Toronto Votes 2026: Scarborough Southwest council candidate Kevin Rupasinghe profile

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Local voters will cast their ballots on Monday, Oct. 26, in Toronto’s municipal election. Along with voting for mayor and school trustee, local voters will also be electing a new councillor for Ward 20 Scarborough Southwest.
There are eight candidates running for the council seat in Scarborough Southwest. For this Candidate Profile feature, Beach Metro Community News reached out to the candidates who we could find contact information for and asked them to send their profile and a photo in by a set deadline. We are only printing the profiles of those who responded by the deadline. The eight candidates registered to run for councillor in Scarborough Southwest in this month’s municipal election are Laikul Choudhury, Naser Kaid, Parthi Kandavel, Ariel-Rachel Karokis, Luigi Lisciandro, Sharmina Nasrin, Mohammad Ali Reza, and Kevin Rupasinghe.)

I’m Kevin Rupasinghe, and I’m running to be the councillor you can count on in Scarborough Southwest. This ward has been my home for years, and we want to raise our family here.

There’s a lot to love about our community – our neighbourhoods, our parks, our Bluffs, our plazas – and still, our families deserve better. We deserve someone with vision, someone who puts our families first, someone who we can count on – for a change.

I’m the son of two auto workers, newcomers who worked hard to build a foundation for my sister and I to get a good education. They taught me the value of working hard, being honest, and sacrificing in service of others.

I am an engineer by training; I get to work on solutions to the big issues that cities are facing around transportation, land use, infrastructure, and resilience, and I do so reminded of the oath that engineers take to always put the public interest first.

I’ve spent many years as an active community leader, serving on boards, founding grassroots organizations, volunteering with groups, writing for local papers, and advocating for our community by pushing for better transit, safer streets, and affordability.

I know we can do better, but too often, we have been left without a voice at City Hall, brought into the conversation after decisions are made or with no real action taken. As future developments emerge, we deserve to have a voice at the table, to guide and shape our community’s future together, to enhance the character of our neighbourhoods.

This election is our opportunity to engineer better parks, less gridlock, improved transit, and greater community character, so that this is a community where your kids and your parents can find a home they can afford and where our roads and transit can get you where you need to go safely and quickly. That is why I am running: to be the councillor who you can count on to deliver for all our families – for a change.