Voters have decided: Immigration Minister Chris Alexander is out.
The incumbent Conservative Ajax-Pickering MP was unseated by Liberal Mark Holland — who formerly represented the riding in the House of Commons between 2004-2011.
Alexander was elected in 2011 and was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence in the same year.
Two years later, he was promoted to cabinet.
Alexander “temporarily suspended” his re-election campaign in early September to pick up ministerial duties related to the refugee crisis in Syria.
His handling of the portfolio came under fire after photos of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a Turkish beach served as a lightning rod for renewed attention on to Europe’s migrant crisis.
It was later revealed that Kurdi’s aunt, a B.C. resident, had made an appeal to Alexander for help to bring members of her family to Canada.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada says it received an application for Kurdi’s uncle, and not for Alan, his mother, or five-year-old brother Galib, who also all drowned after the boat they in capsized in the waters between Turkey and the Greek island of Kos.
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