Justice Minister Arif Virani and International Trade Minister Mary Ng will not be running in the next federal election, they announced in separate statements on Monday.
They are the fifth and sixth ministers in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet to announce they’re not running for re-election since the prime minister shuffled his cabinet in December — seven if you include Trudeau himself.
“It has been the honour of a lifetime to have served as the Member of Parliament for Parkdale-High Park for three straight elections,” Virani, a Toronto MP, said in a statement. He said he made the decision “with a heavy heart, and after considerable soul searching for the past several weeks.
Virani was first elected in 2015. Before he was appointed justice minister in 2023, he served as a parliamentary secretary for a number of portfolios including immigration, heritage, justice and international trade.
Ng became an MP when she won a 2017 byelection in the Toronto-area riding of Markham-Thornhill. She was appointed minister of small business in 2018 and took over the international trade portfolio the following year.
“My first priority has been safeguarding our access to the world’s largest economic partnership through CUSMA, our free trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico,” she said in her statement. “Now more than ever, as we navigate headwinds from U.S. tariffs, Canada must chart its course for the future.”
Virani said he will stay on as minister as long as he has the privilege to serve, and as MP until the next election.
In his statement, he also discussed the impact of his political career on his wife and two sons, who have only known a family life with their husband and father in politics and frequently out of town.
“People say that is the price of public service,” he said. “But it is hard to appreciate the toll that price takes unless you live it, personally in my case, for over a decade.”
Virani and Ng join Transport and Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand, Rural Development Minister Gudie Hutchings, Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan and former tourism minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada as federal cabinet members who aren’t seeking re-election.
Ferrada resigned from cabinet last week to run for mayor of Montreal. The others remain in their posts.
