🔎 The race
Milton votes **Monday, October 26, 2026**, with **45 certified candidates** running for 9 offices — mayor, four regional councillors and four town councillors — according to the Town's certified candidates list. There are 110,851 eligible voters, up sharply from 80,367 in 2022, when turnout was 29.0 per cent (23,298 ballots).
The mayor's race has **10 candidates — the largest field in Milton's history** and more than double the four who ran in 2022 (Inside Halton). At the centre is incumbent **Gord Krantz**, 89, mayor since 1980 and Canada's longest-serving mayor. His 2022 win was the closest in decades: 11,391 votes, 49.5 per cent, edging then-councillor Zee Hamid — now Milton's MPP — by fewer than 1,000 votes (INsauga).
Two sitting councillors are the best-known challengers. **Sameera Ali**, Ward 4 regional councillor, was first to declare and would become Milton's first woman mayor if elected. **George Minakakis**, Ward 1 town councillor since winning an October 2025 byelection, is the candidate several senior councillors have lined up behind — Ward 2 councillor John Challinor says "George ticked all the boxes for me" (Toronto Star). The rest of the field — Nadeem Akbar, Zainab Azim, Maliha K. Ahmed, Abdulkareem Akbik, Asif Khan and Arjun Joshi — range from a two-time federal candidate and a tech executive to a 24-year-old Mamdani-campaign organizer and a University of Waterloo planning student.
The council races come with guaranteed turnover. Because Ali and Minakakis are vacating their seats, and Ward 2 regional councillor Rick Malboeuf is not running again, **at least four of eight ward seats will go to new representatives** no matter the results. Ward 2's open town council seat draws the biggest ward field with seven candidates; Ward 3's town race is the quietest, with incumbent Adil Khalqi facing only Sanjay Gupta. Incumbents Colin Best (Ward 1 regional) and Sammy Ijaz (Ward 3 regional) are both seeking re-election (INsauga).
The campaign has largely played out at community-forum format events rather than a town-run debate: a packed all-candidates meeting in Campbellville on Oct. 7 drew seven of the ten mayoral hopefuls (Inside Halton), local radio ran one-on-one interview series with the candidates, and The Milton Record put the same questionnaire to the whole ballot.
⚡ Key issues
Property taxes and town spending
Cumulative property-tax increases of 34.7 per cent over the past four years dominated the Oct. 7 Campbellville meeting. **Nadeem Akbar** pledged zero-based budgeting — "It's time to bring back respect for taxpayers. Because every dollar that comes in is a dollar out of your pocket" — and **Gord Krantz** countered that the hikes were votes of the council majority, not his preference (Inside Halton). The Star reports a home assessed at $600,000 paid $784 more in 2026 than in 2023, while town budget reports note Milton's property taxes remain among the lowest in the GTA as a share of household income (Toronto Star). Several challengers frame taxes as a symptom of how growth is paid for: The Milton Record notes provincial changes have cut development-charge revenue while demand for roads and facilities keeps rising (Milton Record).
Growth and the new Official Plan
Council adopted Milton's first new Official Plan in thirty years in June 2026, setting where homes, jobs and services go through 2051; the town's plan forecasts the population more than doubling, from an estimated 160,000 to 400,400, in the next 25 years (Milton Record, Toronto Star). The Star's campaign report finds the pains of growth everywhere: three highrises rising by the GO station, 113 school portables, an expanded-but-still-overcapacity hospital, a Costco under construction on the town's edge, and density backlash in Old Milton. The candidates' debate is less whether to build than whether roads, transit, schools, parks and attainable housing arrive with the rooftops.
All-day, two-way GO service
Transit is the theme with the most direct candidate-on-record comparison: asked what a Milton councillor can do beyond passing motions, 16 of 44 candidates answered The Milton Record. **Zainab Azim**: "All-Day GO has been promised to Milton for 25 years, yet it still has not been delivered." **John Challinor**: "The Province and Federal governments have promised all-day, two-way GO transit service for more than 25 years." **Sarah Marshall**: "Our community has already waited too long for this to become a reality" (Milton Record). Locally, Milton Transit's coverage lags the newest neighbourhoods, and council controls the transit budget and service hours.
Data centres, quarries and the CN logistics hub
Proposed hyperscale data centres and new extraction pits gave the campaign a sharp land-use axis. At Campbellville, **Zainab Azim** declared "We do not need another quarry. We do not need AI data centres polluting the land here," and **Sameera Ali** ran partly on her public opposition to hyperscale data centres (Inside Halton). The stakes include the controversial CN logistics hub — a 24-hour truck-and-rail transfer point near homes — expected to be operational next year after the town and region lost their legal challenge to the feds (Toronto Star).
