Scott Reid Seeking Re-Election for the 9th Time

Jeff Green | Jan 16, 2025

Scott Reid was first elected, as a member of the Canadian Alliance Party, on November 27,  2000, and has been an MP ever since; 24 years, and counting. He has been acclaimed as the Conservative Party candidate for an election that will take place this year, perhaps as early as this spring. It will be his 9th election campaign.

In 2000, Reid was one of two members of the Alliance Party to win seats in Ontario. The party was official known as the Canada Reform Alliance Party, but ran as the Candian Alliance Party,  at least partly because it had a better acronym. The party leader was Stockwell Day, who had replaced Scott Reid’s former boss, Preston Manning. Reid won by a landslide, garnering over 60% of the popular vote.

In that election, the Progressive Conservative Party won only 12 seats.

A lot has changed since 2000, but Scott Reid remains the MP for Lanark County, which is now part of the riding of Lanark-Frontenac Kingston, and the new riding of Lanark-Frontenac that is coming into being in the 2025 election. The Conservative and Alliance parties merged in late 2003, and in the 2004 election Reid was re-elected as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada under their freshly minted leader, Stephen Harper. Reid was elected three times under the leadership of Harper, and again under the leadership of Andrew Sheer and Erin O'Toole during the Trudeau government years in office.

In 2025, he will be running under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre. If Reid wins, and the new government serves a 4-year term, he will have served over 29 years by the time another election rolls around.

Scott Reid is currently the chair of the Conservative Party caucus, a role he has held throughout the current parliament. He has served, and been chair or vice chair, on numerous parliamentary committees during his career. He does not have a committee role in the current Parliament. He also has taken on a senior leadership role at Giant Tiger in recent years. He is the Chair of the Board of Governors of the family-owned company that was founded by his late father Gordon Reid in 1961, and has published an article about how he juggles his role as MP with his role with the company. He is 61 years old.

But although he may be the longest serving Conservative Party MP, Reid has a way to go to get even close to Louis Plamondon, the Bloq Quebecois MP who has represented the riding of Becancour-Nicolet-Saurel continuously since 1984, 41 years and counting. Plamondon represented the Progressive Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney at that time. He was one of the first Progressive Conservatives to abandon the party in 1990 upon the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, and joined the Bloq Quebecois under its founding leader, Lucien Bouchard. He has represented the Bloq ever since.

On April 3rd of last year, Plamondon became the longest continuously serving MP in the history of Canada, and has been the dean of the house (the longest serving sitting member) for over 15 years, making him the longest serving dean as well. And at the age of 81, Louis Plamondon has been nominated by his local riding association to run again whenever the election call comes in 2025.

Among the other parties in the new riding of Lanark-Frontenac, only the Liberal Party has a candidate, Michelle Foxton is in place for the next federal election. Foxton has been actively campaigning since she was selected as the Liberal candidate last July, and has already indicated she will talk about Scott Reid’s role with Giant Tiger as part of her campaign.

That election could come soon after Parliament returns in late March, after a two-month prorogation was enacted in order to allow the governing Liberal Party to choose a new leader to replace Justin Trudeau. The three opposition parties have all pledged to bring the minority government down at the first opportunity once Parliament resumes, so a spring election is a distinct possibility, but is not guaranteed.

The new Lanark-Frontenac riding has mostly the same boundaries as the current Lanark-Frontenac Kingston riding. The one exception is the rural Kingston portion of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston, the section between the southern boundary of South Frontenac and Hwy. 401. That section will be part of the Kingston and the Islands riding.

This creates a more populous Kingston and the Islands riding (134,413 electors) and a less populous Lanark-Frontenac riding (103,120 electors) but makes for a more cohesive ‘community of interest’, one of the factors that the non-partisan redistribution committee looks at when it draws up the electoral boundaries.