Red wave in Mississauga

Liberals hold on to ridings in western suburb on way to election victory,

Voters in Mississauga-Streetsville have elected Liberal Rechie Valdez, capturing a of 905-region seat that Conservative Jasveen Rattan had hoped to win.

Valdez’s victory comes in a riding that had no incumbent candidate and one that has been known to flip between the Liberals and Conservatives.

It is where Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie lost her federal Liberal seat in 2011 when the Conservative “blue wave” rolled across the GTA, taking Brad Butt to Ottawa as part of the Stephen Harper government.

Crombie was with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau when he stopped in Mississauga on Aug .30 to announce his support for vaccine passports.

In 2015, Mississauga-Streetsville voted red again, electing Liberal Gagan Sikand, who was returned to Parliament in 2019 with 50 per cent of the vote. After withdrawing from work last year on an unexplained medical leave, Sikand announced in August that he wouldn’t be running again.

The Liberals acclaimed Valdez, who has lived in Mississauga since she was a child and attended nearby St. Joseph Secondary School.

An entrepreneur with expertise in marketing, she spent 15 years in the world of corporate banking. She has done fundraising for Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and the Montreal Children’s Hospital Foundation, and she advocates for women and girls’ basketball.

It was the second election for Rattan, a consultant who advises clients on sustainability.

She lost the Toronto riding of YorkSouth Weston in 2019, to Liberal Ahmed Hussen, who was minister of families, children and social development in Trudeau’s most recent cabinet.

Born in Singapore, Rattan came to Canada as a baby and studied hospitality and tourism. She earned a PhD in Recreation and Leisure Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her campaign material referred to her as Dr. Jasveen Rattan.

Following the 2019 election, TVO host Steve Paikin wrote that Rattan caught the political bug while campaigning in 2018 for Nina Tangri, the MPP for MississaugaStreetsville in Ontario Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford’s government.

On doorsteps and in a pre-election debate, the candidates spoke of their goals to address the GTA’s housing affordability, gun control and reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations. They also expressed concern about pandemic benefits and recovery.

Both Valdez and Rattan said they supported increased service on the Milton GO line that runs through the riding. The Trudeau

Liberals have said they will pay half of the $1-billion cost to build tracks that would allow commuter trains to run fullday service between the Streetsville GO station and Union Station in Toronto.

With a population of 118,301, Mississauga-Streetsville encompasses the old villages of Streetsville and Meadowvale in Canada’s sixth largest city.

The riding is bordered on the west by Ninth Line and Britannia Rd. West. It dips south on Britannia to Eglinton Ave., where it runs east to Creditview Rd. Further north, its eastern boundary is along Mavis Rd. to the north of Highway 401.

This was the third bid for election by NDP candidate Farina Hassan, who also ran in Milton in the 2019 election that was won by Liberal Adam van Koeverden.

Also on the ballot for Mississauga were the Green party’ s Chris Hill and Gurdeep Wolosz of the People’s Party of Canada.

On doorsteps and in a pre-election debate, the candidates spoke of their goals to address the GTA’s housing affordability, gun control and reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations