[14][15] Stewart campaigned on the main tenets of the Conservative Party platform under Pierre Poilievre, including crime and support for Israel.

[20][21] In 2020, Church agreed to an ethics screen for being married to lobbyist "Sheamus Murphy..(who is) registered to lobby the Liberal government in relation to several major sectors with active policy files, including broadcasting, energy and pharmaceutical companies that are working on a COVID-19 vaccine.

"[22] Other prospective candidates for the Liberal nomination who declined to run, included former Toronto city councillor Josh Colle; former Ontario MPP Eric Hoskins, who represented the area provincially from 2009 to 2018 and previously served in the provincial cabinets of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, including as Minister of Health and Long-Term Care from 2014 to 2018; and Toronto city councillor Josh Matlow, who has represented the area municipally since 2010; Matlow ultimately decided not to run.

[17][23][24] With his riding set to merge with Scarborough Centre at the next election, Don Valley East MP Michael Coteau was seen as a potential candidate, in order to avoid a nomination battle with fellow Liberal MP Salma Zahid; Coteau ultimately declined to run.

She works as the Director of Programs at the Institute for Change Leaders, an organization that was founded by Toronto mayor, Olivia Chow.

[29] On May 24, the Green Party announced that Christian Cullis, a constituent coordinator for Ward 11 city councillor Dianne Saxe, would be their candidate.

[32] The Longest Ballot Committee, a political movement focused on electoral reform in opposition to first-past-the-post-voting, and supporting proportional representation,[33] targeted this by-election.

[35] The resulting ballot papers were 90 centimetres (35 in) long, requiring temporary changes to the Elections Act due to their unprecedented size.