Change versus continuity
The frame underneath every door-knock is whether Milton's founder-mayor era should end. Krantz, asked about retirement, told the Star "I'm going to finish first," and opened the Campbellville meeting by predicting he "will be the mayor of Town of the Milton in a little less than three weeks from now," pitching "leadership, stability, experience, consistency and affordability" (Toronto Star, Inside Halton). His critics, including councillor Colin Best — on council since the same year Krantz became mayor — say "I respect the mayor, but it's time," while Ali argues "Milton is different now" in a town that is 43 per cent immigrant, 57 per cent visible minority and skews young (Toronto Star).
- Coverage exists for a second mayoral forum at Southside Community Church (Sept. 23, eight of 10 candidates; quotes from Ahmed, Krantz, Minakakis, Azim) in a The Trillium article (thetrillium.ca, slug milton-mayoral-candidates-discuss-growth-taxes-downtown-core-and-more-12822195), but that URL returns 403 to HEAD requests and the miltontoday.ca mirror returns 403 outright, so both were excluded under the 200-only link rule and none of their unique quotes are used.
- FM 101 Milton Now's mayoral interview series (Krantz, Azim, Joshi) returned 404 to curl when fetched directly, so those interview URLs are not cited; interview facts here come from other verified pages.
- Inside Halton's Ward 1, Ward 2 and Ward 3 'meet the candidates' articles (listed in the brief via Google News redirects) were not resolvable to stable direct URLs in this pass, so ward profiles lean on the verified Ward 4 questionnaire, INsauga, the Star and The Milton Record; several ward candidates therefore have thinner profiles than the mayoral field.
- Asif Khan did not respond to Inside Halton's profile request; Zaheer Ashraf, Tahira Haroon (Ward 4 town) and Youssef Roshdy (Ward 4 regional, questionnaire) did not respond to the Ward 4 questionnaire — Roshdy did answer The Milton Record.
- The Milton Record's May 2026 note on turnout and the '29 per cent in 2022' figure match the certified 2022 numbers (23,298 of 80,367).
- Name spellings differ by source: the certified roster and news stories use 'Gordon/Gord Krantz', 'Chéz Amun' (this roster: 'Chez Amun'), 'John Challinor II' (roster: 'John Challinor'), and 2022's 'Khurshid Ali Khan' (roster: 'Khurshid A Khan').
- No all-candidates meeting hosted or livestreamed by the Town of Milton (milton.ca/YouTube) was found; the town's election pages direct candidates and voters to information rather than debates.
| Abdulkareem Akbik | 🔎 A relative newcomer who worked on a candidate's campaign in the previous municipal election and as an outreach intern for an MPP; a longtime Milton volunteer running on a "community-first" platform of housing affordability, road safety, youth programming and better local jobs (Inside Halton). He did not attend the Oct. 7 Campbellville meeting (Inside Halton). |
| Arjun Joshi | 🔎 An urban planning student at the University of Waterloo who argues his studies give him a unique grasp of municipal planning and his age helps him reach younger voters (Inside Halton). According to his campaign's Instagram page, he is attempting to become the youngest mayor in Canada (CHCH). He did not attend the Oct. 7 Campbellville meeting (Inside Halton). |
| Asif Khan | 🔎 A broadcaster with, by his account, more than 25 years of research and business experience including work with the cities of Winnipeg and Vancouver and the State of Oregon (CHCH). "I am not coming to learn on the job... I'm a warrior, I just believe in delivering results," he told Campbellville voters, pledging tax cuts and low-income housing (Inside Halton). He did not provide contact information to Inside Halton's candidate profile request (Inside Halton). |
| Chez Amun | 🔎 A radio DJ, announcer and youth mentor who says he has dedicated more than seven years to mentoring young people (CHCH). His campaign supports fixing traffic, more affordable housing, transit expansion, more entertainment venues and a fiscally responsible tax policy (Inside Halton). "I'm just like a person that listens to people. I connect with people," he told Campbellville voters (Inside Halton). |
| George Minakakis Serving council — different office Ran 2022 · Councillor, Ward 1 | 🔎 Ward 1 town councillor since winning the October 2025 byelection; a retail-industry executive and former chair of Milton Hydro who pitched "The town is a business" at Campbellville (CHCH, Inside Halton). He is the candidate longtime councillors including John Challinor settled on as Krantz's successor (Toronto Star). He previously ran unsuccessfully for Ward 1 town councillor in 2022 (1,671 votes). |
