Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced on Wednesday that three provincial by-elections, including one in Hamilton East–Stoney Creek, will take place on Thursday, Sept. 3.
Hamilton East–Stoney Creek is without a representative after Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) and Minister of Sport, Neil Lumsden, 73, announced his retirement.
Lumsden was first elected in 2022 and was re-elected on Feb. 27, 2025, after Premier Doug Ford called a snap election.
The Ontario PC Party announced that Hamilton City Councillor Jeff Beattie, who represents Ward 10 – Stoney Creek–Fruitland–Winona, will be their candidate in the riding.
The Ontario Liberal Party has nominated Heino Doessing as their candidate in the by-election.
Doessing ran in the 2025 provincial election in Hamilton East–Stoney Creek, finishing second with 12,323 votes (31.61 per cent), compared to Lumsden’s 16,401 (42.07 per cent).
The Ontario NDP Party, led by Marit Stiles, announced last Friday that long-time Hamilton Mountain MPP Monique Taylor will be their candidate.
They finished third last election with candidate Zaigham Butt earning 6,862 votes (17.60 per cent).
Meanwhile, the Green Party of Ontario will have Pascale Marchand, who also represented the party in Hamilton East–Stoney Creek in 2025 and came fourth with 2,049 votes (5.26 per cent).
MONIQUE TAYLOR, ONTARIO NDP PARTY
NDP candidate Taylor represented Hamilton Mountain provincially for 14 years, serving as the opposition critic for children, community, and social services.
She decided not to run in the 2025 provincial election and instead opted to become the federal NDP candidate in Hamilton Mountain under Jagmeet Singh.
In the 2025 federal election, she finished a distant third with only 7,044 votes (11.8 per cent), behind Liberal Party candidate Lisa Hepfner (45.6 per cent) and Conservative Party candidate Ken Hewitt (41.5 per cent).
Despite living on Hamilton Mountain and representing the riding, Taylor says that she grew up in Hamilton’s east end.
HEINO DOESSING, ONTARIO LIBERAL PARTY
Doessing was born and raised in Denmark and moved to Canada in 2010, living in Toronto and Saskatchewan before settling in Hamilton.
It is unclear exactly how long Doessing has lived in Hamilton, but his biography says that it has been less than 10 years.
He reportedly served as a Member of Town Council in Solrod, Denmark, a municipality of about 25,000 people.
Doessing attended Copenhagen Business School and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte before working for Deloitte Canada, OMERS, Onex, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, according to his LinkedIn profile.
JEFF BEATTIE, ONTARIO PC PARTY
Beattie is a lifelong Winona resident and sixth-generation Stoney Creeker who owns and operates Winona Gardens Greenhouse and Garden Centre on Highway 8 at Fifty Road with his wife Tina.
The business was founded by Beattie’s grandfather in 1953 on land that has been in the Beattie family since 1890.
Beattie attended Orchard Park Secondary School in Stoney Creek and graduated from Niagara College’s Business Administration program before serving as a school trustee for Stoney Creek from 2014-2018 and vice-chair of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board.
Beattie ran for City Councillor in the 2018 municipal election, finishing third with 2,692 votes (24.53 per cent).
Incumbent Maria Pearson finished first with 3,988 votes (36.34 per cent), followed by Louie Milojevic with 2,990 votes (29.25 per cent).
In 2022, Beattie ran again and increased his vote share to 4,236 (39.69 per cent) and won the race, while Milojevic came in second with 3,436 votes (32.20 per cent), and Pearson came in third with 3,000 votes (28.11 per cent).
Beattie has also been a volunteer with the Winona Peach Festival for nearly 30 years and is one of the founding organizers of the Winona Hallowe’en Bash.
He has volunteered with the Winona Easter Egg Hunt, 1st Winona Scout Group, and the Orchard Park Robotics Team.
He is a long-time member of the Winona Men’s Club and the Winona Horticultural Society, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, and the Stoney Creek Chamber of Commerce.
As City Councillor, Beattie has voted against property tax increases, opposed the Vacant Unit Tax and the Stormwater Fee Rain Tax, and supported increased police funding.
PASCALE MARCHAND, ONTARIO GREEN PARTY
Marchand works as a Constituency Assistant for Ward 4 (Hamilton East) Councillor Tammy Hwang.
Marchand describes herself as an “advocate, policy advisor, knowledge mobilizer, and equity promoter” and has worked as a freelance French-English translator and in various positions for Air Canada.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
