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Incumbents have almost unbeatable head start in GTA elections
Thirteen of 14 immigrant and visible-minority candidates in the analysis won their races.
A seat on a municipal council is a stronger predictor of success for immigrant candidates than how much money they raise for their election campaigns, according to an analysis by New Canadian Media and interviews with academics who study electoral dynamics.
With Ontario voters heading to the polls on Oct. 26, NCM reviewed the audited 2022 financial statements of 14 candidates in Toronto, Mississauga and Brampton who have publicly identified as immigrants, the children of immigrants or members of a visible minority. Thirteen won.
NCM counted only candidates who identified themselves as immigrants in an interview, on social media or in an official biography.
Candidates who described themselves as immigrants or the children of immigrants, raised as much and often far more than their rivals in three of the most immigrant-heavy cities in Canada during the 2022 municipal elections. The ones who were already in office had an advantage over new candidates.
More than half of Mississauga's residents (53.2 per cent) and Brampton's (52.9 per cent) were born outside Canada, according to the 2021 census. In Toronto, that number was 46.6 per cent.
Money and office travelled together
Six of the 14 candidates were sitting members, and all six won. Bonnie Crombie raised $505,675 for the Mississauga mayoral race, more than 20 times her nearest rival. In Mississauga's Ward 7, Dipika Damerla raised $40,870, about three times the amount raised by the next closest candidate.
[caption id="attachment_43318" align="alignleft" width="375"] Dipika Damerla. Photo: The Pointer[/caption]
Toronto's Josh Matlow raised $90,668 compared to the $3,425 raised by his closest challenger. In Brampton, Martin Medeiros raised $62,812 against $5,750; and Pat Fortini and Rowena Santos also raised more campaign funds by wide margins. (Matlow is Canadian-born, and his Jewish identity is the only self-identification in our sample.)
The pattern held beyond our sample. In Mississauga, eight of the nine sitting members who ran for office, including the mayor, won.Ron Starr lost Ward 6 to Joe Horneck, 25 per cent to 60 per cent. In Brampton, seven of eight won; regional councillor Gurpreet Dhillon lost Wards 9 and 10 to Gurpartap Singh Toor. In Toronto, Mayor John Tory and 16 sitting councillors won, and Mark Grimes lost Ward 3 to Amber Morley.
[caption id="attachment_43322" align="alignright" width="389"] Rowena Santos. Photo: The Pointer[/caption]
Without an incumbent, money still mattered. In Toronto, Ausma Malik raised $105,944 to win Ward 10, about double that of the next candidate. Alejandra Bravo raised $102,681 in Ward 9 and Chris Moise raised $91,695 in Ward 13. Dianne Saxe won Ward 11 by 123 votes and raised $85,814 compared to the $61,759 raised by her closest rival, Norm Di Pasquale.
Across Toronto and Mississauga, the candidates who were the top fundraisers won 30 of 38 seats.
Where the money lost
In Mississauga Ward 9, Nokha Dakroub raised $37,985, the most in an 11-candidate field — more than twice what the winner, Martin Reid, raised. Still she finished second, 241 votes behind Reid. Alvin Tedjo won Mississauga's Ward 2 but raised less money than Silvia Gualtieri. Lily Cheng won Toronto's Ward 18, but didn’t raise as much for her campaign as Markus O'Brien Fehr.
[caption id="attachment_43321" align="alignleft" width="373"] Martin Medeiros. Photo: The Pointer[/caption]
Damerla, who won Ward 7 with 55 per cent of the vote, is now running for mayor and proposes term limits for the mayor and councillors.
"It's time for fresh ideas and letting somebody else come in," she told NCM. She said a three-term ceiling could open the door to new candidates, though a change like that would have to fit Ontario's legislative framework.
What the experts say
Erin Tolley, a Carleton University professor who studies diversity in Canadian politics, said incumbency is the biggest edge in municipal politics.
"Incumbency is by far the greatest advantage in municipal politics — there's no bigger advantage," she said. Name recognition, a track record on city council and relationships with voters is clearly valuable.
A 2024 study by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario reached a similar conclusion. Based on interviews and surveys with candidates and people considering municipal office, researchers found that many candidates had their first electoral success after an incumbent stepped down.
Some candidates also reported difficulty raising money to compete against sitting councillors. They said potential donors were reluctant to support a challenger because their contributions would become public, and they worried that if the incumbent won, the councillor might be less willing to help them in the future.
Randy Besco, a University of Toronto Mississauga political scientist, co-authored a 2022 study that found visible minorities donate less money on average to federal party candidates; South Asian donors were an exception.
Besco said the results didn't surprise him. "There are lots of very successful immigrants. It doesn't surprise me that some of them are very proficient fundraisers."
He said he has not tested whether the donor findings hold for municipal elections.
Besco cautioned against reading the incumbent's fundraising success as proof of an incumbency effect. Incumbents find it easier to raise money, he said, but "it's possible that it's kind of a selection effect." Candidates who can raise money are the ones who win. He said he doesn’t know which factor is greater.
Besco said immigrant candidates usually run for municipal council in the community where they live, and that wards with many immigrants are easier places for them to run because they might have community networks.
Sukhman Sangha, a lawyer running for an open regional council seat in Brampton's Wards 9 and 10, said money is not the first thing he would tell a new candidate to focus on.
Sangha said he was born in the riding and is the son of Punjabi immigrants. Nine other candidates are running for seats and only one other lives in the riding.
“The biggest obstacle for a first-time candidate in Peel is not knowing how to run a campaign,” Sangha said. He recommends that new candidates first work on someone else's campaign to gain experience in the municipal election system.
Sangha said his previous work as a senior advisor to Ontario's Minister of Transportation taught him how to navigate government. Whether he raised more than his rivals will not be public until the filing deadline in March.