| Gord Krantz Incumbent Elected 2022 · Mayor (49.5%) | 🔎 The incumbent, 89, has been Milton's mayor since 1980 and a figure on council since 1965 — Canada's longest-serving mayor (Toronto Star). He won his 2022 re-election with 11,391 votes (49.5 per cent), his closest margin in decades, and ran the Campbellville meeting on "leadership, stability, experience, consistency and affordability" (Inside Halton). He has no campaign website; his certified listing is a landline he answers himself (Town of Milton, Toronto Star). |
| Maliha K. Ahmed | 🔎 Founder and CEO of Milton Muslim Moms, a grassroots support network she has grown since 2015; her platform centres on affordable transit, childcare, housing and healthcare access (CHCH). On all-day GO she told The Milton Record, "This is where I think municipal leadership needs to become much more persistent" (Milton Record). She did not attend the Oct. 7 Campbellville all-candidates meeting (Inside Halton). |
| Nadeem Akbar | 🔎 Tech executive and IT consultant, longtime Milton resident, two-time Conservative candidate for MP, and former Halton Police Board member (Inside Halton). His campaign is fiscal: zero-based budgeting, a hard look at the 34.7 per cent cumulative tax increase, and the line "It's time to bring back respect for taxpayers" (Inside Halton). He once hosted a party marking Krantz's 45th year in public service (Toronto Star). |
| Sameera Ali Serving council — different office Elected 2022 · Regional Councillor, Ward 4 | 🔎 Ward 4 regional councillor, first elected to council as a town councillor in 2018; the first candidate to declare for mayor and, if elected, Milton would have its first woman mayor (CHCH, INsauga). She has served on the Halton Police Board and other boards, has publicly opposed hyperscale data centres, and told Campbellville voters "I hear that you are concerned about crime and safety" (Inside Halton). She ran provincially in 2022 (INsauga). |
| Zainab Azim | 🔎 A 24-year-old Milton-raised educator and Harvard Teaching Fellow who applied organizing experience from Zohran Mamdani's New York mayoral campaign at home, on a three-pillar platform: Careers Close to Home, Transit Every 20 Minutes and Alive After Five (Toronto Star, Newswire). She is a Milton Citizen of the Year (Inside Halton). Marshall Ganz — organizer of Obama's 2008 campaign — endorsed her on Oct. 3, alongside MPs Salma Zahid and Sima Acan, former MP Bryan May and former minister Kathryn McGarry (Newswire). |
| Colin Best Incumbent Elected 2022 · Regional Councillor, Ward 1 | 🔎 Incumbent Ward 1 regional councillor — first elected to the same council the year Krantz became mayor, and an unsuccessful mayoral challenger to Krantz in 1997 (Toronto Star). On the mayor's race he says "I respect the mayor, but it's time" (Toronto Star). He was acclaimed to Ward 1 regional councillor in 2022. |
| Sajid Chaudhry | 🔎 |
| Donna Danielli | 🔎 |
| Gourav Suri | 🔎 |
| Nabil Ahmed | 🔎 |
| Owen Gray | 🔎 |
| Rahul Chaudhari | 🔎 |
| Galen Naidoo Harris | 🔎 One of four candidates for Ward 2's open regional seat, vacated at the regional level by Rick Malboeuf's retirement (INsauga). On advancing all-day GO: "The proverbial ball on all-day two-way GO service is squarely in the province's court" (Milton Record). |
| John Challinor Serving council — different office Elected 2022 · Councillor, Ward 2 | 🔎 Incumbent Ward 2 town councillor (3,542 votes in 2022) running for Ward 2's open regional seat; he ran two of Krantz's mayoral campaigns but backed Minakakis as successor — "George ticked all the boxes for me" (Toronto Star). On GO: "The Province and Federal governments have promised all-day, two-way GO transit service for more than 25 years" (Milton Record). |
| Syed Naqvi | 🔎 |
| Yagya Paudel | 🔎 |
| Ahmad Jamal | 🔎 |
| Arthur Amadi | 🔎 |
| Lori Foster | 🔎 |
| Melissa Cassells | 🔎 |
| Patrick Murphy Ran 2022 · Councillor, Ward 3 | 🔎 A Ward 3 town council veteran of the 2022 race (1,090 votes) now seeking Ward 2's open town seat in the town's most crowded ward contest, alongside six other candidates (INsauga). |
| Shan Jayatilake | 🔎 |
| Tanya Sethi | 🔎 |
| Haris Iqbal | 🔎 |
| Rick Di Lorenzo Ran 2022 · Regional Councillor, Ward 3 | 🔎 Chasing Ward 3's regional seat he narrowly lost in 2022, finishing with 1,827 votes to incumbent Sammy Ijaz's 2,182. He faces Ijaz again plus Haris Iqbal and Salman Zafar (INsauga). |
| Salman Zafar | 🔎 Ward 3 regional councillor candidate who told The Milton Record he will "aggressively advocate directly to Metrolinx and the provincial government to deliver all-day, two-way 15-minute GO rail service on the Milton line" (Milton Record). |
| Sammy Ijaz Incumbent Elected 2022 · Regional Councillor, Ward 3 | 🔎 Incumbent Ward 3 regional councillor, elected in 2022 with 2,182 votes, seeking re-election against three challengers including 2022 runner-up Rick Di Lorenzo (INsauga). |
