Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière

Southwest of Quebec City, this riding ran along the south bank of the St. Lawrence from the western suburbs of Lévis out into open farm country. The suburban end took in Saint-Nicolas, Saint-Rédempteur, Charny, Saint-Jean-Chrysostome, Sainte-Hélène-de-Breakeyville and Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon; beyond them lay the MRC de Lotbinière, with Saint-Apollinaire, Saint-Agapit, Saint-Gilles, Saint-Flavien, Dosquet, Laurier-Station, Sainte-Croix, Leclercville and the riverside village of Lotbinière.

Candidates

Jacques Gourde (Conservative) — A hay producer and exporter from Saint-Narcisse-de-Beaurivage with a diploma in farm management, Gourde won the seat in 2006 and was made parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and for the Canadian Wheat Board within two weeks of that election. He moved to Natural Resources in January 2007 and to Labour in October of the same year, serving a minister who also carried the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec. He ran as the incumbent.

Antoine Sarrazin-Bourgoin (Bloc Québécois) — A political science student at Université Laval from Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly, Sarrazin-Bourgoin had led the student associations at Polyvalente Pamphile-Le May and Cégep François-Xavier-Garneau and worked as an information officer for Greenpeace in 2007 and 2008. He made his youth an explicit part of the pitch and campaigned on supply management, on more subsidized daycare places, on environmental protection and on higher benefits for seniors.

Raymond Côté (New Democratic Party) — Côté was making his second run here for the NDP, having also carried the party's colours in the riding in 2006.

Marie-Thérèse Hovington (Liberal) — Hovington, from Saint-Nicolas, stood for the Liberals in a riding where the party ran well behind both the Conservatives and the Bloc.

Shirley Picknell (Green Party) — A teacher from Saint-Nicolas, Picknell was the Green candidate.

About the Riding

The most contentious local file of 2008 ran underground. Ultramar's Pipeline Saint-Laurent, authorized by a Quebec private act sanctioned on 17 June 2005, was to carry refined product about 240 kilometres from the company's refinery at Lévis to Montreal's east end, and its route crossed prime farmland in Lotbinière, with Saint-Gilles, Saint-Agapit, Dosquet and Saint-Flavien among the municipalities affected. The company had to negotiate rights of way with close to 700 landowners. Quebec's farmland protection commission cleared part of the route in a decision issued on 25 June 2008; nearly all of its decisions were appealed to the Tribunal administratif du Québec by owners who wanted no pipeline through their fields, and where no agreement could be reached Ultramar moved to expropriate. Farmland protection, energy infrastructure and property rights all landed on the same ballot.

The MRC de Lotbinière is among the more productive farming districts of Chaudière-Appalaches, built on dairy, hogs and field crops. Every serious candidate defended supply management, at a moment when world trade talks and rising feed costs had farmers uneasy and hog producers were losing money on every animal they shipped.

The suburban third of the riding tells a different story. Saint-Nicolas, Charny and Saint-Jean-Chrysostome were farm villages within living memory and became commuter towns after the Pierre-Laporte bridge opened in 1970, filling in with subdivisions, trucking firms and light manufacturing while keeping pockets of strawberry and apple growing. All were folded into the enlarged city of Lévis in 2002. Half the riding's name comes from the Chaudière, which drops over a broad set of falls in a park at Charny before it reaches the St. Lawrence. The population is almost entirely francophone.