Chatham-Kent—Leamington

Chatham-Kent—Leamington covers a vast stretch of southwestern Ontario's agricultural heartland, from the municipality of Chatham-Kent in the north to the town of Leamington on the northern shore of Lake Erie. The riding encompasses the city of Chatham, the town of Wallaceburg, and the communities of Ridgetown, Blenheim, Tilbury, and Wheatley, along with Leamington and the surrounding Essex County farmland. This is one of the most productive agricultural regions in Canada, with more than 630,000 acres of farmland, over 2,400 farms, and more than 20 million square feet of greenhouse space generating billions of dollars in annual economic activity. Leamington, known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada," anchors a massive greenhouse vegetable industry that has expanded rapidly to include cannabis and flower production.

Candidates

Dave Epp (Conservative) is a third-generation processing vegetable and cash crop farmer born and raised in Leamington who has represented the riding since 2019. He holds a Bachelor of Theology and brings extensive agricultural governance experience, having served as chair of Agricorp, as the Ontario and Quebec regional representative for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, and on the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council. In Ottawa, he served as Deputy Shadow Minister for Agriculture and sat on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Keith Pickard (Liberal) is a Chatham-born, Leamington-based entrepreneur who founded two businesses supplying packaging material to the greenhouse industry in the Leamington and Kingsville area. His father, Jerry Pickard, represented the region in Ottawa as a Liberal MP for five terms between 1988 and 2005, giving Keith deep family roots in local politics.

Seamus McInnis Fleming (NDP) is a 22-year-old University of Ottawa student running in his first-ever election. He campaigned on affordability and workers' rights issues.

Trevor Lee (People's Party) ran on the PPC platform.

James Plunkett (Green Party) ran on the Green Party platform.

About the Riding

Agriculture is the economic engine of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, and the greenhouse sector in particular has been a story of rapid growth and mounting infrastructure strain. The Leamington and Kingsville greenhouse corridor is the largest concentration of greenhouse production in North America, but expansion has outpaced the water and wastewater infrastructure needed to support it. In 2024, Chatham-Kent Municipal Council passed development charges that would escalate to hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre for new greenhouse construction by 2029, prompting some greenhouse operators to explore privately funding their own water infrastructure.

The 2025 campaign was heavily shaped by the US tariff threat. The riding's economy is deeply integrated with American markets—fresh vegetables, processed foods, and automotive parts all flow across the border—and the uncertainty created by President Trump's trade measures weighed on local businesses and farm operations. Pickard, whose own packaging business serves the greenhouse industry, campaigned directly on the tariff issue and its local impact.

Despite the Liberal challenge, Epp held the riding comfortably, reflecting the Conservative Party's enduring strength in rural southwestern Ontario. The riding's agricultural character, its older and more rural demographic profile, and Epp's personal credibility as a working farmer gave him a strong foundation that the Liberal and NDP campaigns could not overcome. Affordability, healthcare access in smaller communities, and the opioid crisis affecting towns like Chatham and Wallaceburg rounded out the local issues that shaped the race.