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TORONTO — Liberal Tanveer Shahnawaz won Monday’s byelection in the federal riding of Beaches-East York, maintaining the party’s hold on the Toronto-area seat.
With more than 85 per cent of polls reporting, the 30-year-old political aide was well ahead of the NDP’s Shannon Devine, a labour organizer, and Conservative Jim Syrbos, a Danforth diner and coffee shop owner.
“It is going to now be the honour of a lifetime to represent the only home I have ever known as your next member of Parliament for Beaches East York,” Shahnawaz said as his supporters burst into loud cheers and started chanting his first name.
Shahnawaz takes the reins from his former boss, Nate Erskine-Smith, who resigned the seat earlier in this year. Shahnawaz worked in the outgoing MP’s community office for nearly a decade, first as an assistant and then as the manager.
He was picked as the party’s candidate after an abbreviated nine-day nomination contest. Among others, he beat out Claire Seaborn, a lawyer and former chief of staff to ex-Liberal minister Jonathan Wilkinson, and former Ontario legislator Arthur Potts.
The byelection solidifies the Liberals’ footing in Toronto and extends its reign in Beaches-East York.
The Liberals have won all but one of the last 12 elections in the riding, with Jack Layton’s NDP responsible for a breakthrough during the Orange Wave in 2011. Erskine-Smith reclaimed the seat in the 2015 election and held it until his July resignation.
Erskine-Smith developed a reputation as an independent-minded backbencher willing to challenge the Liberal party orthodoxy from its left-wing flank on issues from medically assisted death to drug policy.
More recently, he was the lone Liberal MP to vote against his own government’s motion to limit debate on the major projects legislation, Bill C-5. He questioned the expanded powers it granted to cabinet and worried it set a dangerous precedent for a future government to gut environmental protections.
Shahnawaz credited that principled outspokenness as a key ingredient in Erskine-Smith’s electoral success.
“At the same time though, I think we’re also living through a very interesting and volatile time for our national economy and how all that trickles down, and I can tell you, I’m also very happy to know and agree with many folks at the doors that Mark Carney’s leadership has been also very uniting for us here,” he said in an interview on the eve of the byelection.
Asked if he would have voted the same way as Erskine-Smith on Bill C-5, Shahnawaz said he had “not given it as much thought” and suggested it was not among the top concerns he heard from constituents during the campaign. Pressed on whether there was any daylight between him and the Liberal leadership on policy issues, he cited the repeal of the electric vehicle sales mandate.
“We live in a riding where I think there’s an appetite to see more EV charging infrastructure,” he said.
The NDP had long been the main Liberal challenger, but the Conservatives moved into a distant second place during the 2025 election amid a wider collapse in New Democrat support.
With a majority of polls reporting, Shahnawaz had about 55 per cent of the vote, followed by Devine at over 25 per cent and Syrbos at over 16 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2026.
–With files from Jordan Omstead
Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press
