He had been scrambling to hold his seat as his Liberal Party had long been forecast to lose the election. But in the past month, polls showed the Conservative Party slipping and the Liberals regaining traction. In the end, the Liberals lost 18 seats and won one seat less than a majority. But they are still by far the largest party in the legislature and are expected to continue governing.
Province-wide, the Liberals saw their share of the vote fall by 4.7 percentage points from the results in the 2007 provincial elections. Moridi, however, saw his vote slip only a fraction of a percentage point—from 47.8 percent to 47.0 percent. Moridi was first elected in 2007.
Canada has three major parties, so winners often do not top 50 percent. In Moridi’s riding, as Canadian election districts are called, the Conservative candidate got 35.8 percent of the vote, the National Democratic Party candidate received 12.9 percent and two others took 4.3 percent combined.
Moridi’s riding is in Richmond Hill, a suburb of Toronto lying 12 miles (20 kilometers) directly north of downtown Toronto. It is a very diverse community. The census shows that 56 percent of the riding’s residents have a mother language other than English or French.
Moridi, 66, is a physicist who has spent most of his career working in the field of nuclear safety. He migrated from Iran to Richmond Hill in 1991.
Celebrating his victory at Richmond Hills’s Shiraz restaurant, the soft-spoken Moridi said, “I am humbled and honored that the people of Richmond Hill have chosen to have me to continue the work that we have done together over the last four years.”
Another Iranian-born Ontarian sought a seat in the provincial legislature, but fell far short. Bahman Yazdanfar is the leader of the Canadians Chose Party, which is anti-tax and anti-regulation. His party ran candidates in only three of the 107 ridings. Yazdanfar himself tied for ninth and last place in his own riding. He received only 29 votes or one-tenth of 1 percent.
Moridi was born in Urumiyeh in 1945 and educated in Britain, receiving both his master’s and doctorate in physics from Brunel University there.
He returned to Iran to teach at Alzahra University in Tehran where he eventually became dean of the School of Sciences, chair of the Physics Department and university chief librarian.
He came to specialize in radiation safety issues.
In 1991, he moved to Canada and became chief scientist and vice president of the Radiation Safety Institute of Canada. In 2002, the US Health Physics Society recognized him for his contributions in the field of radiation protection.
Moridi left Iran just shortly after it re-started its nuclear program.
In the 107-seat provincial assembly, Moridi has been chiefly active in science and health issues. But he has also been vocal about pressing for freedom for Reza Malekpour, a fellow resident of Richmond Hill who has been jailed in Iran the last few years. He has also sponsored legislation to recognize Now Ruz and has spoken out often on human rights issues in both Iran and Azerbaijan.
One other Iranian is known to hold elective office in Canada. That is Amir Khadir, born in Tehran, who was elected in December 2008 to the provincial legislature of Quebec. He was the first member of Quebec Solidaire, which supports Quebec independence, ever elected in the province. He represents parts of Montreal.
Nine others from Iranian families hold elective office in California and one in Texas.