Cape Breton—Canso, NS — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Cape Breton—Canso

Few ridings in Nova Scotia stretch as far. Cape Breton—Canso wrapped around the southern, western and eastern edges of Cape Breton Island — Glace Bay, Dominion, Louisbourg, St. Peter's, Inverness, Chéticamp and Port Hawkesbury — and reached across the Strait of Canso to Mulgrave, the town of Canso and most of Guysborough County. The 2003 order drew it as all of Richmond County, the part of Inverness County south of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, the southeastern portion of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, and Guysborough County apart from its western district. That came to 9,438 square kilometres and about 72,000 people.

Candidates

Rodger Cuzner (Liberal) — Cuzner was born in Glace Bay in 1955, the second of six children, and studied physical education at St. Francis Xavier University. He worked as a special events coordinator for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality's recreation department, running projects such as the Millennium Countdown, and coached Nova Scotia teams at the 1995 and 1999 Canada Games. First elected in 2000 in the predecessor riding of Bras d'Or—Cape Breton, he served as parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien through 2003 and chaired both the Nova Scotia and Atlantic Liberal caucuses. He carried the veterans affairs file for the opposition in 2006 and 2007.

Allan Richard Murphy (Conservative) — A newspaper publisher, Murphy stood for the Conservatives in a riding the party had not carried since its creation in the 2003 redistribution.

Mark MacNeill (NDP) — A government and business policy adviser from Inverness, MacNeill was the New Democratic candidate, hoping to convert the party's growing provincial strength in industrial Cape Breton into a federal breakthrough.

Dwayne MacEachern (Green Party) — A community development officer from Judique, MacEachern stood for the Green Party.

About the Riding

Coal built the eastern end of this riding and its withdrawal reshaped it. The Cape Breton Development Corporation wound down the last of the deep mines at the turn of the century, and the towns that grew around the pits have carried heavy unemployment and steady out-migration since, much of it to Alberta. The one prospect of a return to coal lay at Donkin, where in December 2005 the province awarded exploration and development rights over the undersea deposit to an alliance led by the mining group Xstrata. Assessment work had been under way for several years, but no mine was operating and no production decision had been taken.

The mainland approaches are anchored by the industrial cluster at Point Tupper and Port Hawkesbury, where a large pulp and paper mill and deepwater berths on the Strait of Canso provide the region's biggest private payroll. Fishing carries the rest of the coast. Groundfish never recovered from the 1992 moratorium, but lobster and snow crab remained the mainstay of harbours from Canso and Guysborough round to Chéticamp and Inverness. Tourism grew through the 2000s around the Cabot Trail, the reconstructed Fortress of Louisbourg and the Celtic music circuit.

Federal politics here have turned on jobs and on the terms of employment insurance for seasonal workers. David Dingwall, a Liberal cabinet minister with seventeen years in the Commons, lost the predecessor seat of Bras d'Or in 1997, when the New Democrats broke through across Nova Scotia and the Liberals were shut out of the province. Cuzner had held the seat since 2000, and the Conservative campaign of 2008 was working against both that record and a regional quarrel with Ottawa over the Atlantic Accord.