Ahuntsic, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Ahuntsic

Ahuntsic occupied the northern edge of the Island of Montreal, an 18-square-kilometre wedge running from the Rivière des Prairies south towards the Metropolitan Boulevard. It held the Ahuntsic and Bordeaux quarters, the newer streets of Nouveau-Bordeaux and the western half of Sault-au-Récollet, all within the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville; Cartierville itself lay across the boundary in Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. Papineau, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel and Bourassa closed it in on the south and east. Just over 100,000 people lived inside the lines at the 2006 census.

Candidates

Maria Mourani (Bloc Québécois) — Mourani took degrees in criminology and sociology at the Université de Montréal and worked as a parole officer with the Correctional Service, as a consultant on offender rehabilitation and as a university teacher. Her study of Montreal street gangs, La face cachée des gangs de rue, appeared in October 2006 and gave her a public profile on crime policy. She fell narrowly short against Eleni Bakopanos here in 2004, beat her in January 2006, and was defending the seat for the first time; she gave her residence as Blainville, north of Laval.

Eleni Bakopanos (Liberal) — Born at Argos in Greece in 1954, Bakopanos sat in the Commons from 1993, first for Saint-Denis and from 1997 for Ahuntsic. She chaired the Commons committee on citizenship and immigration, was parliamentary secretary to the justice minister from 1997 to 1999 and to the minister of social development from 2004, and served as assistant deputy chair of committees of the whole from 2001 to 2003. Out since 2006 and giving her occupation as political adviser, she was back for a third meeting with Mourani.

Jean Précourt (Conservative) — A certified general accountant, Précourt stood for the Conservatives.

Alexandra Bélec (NDP) — A lawyer, Bélec ran for the New Democrats.

Lynette Tremblay (Green Party) — Self-employed, Tremblay carried the Green Party banner in the riding for the third election running.

About the Riding

Ahuntsic-Cartierville was among Montreal's most mixed boroughs, and the riding reflected it. At the 2006 census a little over half the residents gave French as their mother tongue, fewer than one in twenty-five gave English, and close to two in five gave some other language — Arabic, Italian and Spanish the largest among them.

Housing shifted noticeably from one end to the other. Ahuntsic proper is a district of tree-lined streets, duplexes and single-family homes laid out between the wars; Bordeaux and Nouveau-Bordeaux run to apartment blocks and higher-density postwar construction and hold much of the rental stock. Commercial life concentrated on rue Fleury Est, where the merchants of the Promenade Fleury had organised themselves in 1985 and where some 250 independent shops and restaurants traded, and at the Marché Central complex off boulevard de l'Acadie beside the Metropolitan.

The institutional employers were substantial for a riding this compact. Collège Ahuntsic, opened on rue Saint-Hubert in 1967, is one of the largest CEGEPs in the province. Hôpital Fleury served Ahuntsic and Montréal-Nord as the main installation of a health and social services centre counting better than 2,200 employees at the end of March 2008. Along the northern edge, the Rivière des Prairies shoreline carried most of the open land, chiefly the Parc-nature de l'Île-de-la-Visitation, laid out around the ruins of the Sulpician mills that worked the Sault-au-Récollet from 1726 until 1960.

Federal questions here ran to immigration: processing delays, family reunification, credential recognition and settlement funding all touched large numbers of constituents directly. Public safety was the other recurring theme. The city had adopted a security policy in 2007 whose local application in Ahuntsic-Cartierville dealt expressly with street gangs — territory the sitting member had worked as a criminologist before entering politics.

The August announcement of some $45 million in reductions to federal cultural programs cut against the government across Quebec. A crowd the organisers put at 2,500 gathered outside the Société des arts technologiques on Saint-Laurent on 27 August, eleven days before the writ; the argument then ran through the campaign, reaching a protest concert in the city on 23 September at which both Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton spoke.