Scarborough—Rouge Park

Scarborough—Rouge Park occupies the eastern edge of Scarborough, running from Steeles Avenue in the north to the Lake Ontario shoreline in the south, and from Morningside Avenue and Neilson Road in the west to the Rouge River and the city boundary with Pickering in the east. The riding encompasses the neighbourhoods of Rouge, Port Union, West Rouge, Highland Creek, the eastern portion of West Hill, and Malvern east of Neilson Road. The 2021 census recorded a population of approximately 110,600. The riding is distinguished by the presence of Rouge National Urban Park—Canada's only national urban park—which preserves forests, farmland, marshes, and a Lake Ontario beach within the city's boundaries, along with human history spanning 10,000 years.

The riding is among the most diverse in the country. South Asian Canadians represent 35.4 percent of the population, followed by White (23.6 percent), Black (15.0 percent), and Filipino (8.9 percent) communities. More than half of the riding's residents are immigrants to Canada, and nearly three-quarters identify as visible minorities.

Candidates

Gary Anandasangaree (Liberal) — Born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1973, Anandasangaree came to Canada as a refugee at age ten in the aftermath of Black July. He studied at Osgoode Hall Law School, graduating in 2005 and being called to the bar the following year. He established Gary Anandasangaree and Associates, a Toronto law firm specializing in business, real estate, and international human rights law. An internationally recognized human rights advocate, he represented Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada at the United Nations Human Rights Council. First elected in 2015, he was seeking his third term.

Zia Choudhary (Conservative) — Choudhary was the Conservative Party of Canada candidate for Scarborough—Rouge Park in the 2021 election.

Kingsley Arnold Kwok (NDP) — Kwok was the New Democratic Party candidate for Scarborough—Rouge Park in the 2021 election.

Asad Rehman (PPC) — Rehman was the People's Party of Canada candidate for Scarborough—Rouge Park in the 2021 election.

About the Riding

Scarborough—Rouge Park was created through the 2012 federal redistribution and first contested in the 2015 election. Its defining geographic feature is Rouge National Urban Park, established by the federal government in 2011 and expanded in subsequent years. The park protects one of the last remaining tracts of Carolinian forest in the Greater Toronto Area, along with wetlands, working farms, and the Rouge River watershed. It draws over 1.5 million visitors annually for hiking, birdwatching, and cultural programming. The park's ecological and cultural significance—including Indigenous heritage sites and 19th-century farmsteads—gives environmental stewardship an immediacy in the riding that is unusual for an urban constituency.

The riding's neighbourhoods range from the affluent waterfront homes of Port Union—where homeownership rates reach 93 percent—to the dense apartment complexes of Malvern and the suburban subdivisions of Highland Creek. West Rouge and the Rouge community feature a mix of detached homes and newer infill development along the city's eastern fringe. Highland Creek village, centred on a small historic core along Old Kingston Road, retains a small-town character within metropolitan Toronto.

Transit, affordable housing, and immigration services are the riding's principal political concerns. Many residents face long commutes to employment centres, and improved connections to the city's rapid transit network have been a recurring demand. Anandasangaree's background as a Tamil-Canadian refugee and human rights lawyer gave him particular resonance in a riding with large South Asian and Tamil communities. The riding has been held by the Liberals since its creation in 2015.