Beauport—Limoilou, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Beauport—Limoilou

This was Quebec City's eastern flank, 74 square kilometres holding 101,331 people at the 2006 census. It joined the greater part of the borough of Limoilou — the working-class grid north of the Saint-Charles River, with Lairet and Maizerets — to the western and central sectors of Beauport, which climb the terrace above the St. Lawrence. Limoilou's oldest streets, nearest the Saint-Charles, belonged to the Québec riding, and the eastern end of Beauport around Courville and Montmorency to Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord. The district had been created for the 2004 election under the plain name Beauport and was renamed afterwards.

Candidates

Sylvie Boucher (Conservative) — Born at Victoriaville in December 1962, Boucher studied office systems technology, gerontology, information technology and literature, sold and marketed for private firms, held several posts at the Quebec National Assembly and served on the staff of the Quebec tourism minister, Françoise Gauthier. She unseated the Bloc's Christian Simard in January 2006 and was made parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on 7 February, a fortnight after the vote, carrying the La Francophonie and official languages file until October 2007 and the status of women file from then until dissolution. She was defending the riding for the first time.

Éléonore Mainguy (Bloc Québécois) — A distribution clerk living in Quebec City, Mainguy carried the Bloc Québécois banner.

Yves Picard (Liberal) — A lawyer who had also been the Liberal candidate here in 2006, Picard stood again.

Simon-Pierre Beaudet (NDP) — A teacher who had carried the NDP banner in the riding in 2006, Beaudet was back for a second attempt.

Luc Côté (Green Party) — A computer specialist, Côté was the Green candidate.

Simon Bédard also ran as an independent.

About the Riding

The campaign arrived at the end of Quebec City's four-hundredth year. Ottawa had put about $110 million into the anniversary — $40 million to the Société du 400e for programming and $70 million into capital work, including harbourfront projects at Pointe-à-Carcy, Anse Brown and the Baie de Beauport inside the riding — and the celebrations ran through the summer immediately before the writ.

Limoilou and Beauport are quite different places. Limoilou is a grid of triplexes and duplexes laid out in the early twentieth century around the paper mill; most households rent, and incomes trail the Quebec City average. Beauport, merged into the city on 1 January 2002, is largely detached and semi-detached housing on the terrace above the river, with newer subdivisions further inland.

The Stadacona mill, built in Limoilou by Anglo-Canadian Pulp and Paper in 1927 and bought by White Birch Paper in 2004, was the riding's signature industrial employer. It turned out newsprint, directory paper and paperboard to an annual capacity of some 550,000 tonnes, but with North American newsprint demand falling and the dollar high, its outlook was a live local worry. The city's municipal incinerator, in service in Limoilou since 1974, was a standing neighbourhood grievance: residents had organised the Mouvement Environnement Limoilou around a petition within two years of its opening, and complaints of smoke, chemical odours and dust had not stopped since. Founded in 1923 by Irma LeVasseur and by 2008 part of the Centre hospitalier affilié universitaire de Québec, the Enfant-Jésus hospital anchored the health sector: one of only four tertiary trauma centres in the province, and the only one east of Montreal.

The Quebec City region was among the healthier local economies in the province in 2008, unemployment across the metropolitan area averaging 4.4% for the year against 7.2% province-wide, though the benefit was spread unevenly between Beauport's subdivisions and Limoilou's older streets. The Conservatives had established a foothold in the region in 2006 and were working to hold it. Their youth-justice proposal of 22 September, opening adult sentences and the publication of names to offenders as young as fourteen for the most violent crimes, was among the sharper points of contention in Quebec, the more so because provinces could set a higher threshold and Quebec's stood at sixteen. Closer to home the recurring threads were housing and urban revitalisation in Limoilou, air quality, and the federal money tied to the anniversary.