Beauce, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Beauce

The Chaudière valley runs north from the Maine border towards the St. Lawrence, and the riding followed it. It took in the regional county municipalities of Beauce-Sartigan and Beauce-Centre, nearly all of La Nouvelle-Beauce, the Saint-Prosper and Saint-Zacharie corner of Les Etchemins, and a handful of municipalities at the western edge of Le Granit — about 4,470 square kilometres holding 103,617 people at the 2006 census. Saint-Georges, with close to 30,000 residents, was much the largest town; Sainte-Marie, Beauceville, Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce and Saint-Prosper followed a long way behind.

Candidates

Maxime Bernier (Conservative) — Bernier is the son of Gilles Bernier, a broadcaster at CKRB in Saint-Georges who held the Beauce seat from 1984, first as a Progressive Conservative and from 1993 as an independent, and afterwards served as ambassador to Haiti. Admitted to the Quebec bar in 1990, the younger Bernier practised law and worked in securities regulation, banking and insurance before becoming executive vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute. He won the riding in January 2006 and was sworn in as industry minister with the rest of the first Harper cabinet on 6 February, moving to foreign affairs in August 2007. He resigned from cabinet on 26 May 2008 after acknowledging that he had left classified briefing material at the home of Julie Couillard, and sat on the back benches for the balance of the Parliament. Couillard's memoir, brought forward from 14 October once that date was fixed for the election, was published on 6 October.

André Côté (Bloc Québécois) — A recreologist living at Saint-Georges, Côté carried the Bloc Québécois banner.

René Roy (Liberal) — A farmer from Saint-Jules, Roy stood for the Liberals.

Véronique Poulin (NDP) — A student, Poulin was the New Democratic candidate.

Nicolas Rochette (Green Party) — A mathematics teacher living at Notre-Dame-des-Pins, Rochette ran for the Green Party.

About the Riding

The Beauce's reputation rests on small and medium-sized manufacturers, and the count bears it out: the Beauce-Sartigan RCM alone held more than 250 industrial firms, concentrated in food processing, wood products, metal fabrication and machinery. Groupe Canam, started at Saint-Gédéon-de-Beauce in 1960 by Roger Dutil and Gilberte Lacroix-Dutil with an American partner and the largest maker of steel joists in the country by the early 1970s, kept its head office at Saint-Georges. Garaga, founded in the same town in 1983, had become one of the principal garage-door manufacturers in North America.

That orientation left the riding unusually exposed to the American economy. The southern end of the district meets Maine, and much of what the region made was sold across the line. The Canadian dollar had reached parity with the American on 20 September 2007 for the first time in three decades, and the United States housing market had since collapsed. By the autumn of 2008 the credit crisis dominating the national campaign was a straightforward commercial problem in Saint-Georges rather than an abstraction.

Beyond the factories, the Beauce sits at the heart of Chaudière-Appalaches, the largest maple syrup producing region in Quebec and therefore in the world, and dairy and mixed farming occupy the valley floor. The Chaudière is prone to spring ice-jam flooding, a recurring hazard for the riverside towns — Beauceville, Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce, Vallée-Jonction and Sainte-Marie among them.

In its politics the Beauce has never resembled most of francophone Quebec. No Bloc Québécois member had ever held it. Gilles Bernier sat as a Progressive Conservative and then as an independent until 1997, the Liberal Claude Drouin followed for nine years, and Maxime Bernier took the seat in 2006 — a sequence with no sovereigntist interval anywhere in it.

The population was overwhelmingly French-speaking and among the least varied in the country in origin: at the 2006 census about 84% reported Canadian ethnic origin, a higher share than in any other riding. Low taxes, lighter regulation, and support for small business and the American trade relationship were the standing local preoccupations.