Jeff Beattie is heading to Queen’s Park after winning the Hamilton East–Stoney Creek provincial by-election on Thursday, giving the Progressive Conservatives a hold on a riding that had been a longtime New Democrat stronghold before flipping to the PCs in 2022.
With all 44 polls reporting, Elections Ontario’s unofficial results showed Beattie finishing roughly 1,600 votes ahead of his closest challenger, New Democrat Monique Taylor, a former Hamilton Mountain MPP looking to return to the legislature.
Beattie took 38.87 per cent of the vote, compared to Taylor’s 32.9 per cent.
Rounding out the ballot, Liberal candidate Heino Doessing placed third with 23.45 per cent, Green Party candidate Pascale Marchand placed fourth with 2.66 per cent, New Blue Party candidate Wieslawa Derlatka finished fifth with 1.18 per cent, and Ontario Party candidate Heather Curnew finished sixth with 0.94 per cent.
The seat became vacant after former PC MPP and Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden announced his retirement in early August, triggering the by-election in a riding the NDP’s Paul Miller had held for 15 years before Lumsden’s 2022 win.
Paul Miller attended Beattie’s election night celebration at Clifford Brewing on Nash Road.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Hamilton mayoral candidate Rob Cooper, City Councillor Matt Francis (Ward 5 – Hamilton East-Stoney Creek), City Councillor Mike Spadafora (Ward 14 – West Mountain), and Conservative Member of Parliament Ned Kuruc were also in attendance.
Beattie’s 38.87 per cent vote share was down slightly from Lumsden’s 42.07 per cent vote share in the 2025 Ontario election, but up from the 34.60 per cent Lumsden received the first time he ran in 2022.
NDP candidate Monique Taylor increased her party’s vote share to 32.90 per cent, up over 15 percentage points compared to 2025 when Zaigham Butt received just 17.6 per cent of the vote.
Liberal candidate Heino Doessing’s 23.45 per cent was down 8 percentage points from the 31.61 per cent he received in 2025.
Beattie was far from a stranger to voters in the riding.
A sixth-generation Stoney Creek resident from Winona, he and his wife Tina run Winona Gardens, a family business his grandfather started in 1953 on land the Beatties have farmed since 1890.
Beattie has also spent years in local public life, serving as a Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board trustee for Wards 9 and 10 and vice-chair from 2014 to 2018, before winning a seat on Hamilton city council in 2022.
Speaking with reporters after his win was declared, Beattie said his time at city hall gives him an edge in working with the province on issues that matter to Hamilton, describing his approach as one focused on getting more done for both the city and the broader Golden Horseshoe region.
Ford also commented, “I just want the people of Ontario and all of Canada to know that we are going to continue to fight. We are going to fight against Donald Trump. We are going to make sure that we protect people’s jobs, protect their communities, and protect them.”
There were two other provincial by-elections on Thursday in the ridings of Scarborough Southwest and York–Simcoe.
In Scarborough, the NDP retained their seat in a riding that they have held since 2018.
In York–Simcoe, the PC Party retained their seat in a riding that they have held since its creation in 2007.
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.
