Ward 25 — Scarborough–Rouge Park

Scarborough–Rouge Park is Toronto's easternmost ward, stretching from Markham Road east to the Scarborough-Pickering boundary and from Lake Ontario north to Highway 401. The ward takes in the Rouge National Urban Park — Canada's first national urban park, protecting a stretch of farmland, forest, and marshland along the Rouge River — along with the residential communities of Port Union, West Rouge, Centennial Scarborough, and Highland Creek. With a population of roughly 102,000, the ward is 72 percent visible minority, with significant South Asian, Chinese, Filipino, and Black communities. Councillor Jennifer McKelvie, who had represented the area since 2018 and served as Deputy Mayor under John Tory, was one of the more prominent members of council.

Scarborough–Rouge Park produced the closest result in Scarborough: Bailão won by a razor-thin 39 votes, 8,277 (32.5 percent) to Chow's 8,238 (32.4 percent). Saunders placed third at 10.6 percent, and Mitzie Hunter earned 7.2 percent — her second-best showing after her home ward of Scarborough-Guildwood. The result was shaped by the characteristic advance-versus-election-day split: Chow led advance voting with 961 ballots to Bailão's 212, but Bailão dominated on election day with nearly 8,000 votes to Chow's roughly 7,000. The 25,448 total votes were solid for Scarborough in a by-election.

Municipal Issues

Transit access was the overriding concern. Scarborough–Rouge Park is among the most poorly served wards in the TTC network: residents in the ward's eastern communities face multi-transfer, hour-long commutes to reach the subway system. The GO Transit Lakeshore East line provides some commuter rail service at Rouge Hill station, but frequencies are limited and fares exceed TTC rates. The broader Scarborough transit debate — the cancelled LRT, the over-budget subway extension, the looming RT closure — reinforced a sense that the city had no coherent plan for connecting these communities.

The Rouge National Urban Park, while a source of community pride and ecological value, raised governance and development-pressure questions. Parks Canada's management of the park's agricultural and natural heritage lands intersected with municipal planning for surrounding residential areas, and residents sought assurance that the park's boundaries would be respected as development pressures intensified along its edges. Meanwhile, the ward's residential neighbourhoods — predominantly owner-occupied single-family homes — faced rising property taxes and the cost-of-living pressures that were common across suburban Toronto, without the compensating urban amenities and transit access available in downtown wards.