Pickering—Uxbridge

Created through the 2012 redistribution, Pickering—Uxbridge combines the suburban southern half of the City of Pickering, on the shore of Lake Ontario, with the rural Township of Uxbridge to the north. The riding bridges Durham Region's commuter subdivisions and its agricultural hinterland, linking lakefront neighbourhoods within sight of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station to the rolling hills and horse farms around Uxbridge.

Candidates

Jennifer O'Connell (Liberal) — First elected to Pickering city council at the age of 23 in 2006, O'Connell rose to become a Durham Region councillor and was serving as deputy mayor of Pickering at the time of the federal campaign. A University of Toronto graduate in political science, she had built a municipal reputation around fiscal accountability and waterfront development.

Corneliu Chisu (Conservative) — A professional engineer and retired Canadian Forces major, Chisu had represented the predecessor riding of Pickering—Scarborough East since winning in 2011. Born in Romania, he held degrees from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and the University of Toronto, and had worked as a project manager for Genivar (now WSP), one of Canada's largest engineering firms.

Pamela Downward (NDP) — Downward carried the NDP flag in a riding where the party sought to build on the gains Tom Mulcair's campaign was making in Ontario suburbs.

Anthony Jordan Navarro (Green Party) — Navarro ran on the Green ticket, raising issues of environmental protection relevant to a riding that sits adjacent to one of Canada's largest nuclear facilities.

About the Riding

Pickering's southern communities are shaped by two dominant forces: the commuter rail corridor along the Lakeshore GO line, which funnels thousands of residents to jobs in Toronto each day, and Ontario Power Generation's Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, which employed some 3,000 workers and supplied roughly 14 percent of Ontario's electricity. North of Highway 407, the landscape opens into the farmland and heritage villages of Uxbridge, which brands itself the "Trail Capital of Canada" for its network of hiking and cycling paths. The 2015 contest was the first fought on the new riding's boundaries, meaning neither candidate could claim incumbency in the exact seat. Local issues included commuter transit improvements, the future of the Pickering airport lands reserved by the federal government since the 1970s, and the nuclear station's approaching end-of-life decisions.