| Adil Khalqi Incumbent Elected 2022 · Councillor, Ward 3 | 🔎 Incumbent Ward 3 town councillor (2,067 votes in 2022) in the quietest race on Milton's ballot, facing a single challenger, Sanjay Gupta (INsauga). |
| Sanjay Gupta | 🔎 |
| Adejisola Atiba | 🔎 A retired banking professional, post-secondary educator and governance consultant making her second run after seeking Ward 1's town seat in the 2025 byelection; her priorities include a dedicated youth centre and keeping transit pace with growth (Inside Halton). On GO: "Motions matter but they are not enough" (Milton Record). |
| Khurshid A Khan | 🔎 Professional engineer and project-management professional who has lived in Ward 4 for 14 years; his stated priorities include reasonable property taxes, business attraction and two-way, all-day GO (Inside Halton). He previously sought Ward 4's town seat in 2022 (853 votes, listed then as Khurshid Ali Khan). |
| Sarah Marshall Incumbent Elected 2022 · Councillor, Ward 4 | 🔎 Incumbent Ward 4 town councillor and lawyer running for the Ward 4 regional seat Sameera Ali is vacating (INsauga). Her stated priorities include broadening the commercial tax base and opposing the proposed Milton Link project over residential environmental impacts (Inside Halton). On GO: "Our community has already waited too long for this to become a reality" (Milton Record). |
| Syed Raza Ran 2022 · Regional Councillor, Ward 4 | 🔎 Finance and business-management professional running for Ward 4's regional seat; he previously sought the same seat in 2022 (644 votes) (Inside Halton). |
| Youssef Roshdy | 🔎 Candidate for Ward 4 regional councillor; he did not respond to Inside Halton's ward questionnaire by publishing time, but told The Milton Record that on advancing GO, "This is one area where simply passing another resolution is not enough" (Inside Halton, Milton Record). |
| Ada Nwosu | 🔎 Small-business owner, event planner and Igbo-language instructor running first for office in Ward 4; she chairs the Halton Catholic DSB Parent Involvement Committee and, through the Association of Nigerians in Milton, helped raise over $20,000 for the Milton District Hospital Foundation (Inside Halton). Her priorities are safer roads, transit connections and growth matched by infrastructure. |
| Giles Vanderholt Ran 2022 · Councillor, Ward 4 | 🔎 Seeking Ward 4's town seat again after finishing second in the 2022 contest there with 860 votes (Inside Halton). |
| Ginni Malik | 🔎 Business owner with 18 years of corporate workforce-management experience, a nearly decade-long Ward 4 resident running first for office; priorities include safer school zones, neighbourhood parking, inclusive playgrounds and tax transparency (Inside Halton). |
| Naveed Ahmed | 🔎 Small-business owner and current Halton District School Board trustee for Milton Wards 3 and 4 running for Ward 4 town councillor; he disclosed living just outside Ward 4 (Inside Halton). His priorities are growth matched to infrastructure and housing affordability. |
| Tahira Haroon | 🔎 |
| Zaheer Ashraf | 🔎 |
🎙 Debates & forums
No single town-organized debate; the mayoral field instead faced voters at community-hosted all-candidates meetings. The best-documented was the **Campbellville Community Association meeting on Oct. 7** at the Nassagaweya Community Centre, where seven of the ten mayoral candidates gave three-minute pitches, answered yes/no questions and made final appeals; Nadeem Akbar, Sameera Ali, Chez Amun, Zainab Azim, Asif Khan, Gord Krantz and George Minakakis attended, while Maliha K. Ahmed, Abdulkareem Akbik and Arjun Joshi did not (Inside Halton). An earlier September meeting at Southside Community Church drew eight of the 10 candidates for three-minute platform speeches each — its write-ups at The Trillium/MiltonToday could not be linked under this project's link-verification rules (see notes). FM 101 Milton Now ran the same structured interview questions to all ten mayoral candidates through the fall.
🗞 On the radar — local coverage
- Meet Milton’s Ward 2 candidates for regional and town councillor
- 2026 Milton election: Meet the candidates running for Ward 4 town and regional councillor positions
- Who will be Milton's next mayor? Candidates make their case
- 2026 Municipal Election: Gord Krantz, Mayoral Candidate for Milton
- 2026 Milton election: Meet the Halton District School Board trustee candidates
- 2026 Milton election: Meet the candidates running for Ward 3 councillor
- Gord Krantz, 89, wants another term as Milton mayor. Longtime councillors are backing someone else
- 2026 Milton election: Meet the candidates running for Ward 1 councillor positions