Kingston and the Islands: drop of red in sea of blue
Joseph Tunney | CBC News | Posted: August 15, 2021 3:20 PM | Last Updated: September 7, 2021
Former Kingston mayor Mark Gerretsen made jump to federal politics in 2015
Kingston and the Islands, which includes the core of the City of Kingston, has been solidly red since the late 1980s
Liberal incumbent Mark Gerretsen won the riding in 2019 with 46 per cent of the vote — 15,349 more ballots than his nearest competitor, the NDP candidate Barrington Walker. He first won the riding in 2015 after it had been redrawn, losing the area north of Highway 401 to Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.
Gerretsen, Kingston's former mayor, is one of three Liberal MPs in eastern Ontario outside of the nation's capital (counting Glengarry–Prescott–Russell, with a small slice of Ottawa's east end).
This time, Gerretsen is up against Dr. Waji Khan, a dental surgeon, for the Greens. Kingston city councillor Gary Oosterhof is running for the Conservatives.
The NDP's representative is Vic Sahai, a public health scientist. Mental health worker Shelley Sayle-Udall is the candidate for the People's Party of Canada.