By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

The election posters went up the night before Prime Minister Mark Carney paid his visit to Governor-General Mary Simon to kick off the 2025 election campaign. But in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount riding posters for only one candidate went up, that of Liberal incumbent Anna Gainey.

The riding has always been a Liberal stronghold.The current boundaries are fairly new, created in 2012 when federal ridings were redistributed. It encompasses the towns of Westmount and Montreal West, along with the neighbourhood of NDG, part of the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, with a bit of the Ville Marie borough thrown in (the historical block of Îlot-Trafalgar-Gleneagles).Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount is a majority Anglo riding.

Gainey won the riding in the by-election held on June 19, 2023, which was held to replace Marc Garneau who had resigned the previous March.For the past year Gainey has been on the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group, the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group, the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association, the Canada-United Kingdom Inter-Parliamentary Association, and the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group.

In the last few elections the NDP had come in behind the Liberals, with the Conservatives consistently in third place. Mathew Kaminski, who had run for the Conservatives in both the 2021 election and the 2023 by-election, told The Suburban that he will not be running. Sources confirmed to The Suburban, days later, that Neil Drabkin will be running against Gainey. His name began to appear on the party’s website and social media shortly after.

Drabkin had run in the riding before, going up against Garneau in 2011 and 2019. He had also run as a Progressive Conservative in 1993 in the Mount Royal riding. He is a lawyer and political commentator, with plenty of political experience as Chief of Staff in the federal government to then Ministers Stockwell Day and Joe Oliver, and had been senior policy and legal advisor to former Multiculturalism and Citizenship Minister Gerry Weiner.

Malcolm Lewis-Richmond will be running for the NDP.

Félix-Antoine Brault is the Bloc Quebecois candidate.

The Green Party has consistently come out ahead of the Bloc Québécois, except in 2021 when Jordan Craig Larouche beat Sam Fairbrother for fourth place.

Alex Trainman Montagano is once again running as an independent. n