The Ontario NDP has nominated United Church minister Alexa Gilmour to run in Parkdale—High Park, the party announced Tuesday.
Gilmour is not the first United Church minister to be nominated to represent the party in that riding — in 2006, minister Cheri DiNovo was nominated as the NDP candidate and went on to hold the MPP seat from 2006-2017.
Gilmour was most recently the minister in charge of Windermere United Church in Swansea, where she started several social outreach initiatives. She has been a regular contributor to Broadview magazine, formerly the United Church Observer. She has five children.
Current Parkdale—High Park NDP MPP Bhutila Karpoche, who has held the position for two terms, was nominated to be the party's federal candidate in the riding in November.
Also on Tuesday, the NDP announced that University—Rosedale incumbent MPP Jessica Bell would run for re-election. Bell is the opposition housing critic at Queen's Park.
She was first elected in 2018, after the riding was created in a redistribution, and was re-elected in 2022.
In University—Rosedale, Bell's 2022 re-election was narrower than her first election in 2018, but in 2022 she faced a very strong Green candidate in Dianne Saxe, who is now a city councillor.
The Parkdale—High Park riding has been held by the NDP since DiNovo won it in a 2006 by-election. For the next several elections, the Liberals and the NDP were competitive, but in 2018 and 2022, NDP victories were crushing.
Federally, the riding is held by Liberal Justice Minister Arif Virani, who has been its MP since 2015, when he won in a narrow victory over the NDP's Peggy Nash. In 2021, he again eked out a narrow re-election over the NDP.
The NDP nominations come as Premier Doug Ford toys with the idea of holding an early election.
