PC candidate projected to win Milton byelection

The CBC Decision Desk is projecting that PC candidate Zee Hamid will win the provincial byelection in Milton Thursday. 

CBC made the projection at close to 9:30 p.m, just a half hour after polls closed. 

Shortly after 9 p.m., about 80 per cent of the polls were reporting that PC candidate Zee Hamid had 47 per cent of the vote, amounting to 10,909 ballots. The Liberal candidate Galen Naidoo Harris was slightly behind Hamid, with 8,589 votes making up about 37 per cent of the vote share. 

Thought 98,785 voters are registered in Milton, about 23 per cent of those voters went out to the polls. 

Hamid, a three-term Milton councillor, has a past connection to the Liberals. He unsuccessfully sought a Liberal nomination in 2015 and donated to the party as recently as 2022.

Speaking at the PC results gathering at a Milton Shoeless Joe's, PC MPP Deepak Anand said that Hamid has experience and voters saw that. 

"It's great news ... you can see the results. It's exciting. The people of Ontario have won again. They want a government that wants to take care of prosperity," he said.

The riding west of Mississauga has been vacant since February, when then-PC MPP Parm Gill left his post to join the federal Conservative Party of Canada.

The byelection in Milton is being watched as a potential litmus test for Premier Doug Ford and his government as strategists told CBC Toronto this week it could indicate what challenges are ahead for the next provincial election in 2026.

The race was expected to be close between the Liberal and Conservative candidates, strategists with each party told CBC Toronto.

Through the campaign period, opposition candidates spoke out against a proposed quarry that Premier Doug Ford's government had promised to cancel four years ago. That hasn't happened yet, though Ford did say he will sit down with the community after an environmental assessment is complete.

Following the announcement of Hamid's projected win, community advocacy group ACTION Milton said Hamid must stop the quarry from going ahead. 

Preliminary figures from Elections Ontario show that 6,511 voters cast their ballot in advance, which makes up 6.6 per cent of registered voters in Milton. In comparison, 11,520 voters, making up 12.6 per cent of registered voters, voted before polling day during the 2022 general election. 

One Milton resident Augustin Gahungu spoke to CBC Toronto as he headed into a poll to vote. He said transit accessibility is a major issue in the town, and not enough trains run to Milton outside of work hours.