Liberals’ Shafqat Ali holds onto key seat in ethnically diverse riding

Shafqat Ali has held the seat for the Liberals in Brampton Centre, beating Conservative Jagdeep Singh and New Democrat Jim McDowell with 46 per cent of the vote with 98 out of 189 polls reported.

Ali is a local realtor and community activist who previously served on the board of directors for the Peel Multicultural Council and as a youth co-ordinator for Shalimar Community Services. He immigrated to Canada when he was young and was raised by a single mother after his father died when he was 10.

Just northwest of Toronto, Brampton Centre is in the Golden Horseshoe “905” region, a battleground part of Ontario that often decides who forms government. The riding was created in 2015 after a redistribution of federal boundaries split the former ridings of Bramalea-Gore-Malton and Brampton-Springdale into three new ridings. Home to 102,270, Brampton Centre is the smallest riding in Canada’s ninthlargest city and accounts for about 17.2 per cent of Brampton’s population. In 2015, the before-tax median household income was $87,290.

The 905 has mostly gone Liberal in the past two elections but helped propel former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper to a majority in 2011. For its part, Brampton Centre handily went red in 2015 and again in 2019, with incumbent MP Ramesh Sangha earning 47.2 per cent of the votes over Conservative candidate Pawanjit Gosal’s 26.9 per cent. Redistributed results from 2011 show the Conservatives pulled ahead in the area with 46 per cent of the vote.

Ali beat six other prospects to win the Liberal nomination in August, replacing Sangha who was removed from caucus in January for making “baseless and dangerous” accusations against colleagues, according to the party’s whip. Sangha sat for the remainder of his term as an Independent but did not run again in 2021, citing family reasons.

Brampton is one of Canada’s most ethnically diverse cities, home to 234 distinct ethnic groups speaking 89 different languages, according to the 2016 census. More than half of Bramptonians are immigrants to Canada.

Affordability, taxes, the COVID-19 public health response and the post-pandemic economic recovery were all top of mind for residents this election, with about a third of respondents in a recent survey by polling firm Leger ranking these issues as most important.

Housing affordability is also an important issue in the riding, with the average price for a detached home passing $1.2 million in 2021.

Brampton was one of the hardest hit parts of Canada by COVID-19, exposing vast health inequities in the region. Home to thousands of essential workers, Brampton saw test positivity rates upwards of 20 per cent, and the city accounted for about 60 per cent of Peel Region’s total COVID-19 cases.

Brampton Centre also hosts Brampton Civic Hospital, one of the focal points of COVID-19 in Ontario. During the peak of the third wave, Brampton Civic was transferring about 100 patients a week to hospitals across the province as it struggled to keep up with a surge in critically ill patients.

In a recent debate organized by the Brampton Board of Trade, Ali touted his party’s track record during the pandemic, including the Liberals’ emergency funding to Brampton businesses.

He also defended the Liberal carbon tax and said he would continue to support it as MP.

Shafqat Ali is a local realtor and community activist who previously served on the board of directors for the Peel Multicultural Council and as a youth co-ordinator for Shalimar Community Services