Battle between first- time candidates in new riding too close to call

In the newly formed riding of Scarborough— Rouge Park, first- time candidates for the Conservatives and New Democrats ran a race that was too close to call at press time.

With 30 of 42 polls reporting, the tt PC party’s Vijay Thanigasa- lam led by 124 votes over the NDP’s Felicia Samuel.

Thanigasalam, 29, worked as a financial adviser before joining the race. He grew up just outside the Rouge Park riding, around Kennedy and Eglinton Aves.

Improving health care was high on his campaign agenda.

“Our very own Centenary hospital has an overflowing number of hallway health care patients and an overcrowded emergency room,” Thanigasalam said. “That needs to be changed: cc our residents deserve to have quality health care.”

Samuel, who has spent the past seven years working as an executive ee officer with the To- ronto chapter of the Elementary rr Teachers’ Federation of On- tario, wants a new government to measure progress by the impact that programs have on the lives of everyday people, starting with transit.

“Our transit is not effective, it’s not fast, in some areas it runs only Monday to Friday,” Samuel said. “That’s a huge equity issue.”

The riding of ScarboroughRouge RR Park, created in 2015, in- cludes parts of the electoral districts of Pickering- Scarborough East, Scarborough- Rouge River and Scarborough- Guildwood.

According to the 2016 federal census, the riding has a population of 102,275, with the vast majority of residents in the 1664 age bracket and most identifying as a visible minority. The area’s unemployment rate was 8.9 per cent at the time of the census, more than a percentage point higher than the Ontario average.

Liberal candidate Sumi Shan, 39, placed third at press time with ww 20 per cent of the vote. Shan is a partner and managing director at Infinite Enviro Solutions and founder of Niche Strategies, an international agency that supports start- ups businesses.