection;
• Nipissing—Timiskaming, Ont., where Pauline Rochefort will try to retain the seat held by former House Speaker Anthony Rota; and
• York Centre, Ont., where former mental health minister Ya’ara Saks will run for the third time.

Kayabaga’s riding is the most vulnerable of the bellwethers based on an Elections Canada transposition of the 2021 votes to the 2025 boundaries. While Kayabaga won London West with a 4.42-point margin in the 2021 election, the redistribution has narrowed that margin to only 2.72 points. 

Mortgage broker Adam Benni will contest London West for the Conservatives, while Unifor Ontario Regional Council chair Shinade Allder has been nominated for the NDP. 

Allder’s team received a boost from NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s visit to her office on March 26, the fourth day of the campaign. Allder also joined Singh at a campaign announcement in Windsor, Ont., on March 27.

Kayabaga, meanwhile, appeared with Liberal Leader Mark Carney at a campaign stop in the neighbouring riding of London-Fanshawe, Ont., on March 26. The pair were joined by Peter Fragiskatos—who is reoffering in the nearby bellwether of London Centre, Ont.—and  London-Fanshawe Liberal candidate Najam Naqvi, who is aiming to unseat NDP incumbent Lindsay Mathyssen.

Earlier in the week, Carney campaigned in Central Nova, N.S., a bellwether since 2006. The riding, which was recreated in 2004 after a prior abolition, was also previously a bellwether from 1984-1993. In its current incarnation, two MPs have held the riding: former Conservative minister and one-time leadership candidate Peter MacKay, from 2004-2015; and Liberal former immigration and housing minister Sean Fraser from 2015 onwards.

Fraser had announced in December that he would not seek re-election. However, he changed his mind and on March 25 announced he would seek a fourth term, pushing out Graham Murray as the party’s candidate for the seat.

During interviews with reporters on March 25, Fraser characterized his riding as a former “Conservative stronghold.” The riding that largely replaced Central Nova in 1997—Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, N.S.—was represented by MacKay for the Progressive Conservatives, then the Conservatives, between 1997 and its abolition in 2004.

“When [former prime minister] Brian Mulroney—who became a friend of mine before he passed away—wanted a safe seat when he had become the leader of the Conservatives in the 1980s, he actually got Elmer MacKay step to step aside so he could be the MP here,” Fraser said, referring to Mulroney’s representation of the seat between 1983 and 1984. “Over the course of my life, it’s been Liberal once before I was elected in 2015… this is not a Liberal stronghold. You can take nothing for granted.”

Fraser said he decided to reoffer because Carney had asked him to. He had initially quit because he wanted to spend more time at home with his young children, but said the prime minister provided “assurances and comfort that I’m going to be able to be closer to home than I was over the course of the past few years and still make a contribution to the country that we all love.”

“I was concerned about being apart from my family for the four years that may follow,” he said. “Having had the conversation and given very real assurances that I could work with the prime minister to develop an arrangement that allows me to be closer to home than I was previously is the kind of thing that makes this possible for me.”

sjeffery@hilltimes.com

The Hill Times