What you need to know about changes to Eastern Ontario federal riding boundaries and names for the 2025 election

Thousands of voters in the region will be casting ballots for the federal election in ridings different from those they voted in for Ontario’s recent winter election.

While the voters may not have moved, the electoral boundaries did.

The map changes are based on the work of independent commissions that review federal boundaries about every 10 years to ensure members of parliament (MPs) have an equal distribution of constituents. It means some federal ridings have new boundaries and, in some cases, new names.

Kingston and the Islands still has the same name, but for the first time in a decade, the city’s rural population north of Highway 401 will be included in the mostly urban riding, a Liberal stronghold for four decades.

It also means candidates in Kingston and the Islands will have extra canvassing to do as the riding now encompasses all of the City of Kingston, plus the Frontenac Islands (Wolfe and Howe).

As part of the riding redistribution, Kingston’s rural voters have been moved out of the former riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, which has been shortened and renamed Lanark-Frontenac, considered a Conservative stronghold.

Lanark-Frontenac now encompasses South, Central, and North Frontenac Townships, and as far north as the Ottawa city limits including Pakenham, Carleton Place, Sharbot Lake, and Perth, with Highway 7 cutting through the middle of this extensive eastern Ontario riding.

The riding map in Bay of Quinte riding has also changed.

The urban portion of Belleville, Quinte West south of Highway 401, and all of Prince Edward County still form the core of voters in this riding, which last elected a Conservative in 2021, but generally the biggest change was to carve out a section of Quinte West north of Highway 401, located roughly between Highway 62 and the Trent River, and shift it into the adjoining riding, which is now called Hastings-Lennox and Addington-Tyendinaga.

In taking more of Quinte West voters, the largely rural riding of H-L&A-Tyendinaga will retain other communities including rural Belleville north of Highway 401, Amherst Island, Greater Napanee, Stone Mills, Centre Hastings, Tweed, Madoc, Bancroft, and Hastings Highlands, with Highway 62 generally running up the centre of the riding.

The equally large riding of Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes does not have any boundary changes in this election, but the riding name has been shortened, slightly.

A boundary review decided to drop “and” between Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes and replaced it with a dash to make it the same in both Official languages.

Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands-Rideau Lakes, which still includes voters in Gananoque, Brockville, Prescott, Kemptville, and Westport, has traditionally been a Conservative stronghold.

All of the riding name and boundary changes were determined by independent boundary commissions — one for each province — after the 2021 census with public consultations, and later approved by Parliament.

“This process happened in 2022. Elections Canada only administers the changes. We have no role in setting the boundaries,” Dianne Benson of Elections Canada told Kingstonist.

Interestingly, the Ontario government decided not to harmonize provincial ridings with the newly drawn federal districts during the recent provincial election in February 2025.

It means some voters in this region will be represented in different ridings after the current election.

It remains unclear whether the Ford government will pass legislation to allow for a provincial-federal riding harmonization to occur prior to the next Ontario election in 2029.

Elections Canada said voters can check its website (https://www.elections.ca/) for more details about the 2025 boundary changes.

As for this federal election, voting day is Monday, Apr. 28, 2025.