York West

York West sits in the northwest corner of the City of Toronto, bounded roughly by Steeles Avenue to the north, Keele Street and Black Creek to the east, Highway 401 to the south, and the Humber River to the west. The riding encompasses the neighbourhoods of Jane and Finch, Humber Summit, Humbermede, Glenfield-Jane Heights, and the western edge of Downsview, with Highway 400 bisecting the riding from north to south.

Candidates

Judy Sgro (Liberal) — Sgro had represented York West since winning a by-election in 1999 and was seeking her sixth term. Before entering federal politics, she served on North York City Council beginning in 1987, was acclaimed as a Metro councillor for North York in 1994, and became a Toronto city councillor after amalgamation in 1998, serving a term as vice-chair of the Toronto Police Services Board. In the Paul Martin government, she served as Minister of Citizenship and Immigration from 2003 to 2005. In opposition, she co-chaired a Liberal working group on retirement income security that produced a Pension Income Bill of Rights in 2010.

Giulio Manfrini (NDP) — Manfrini ran as the NDP candidate in York West.

Audrey Walters (Conservative) — Walters stood as the Conservative candidate in the riding.

The remaining candidates included Unblind Kheper Keseb Efekh Tibbin for the Green Party, George Okoth Otura for the Christian Heritage Party, and Arthur Smitherman for the Canadian Action Party.

About the Riding

York West in 2011 was one of the most densely populated and culturally diverse ridings in the Greater Toronto Area. The Jane and Finch neighbourhood, one of the riding's largest population centres, was home to a large concentration of public housing built in the 1960s and 1970s and had become one of Canada's most prominent newcomer settlement areas. The neighbourhood faced elevated poverty rates — the 2011 National Household Survey recorded an unemployment rate of roughly 13 percent in the area, with nearly a quarter of residents living in low income.

York University's Keele campus, one of Canada's largest universities with approximately 50,000 students, straddled the riding's eastern boundary. The campus was a major employer and economic anchor for the surrounding community. Highway 400 and the interchange with Highway 401 made the riding an important logistics and transportation corridor, with warehousing and light industrial operations concentrated along the highway frontages.

The Humber River valley and Black Creek corridor provided significant green space, including Derrydowns Park and Driftwood Park. The riding's population was heavily multilingual and multicultural, with large Caribbean, South Asian, East African, Latin American, and Italian communities. Settlement services, affordable housing, youth programming, and community safety were the foremost federal concerns in the 2011 campaign. The planned extension of the TTC subway to York University, then under construction, was also a major local issue.