York Centre

York Centre is a federal riding in the northern portion of the City of Toronto, bounded by Bathurst Street to the east, Highway 401 to the south, Jane Street and Sheppard Avenue to the west, and the city limit along Steeles Avenue to the north. The riding encompasses the neighbourhoods of Westminster–Branson, Bathurst Manor, Wilson Heights, Downsview, and a section of York University Heights. At its approximate centre sits Downsview Park—a 231-hectare urban park on the former grounds of Canadian Forces Base Toronto, now Canada's only national urban park and one of Toronto's largest recreational destinations.

Candidates

Ya'ara Saks (Liberal) — Born in 1973 in Toronto to an Israeli father and a Canadian mother, Saks graduated from McGill University with a BA in Middle East Studies and Political Science and earned a master's degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She worked in the Office of the Mayor of Jerusalem and in Israeli-Palestinian peace process initiatives before returning to Canada, where she founded Trauma Practice for Healthy Communities, a Toronto-based mental health charity. She won the riding in a 2020 by-election following the resignation of Michael Levitt.

Joel Yakov Etienne (Conservative) — Etienne is a senior partner in a full-service law firm in York Centre, with an initial focus on immigration law. Born and raised in New Brunswick, his father was a political exile from Haiti and his maternal grandparents were resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France. He moved to Toronto in 1998. Active in interfaith community work, he serves as president of a synagogue and is a UJA Advisory Council member.

Kemal Ahmed (NDP) — Ahmed is a McMaster University engineering graduate and former software engineer at Deloitte who became a certified professional accessible software developer. A disability advocate, he started a business helping non-profits with accessible software solutions. He was 27 years old at the time of the election and held the riding association's disability representative position.

Nixon Nguyen (PPC) — Nguyen stood as the People's Party of Canada candidate in York Centre.

About the Riding

York Centre's character is shaped by successive waves of immigration that have made it one of Toronto's most culturally layered constituencies. The riding has a large Jewish population—at 14.3 percent, it holds the fourth-largest Jewish community of any federal riding in Canada, concentrated particularly in the Bathurst Manor and Wilson Heights neighbourhoods along the Bathurst Street corridor. Filipino residents comprise 19.3 percent of the population—among the highest concentrations in the city—alongside Black (8.0 percent), Latin American (5.4 percent), and South Asian (4.1 percent) communities. Only 46.9 percent of residents identify as white.

The linguistic diversity is striking: beyond English at 42.0 percent, the most commonly spoken languages include Tagalog (9.5 percent), Russian (6.3 percent), Italian (5.2 percent), Spanish (5.1 percent), and Vietnamese (2.1 percent). This reflects the layered settlement patterns of the riding—Italian families who arrived in the post-war decades along Keele Street, Jewish communities established along Bathurst Street, Filipino families in the Downsview area, and more recent arrivals from Latin America and the former Soviet Union.

Downsview Park anchors the riding's geography, a vast green space that hosts events, sports facilities, and community programming on what was once a military airfield. The neighbourhood surrounding the park is predominantly working- and middle-class, with a mix of post-war bungalows, 1960s apartment towers, and newer infill development. Transit access via the TTC's Line 1 subway at Downsview and Wilson stations connects residents to the city's employment centres. Housing affordability, settlement services for newcomers, and mental health supports are recurring concerns in a riding where many residents are first-generation Canadians navigating economic pressures.