Three Ontario By-Elections Put Ford Government to Its First Test Since Trade Talks Collapsed

Voters in three Ontario ridings — York-Simcoe, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek and Scarborough Southwest — cast ballots on Sept. 3, 2026, in provincial by-elections that serve as the first electoral test for Premier Doug Ford's government since Canada-U.S. trade talks fell apart in late August (The Globe and Mail).

A by-election is a vote held in a single riding to fill a seat left empty when a member of provincial parliament resigns or departs mid-term. The premier's office called these three on Aug. 5, starting a four-week campaign period (Government of Ontario). Elections Ontario, the non-partisan agency that runs provincial votes, confirmed the Sept. 3 date and offered a mail-in ballot option for all three contests (Elections Ontario; Elections Ontario Voter Information Service).

Two of the three seats belonged to the Progressive Conservatives before the vote. York-Simcoe opened when former cabinet minister Caroline Mulroney resigned. Hamilton East-Stoney Creek became available when former minister Neil Lumsden stepped down. The third seat, Scarborough Southwest, had been held for three terms by former Ontario NDP deputy leader Doly Begum, who left the party to run federally for the Liberals (The Globe and Mail).

The timing matters. On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney's Liberals won three federal by-elections across the country. That result gave momentum to provincial Liberal campaigns in Ontario and placed added pressure on both the governing PCs and the provincial NDP (The Globe and Mail).

York-Simcoe, a rural riding north of Toronto, was expected to stay PC. Its conservative lean made it the least competitive of the three. The more contested races were in Hamilton and Scarborough.

In Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, the NDP ran Monique Taylor, a former long-time MPP from a neighbouring area. The Liberal candidate was Heino Doessing, who placed second in the riding during the 2025 provincial election. The seat's PC incumbency, combined with the collapse of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, made it a genuine three-way race.

Scarborough Southwest was the most unpredictable of the three. The NDP viewed it as a must-win, fielding candidate Fatima Shaban in a riding Begum had held for three terms. The Liberals hoped to take the seat back, but their nomination process — the internal party vote that selects a candidate — was turbulent. Former Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith accused the party of wrongdoing after narrowly losing the nomination to candidate Ahsanul Hafiz (The Globe and Mail).

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles and interim Liberal Leader John Fraser both watched results from candidate events in Scarborough, a signal that both opposition leaders saw the riding as the night's bellwether — a contest whose result may point to broader trends (The Globe and Mail).

The PC Party, by contrast, barred journalists from attending its candidates' by-election parties, a departure from the tradition of open media access at such events (The Globe and Mail).

Early voter turnout offered little encouragement for any party banking on enthusiasm. In Hamilton, advance turnout was 5.1 per cent, down from 6.1 per cent in the comparable previous election. York-Simcoe's early turnout also dropped significantly (Global News.

The broader context here matters for reading these results. A by-election is always a partial verdict, shaped by local candidates, riding-specific dynamics and the narrow slice of voters who turn out. But these three contests carried an unusual load of provincial and federal crosscurrents. The Ford government entered the vote period dealing with the fallout of the collapsed trade talks with the United States, an economic file that touches manufacturing in Hamilton, suburban commuters in Scarborough and rural Ontario alike. The federal Liberal sweep on Monday added a tailwind for the Ontario Liberals under interim leader Fraser, who is still working to rebuild the party's provincial standing. For Stiles and the NDP, Scarborough Southwest in particular stood as a test of whether the party could hold a diverse, urban seat after losing its high-profile incumbent to federal politics.

The nomination controversy in Scarborough Southwest, pitting Erskine-Smith against the eventual Liberal candidate Hafiz, also raised questions about the party's internal processes at a moment when the federal Liberal brand carries real traction. Whether that friction depressed Liberal turnout in a riding the party needed to win is one of the key questions the results will answer.

For the Ford PCs, holding York-Simcoe was the baseline expectation. The more consequential signal will come from Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, where a PC loss would mark the first electoral erosion of the government's seat count since the trade talks collapsed. Barring the media from by-election events suggests the party was managing optics carefully, an approach that invites scrutiny regardless of the outcome.

Results were expected after polls closed the evening of Sept. 3, with Elections Ontario's voter-information system tracking returns under event ID 11-by-election-sep-3-2026 (Elections Ontario).