A by-election was held on September 3, 2026, in the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest in Ontario, Canada, following the resignation of incumbent NDP MPP Doly Begum on February 3, 2026.

The writ for the by-election was issued on August 5 with a vote to be held on September 3, 2026, concurrently with by-elections in Hamilton East—Stoney Creek and York—Simcoe. The election was won by Fatima Shaban, who held the seat for the Ontario NDP.

Background On February 2, 2026, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Bill Blair, a former cabinet minister, would resign as member of Parliament for the federal riding of Scarborough Southwest to accept an appointment as Canada’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Blair had previously served as minister of public safety and minister of national defence.

On February 3, the Liberal Party of Canada announced Doly Begum as their candidate for the resulting by-election. Begum was serving as a member of Provincial Parliament for the provincial riding of Scarborough Southwest and the Deputy Leader of the ONDP. She resigned from her seat on the same day as well as her membership in the ONDP.

Premier Doug Ford was not expected to announce a by-election date until after the 2026 Scarborough Southwest federal by-election was held on April 13, 2026.

Candidates New Democratic Party Fatima Shaban, a Canadian community organizer and politician, was nominated as the party's by-election candidate at the Scarborough Southwest NDP Electoral District Association nomination meeting on April 28, 2026.

Shaban has been active in affordable housing advocacy and has served as treasurer of the Regent Heights Public School Council. She graduated with a degree in Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies.

Shaban was the New Democratic Party candidate in Scarborough Southwest in the 2025 Canadian federal election, and again in the 2026 federal by-election following the resignation of Bill Blair.

Following the resignation of MPP Doly Begum, Shaban won the Ontario NDP nomination for the 2026 Scarborough Southwest provincial by-election.

Also running for the nomination was Khalid Ahmed, former Ontario NDP candidate in Don Valley West, Don Valley East, and Pickering—Uxbridge, and social worker Veronica Javier.

Progressive Conservative Party Family physician Asm Noorullah Tarun was chosen at a nomination meeting held on July 9, 2026. Other candidates for the nomination were paralegal and community advocate Ayesha Sardar and HR professional Gazi Sijan. Accountant Murshed Nizam had also been announced as a candidate for the nomination but was not on the ballot when the vote was conducted.

Tarun was previously the Conservative Party of Canada candidate in the 2025 Canadian federal election in Scarborough Southwest.

Gary Crawford, a former Toronto City Councillor for Scarborough Southwest from 2010 to 2023 and Progressive Conservative candidate in the 2023 Scarborough—Guildwood provincial by-election, declined to run as the PC candidate due to family reasons. Crawford had been asked by Premier Ford to run under the party banner.

Liberal Party The Scarborough Southwest Ontario Liberal Electoral District Association held an open nomination meeting on May 9, 2026, using a ranked ballot. In addition to the four candidates on the nomination ballot, Sharmina Nasrin, a former constituency office worker for Whitby Progressive Conservative MPP Lorne Coe, announced her candidacy in April but withdrew prior to the meeting. Ali Demircan, President of the Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations, and Toronto city councillor Parthi Kandavel were reported to be potential candidates, but did not run. With over 1,000 total votes cast, party organizer and pizza franchisee Ahsanul Hafiz won the nomination, defeating Beaches—East York MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith on the third and final ballot by a vote of 718 to 699. 2025 Ontario general election candidate Qadira Jackson and immigration consultant Mahmuda Nasrin were eliminated in earlier rounds. Erskine-Smith was also a prospective candidate in the upcoming Ontario Liberal Party leadership election. During the race, Hafiz and Jackson had formed a strategic pact encouraging their respective supporters to rank the other candidate second on their ballots.

Controversies During the nomination race, screenshots and archived Facebook activity tied to Ahsanul Hafiz were made aware within Liberal circles and the Bangladeshi-Canadian community such as posts like supporting the death penalty for Bangladeshi political opponents, and having shared pornography depicting incest and sexual violence in 2011. Hafiz's supporters and campaign pushed back against internal concerns about whether these posts should disqualify him from the nomination race as the death penalty posts were taken out of political context and stated that the party were aware of the sexual violence post while being vetted by its greenlight committee.

Following the vote, Erskine-Smith alleged irregularities in the process, claiming that some individuals were permitted to vote without proper identification while his campaign questioned the party's executive decision to invalidate 1,800 memberships prior to the meeting. He also suggested that the party establishment had worked to deny him the nomination by sending paid staff from the party to work for his oppositions. Interim party leader John Fraser defended the fairness of the process and stated that any allegations of misconduct required proof.

On May 12, 2026, after consulting his team, Erskine-Smith formally appealed the outcome to the party's arbitration committee, highlighting that 34 more ballots were counted than were cast and the fact that the party allowed the use of “Amazon orders” as proof of identity during the vote. Erskine-Smith called for a new nomination meeting or for the party to appoint a candidate, while ruling himself out as a candidate. This lead to questions about whether party leaders should have a say on candidate nominations, with some such as former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister John Milloy comparing it the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership election where men from homeless shelters were bussed in to vote for Brian Mulroney. It also raised questions whether non-citizens who are barred from the voting in Liberal Party of Canada nomination races, should have the ability to vote in nominations, as Hafiz's campaign manager, Ted Lojko, ran the controversial nomination of Han Dong for the Don Valley North federal riding in 2019 which was noted bussing-in international students of Asian origin.

On May 24, the party’s three-person arbitration committee, which included former cabinet minister David Zimmer, dismissed the appeal, concluding that there were no irregularities that compromised the integrity or final result of the vote. The committee determined that the 34-vote discrepancy was a technical administrative error caused by volunteers failing to cross names off the eligible voters list when handing out ballots.

Green Party On July 14, 2026, the Green Party announced that Mark Bekkering would be the candidate. Bekkering previously ran in Scarborough Southwest in the 2025 provincial election.

New Blue Party On July 18, 2026, the New Blue Party of Ontario announced that Chartered Professional Accountant Chris Rees would be the candidate. He was the New Blue Party candidate in Ajax in the 2025 provincial election.

Opinion polling Polling firm Last dateof polling Link NDP PC Liberal Green Others Samplesize Polling method Lead Mainstreet Research February 22, 2026 HTML 19 29 43 4 5 464 Phone 14

Result

Previous result

See also 2026 Hamilton East—Stoney Creek provincial by-election 2026 York—Simcoe provincial by-election List of Ontario by-elections

Notes

References