Copyright 2026, New Canadian Media. All rights reserved.
Shilpashree Jagannathan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, New Canadian Media.
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Recount flips Quebec riding to the Parti Québécois, Liberals refuse to concede
Recount flips riding to Parti Québécois
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
A judicial recount has flipped a riding in the Montérégie region of Quebec from the Liberal Party to the Parti Québécois by a three-vote margin.
However, the Quebec Liberal Party is refusing to concede victory to its rival for now.
Liberal candidate Affine Lwalalika had initially been declared the winner of the Vachon riding by a margin of ten votes.
A recount was triggered and ended on Wednesday.
Quebec's election authority says the recount gave the upper hand to PQ candidate Stephan Fogaing by three votes.
The Liberal Party says it acknowledges the results of the recount but that its lawyers are reviewing the situation.
“All options are on the table, and we will make a decision quickly on how to proceed,” the party wrote on its social media accounts.
Data from the election authority, Élections Québec, shows more ballots were rejected in the recount than on election day, going from 588 to 730 rejected ballots.
The incumbent for Vachon, former Coalition Avenir Québec cabinet minister Ian Lafrenière, congratulated Fogaing.
“The judicial recount declared him the winner by three votes in Vachon. The phrase ‘every vote counts’ takes on its full meaning,” wrote the former domestic security minister on X.
Lafrenière had finished third with just under 21 per cent of the vote on election day.
The PQ has also requested a judicial recount in Champlain, in the Mauricie region, where its candidate lost by 191 votes to Conservative candidate Adriana Szalontai.
The Court of Quebec confirmed the recount on Tuesday. It is set to begin Thursday at the Trois-Rivières courthouse.
In its press release, the election authority says there have been seven judicial recounts after a provincial election since 2000. Recounts in 2003 and 1994 led to ties, which triggered byelections.
— With files from Frédéric Lacroix-Couture
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Toronto Crime Stoppers temporarily stops accepting tips after data breach
Toronto Crime Stoppers pauses program after breach
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy
Toronto Crime Stoppers has temporarily stopped accepting tips after it says more than 175,000 of them were stolen by hackers earlier this year, alongside nearly 15,000 names.
The organization, which allows people to submit confidential crime tips to law enforcement, says in a statement that the tip software it has used since 2018 was hit by a data breach in March.
It says the company that owns the software reported that 176,859 Toronto tips submitted between January 2022 and last November were included in the stolen data, as well as 14,973 names.
Toronto Crime Stoppers says the company, Navigate360, has not disclosed whether the names are of people who submitted tips, are named in them, or both, nor has it provided the text of the stolen tips, despite repeated requests.
The Toronto program pause comes after CBC reported that 1.5 million tips submitted to Canadian Crime Stoppers programs over the last 25 years were exposed in a massive data breach.
Toronto Crime Stoppers says it didn't stop accepting tips sooner because Navigate360 initially said in April that Toronto data had not been taken, and when the company later said Toronto data was affected, it did not say what information was exposed.
It says it is working on a "safer way" to take tips and will share details in the coming days.
Toronto police say they are aware of new information regarding the breach, which they say "raises serious concerns regarding the protection of confidential information provided through the Crime Stoppers program."
The force says it has suspended its use of the program while it reviews the new information and assesses the additional measures being put in place at the organization.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 22, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Panne chez Rogers : Tout ce que tu dois savoir sur le crédit qui sera versé aux abonnés
Surveille bien ton compte!
Le 8 juillet dernier, tous.tes les abonné.es de la firme Rogers ont été victimes d'une panne massive qui a touché l'ensemble du pays. Durant un peu plus de 24 heures, appels téléphoniques, services d'urgence et de paiement par carte étaient indisponibles entraînant une certaine irritation chez les utilisateur.trices et même la perte de chiffres d'affaires importants.
Il semble que cette interruption qui a fait les manchettes coûtera bien cher à la compagnie de télécommunication puisque celle-ci a annoncé, ce 12 juillet, qu'afin de regagner la confiance de ses usager.ères, elle allait augmenter la valeur du crédit de dédommagement. Si tu fais partie des personnes qui ont été impactées par la panne, voici ce que tu dois savoir sur le versement de ce montant.
Combien vas-tu recevoir ?
Selon ce qu'a indiqué la compagnie dans son communiqué, tu devrais recevoir un crédit équivalent à cinq jours de service. Le montant variera en fonction du forfait auquel tu souscris.
Pour connaître le total de cette somme, tu peux calculer combien te coûte une journée dans ton abonnement.
Est-ce que tu dois faire quelque chose pour avoir le crédit?
Non. Tu n'as pas besoin d'effectuer une action particulière pour recevoir ce montant. Celui-ci sera déposé automatiquement dans ton compte et sera déduit de ta prochaine facture. À noter qu'il sera accordé à tous les abonné.es des filières appartenant à Rogers soit : Rogers, Rogers service Affaires, Fido, Chatr et Cityfone.
Fais attention dans les prochains jours, car il se pourrait bien que des gens malhonnêtes profitent de cette situation afin de te retirer de l'argent en envoyant des messages frauduleux.
Qu'est-ce qui a causé la panne?
Selon un communiqué du président Tony Staffieri, celle-ci serait due à une défaillance du système du réseau : « Nous croyons maintenant avoir cerné la cause, soit une défaillance du système du réseau à la suite d’une mise à jour de maintenance de notre réseau de base, ce qui a causé le mauvais fonctionnement de certains de nos routeurs tôt vendredi matin. »
Ce n'est pas la première fois qu'un tel problème se présente puisqu'en 2021, une panne de quelques heures avait touché les abonné.es du service de télécommunication. Ceux-ci et celles-ci avaient alors reçu une compensation monétaire.