Incumbent Green keeps Hamilton Centre orange
‘It was an election that nobody wanted,’ he said
A New Democrat will return to Ottawa as Hamilton Centre MP for the seventh consecutive session of Parliament after Matthew Green held the seat with a resounding victory Monday night.
Green won with a wide margin of support — garnering roughly 8,000 more votes than his closest contender — and enjoyed an incumbent’s advantage in Hamilton’s urban heartland that has for years been an NDP stronghold.
The 40-year-old claimed 48.1 per cent of the vote with 193 of 194 polls reporting and 3,602 mail-in ballots yet to be counted.
He called his win “humbling” in an interview late Monday and said he refused to take anything for granted despite projections he would run away with the vote.
“The advantage we have is the hard work we put in,” said Green, who watched the results filter in alongside staff and family at his campaign headquarters near Gage Park.
“There’s no luck, there’s nothing taken for granted in this riding, that’s for sure … I think it was an election that nobody wanted, which made it tough.” The urban riding — which has the lowest household income of Hamilton’s five ridings — spans from the waterfront to the escarpment and from Kenilworth Avenue to Highway 403.
Liberal Margaret Bennett finished second with 26.3 per cent of the vote, while Conservative Fabian Grenning finished third with 15.4 per cent. Both contenders were first-time candidates.
Bennett, a certified financial planner, said her first foray into politics was “exciting and tiring.”
“I love knocking on doors, talking to people. It’s actually quite energizing,” said Bennett. “But at the same time, it is tiring. I did over 630,000 steps in five weeks.”
She added: “I tried hard, but, obviously, I know that Matt Green will be going back to Ottawa and I know that he recognizes the honour of that responsibility.”
Green said his second term will be spent continuing the mandate that first got him elected to Parliament in 2019: affordability, housing, reconciliation and climate change.
“That’s what seems to be top of mind for people coming out of COVID — a just recovery.”
Affordable housing and homelessness were salient issues during the campaign in Hamilton Centre, which, with seven people running, had the largest number of candidates in the city.
In recent years, the densely populated area — 100,103 residents in just 30 square kilometres — has seen steady increases in rental rates, gentrification and tent encampments.
All contenders agreed at a debate last week that the downtown riding has a housing emergency, but they differed on how to fix it — or who to blame.
Green pledged the NDP would build 500,000 new affordable housing units, and said the need for accessible rental or co-op housing is particularly acute in his lower-city riding.
“We’re still in a public health emergency, and we have to start thinking about the collective and not just individual interests,” he said.
Prior to becoming the MP for Hamilton Centre, Green was executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion.
He served as Ward 3 city councillor from 2014 to 2018 and led a change to regulate the payday loan industry, stood up for lowincome renters and advocated against police street checks.