Dondre Stewart and Sarah Trumbley
Liberal candidate Navdeep Bains has won the riding of Mississauga-Malton with 58.8% of the vote, compared t0 26.2% for Conservatives Jagdish Grewal, with 100 of 186 polls reporting. New Democrat Dianne Douglass finished in third with 12.7% of the vote.
https://youtu.be/Ha4ETJd-YPc
Mississauga-Malton Liberal Candidate Navdeep Bains with his supporters
Grewal remained on the ballot even though he was dumped by the Conservative party after homophobic excerpts from an article he had written in Punjabi surfaced. The passages appeared to advocate sexual conversion therapy for young homosexuals.
Grewal was writing in defence of the rights of parents to choose such therapy for their children and asked in the piece, “Is it wrong for a homosexual to become a normal person?”
Now Grewal says that the statement was misconstrued and the proper translation would have replaced the word “normal” with “straight”.
Mississauga-Malton is a new electoral district introduced in time for this year’s federal election.
This riding was formerly a part of Bramalea-Gore-Malton. The latter dissolved into four ridings, Brampton East, Mississauga-Malton, Brampton Centre and Brampton North.
Historically this riding has been controlled by the Liberal Party dating back to 1993. But in 2011, the Conservatives were voted in, led by MP Bal Gosal.
It also contains a large portion of the Mississauga-Brampton South riding that was last won by MP Eve Adams and the Conservative party.
Both former ridings were Liberal controlled for years until the last election. So it was expected that this riding would be an arms race between the Liberal and Conservative parties in Mississauga-Malton.
with files from Sarah Wickett