Mr. Thanigasalam broke the Liberal Party hold on the riding most recently held by Liberal Tracy McCharles who was elected in the former riding of Pickering-Scarborough East in 2011. Tracy did not stand for re-election.
A 29 year old financial advisor with one of Canada’s leading banks and advocate for youth development and employment, he narrowly topped his closest opponent, Felicia Samuel NDP by 963 votes. Vijay Thanigasalam says “Our very own Centenary hospital has an overflowing number of hallway health care patients and an overcrowded emergency room. That needs to be changed: our residents deserve to have quality health care.”
Mr. Thanigasalam finished with 16,224 (38.6%) of the vote, while Ms. Samuel gathered 15,261 (36.3%). Sumi Shan, Liberal had 8,788 (20.9%), Priyan De Silva, Green Party had 1,014 (2.4%) votes, Todd Byers. Libertarian had 582 (1.4%) votes and Amit Pitamber, Trillium Party had 149 (0.4%) votes.