Manicouagan, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Manicouagan

Few Canadian ridings covered more ground. Manicouagan began where the Manicouagan regional county municipality does, around Ragueneau and Chute-aux-Outardes, and ran east along Quebec's Côte-Nord through Baie-Comeau, Godbout, Port-Cartier and Sept-Îles to Havre-Saint-Pierre and the isolated settlements of the Lower North Shore, then north into the interior as far as Fermont and Schefferville.

Candidates

Gérard Asselin (Bloc Québécois) — Born at Sainte-Flavie in 1950 and a foreman by trade, Asselin sat on Baie-Comeau city council from 1979 to 1993 before winning the riding of Charlevoix in the Bloc's 1993 breakthrough. He moved to Manicouagan when the boundaries were redrawn and had held it since 2004. He built his parliamentary record on natural resources and forestry and on a long campaign to loosen employment insurance rules for seasonal workers.

Pierre Breton (Conservative) — Breton, from Baie-Comeau, carried the Conservative banner in a region where the party was trying to convert federal spending announcements into seats.

Randy Jones (Liberal) — Born at Harrington Harbour in 1956 and a former ship's captain, Jones entered municipal politics in 2005 and was mayor of Gros-Mécatina on the Lower North Shore. His candidacy gave the coast a presence in a contest otherwise fought out of Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles.

Michaël Chicoine (New Democratic Party) — Chicoine, from Sept-Îles, stood for the NDP.

Jacques Gélineau (Green Party) — An environmentalist from Gallix, Gélineau was making his second run here, having also carried the Green banner in the riding in 2006.

About the Riding

More than half the population lived in two places. Baie-Comeau and Sept-Îles worked as service and industrial hubs for hundreds of kilometres of coastline; everything else was small towns, fishing villages and Innu communities strung along Route 138 or reachable only by air and boat. The Innu communities inside the boundaries — Pessamit, Uashat mak Mani-Utenam, Ekuanitshit, Nutashkuan, Unamen Shipu and Pakua Shipu among them — together with the Innu and Naskapi settlements near Schefferville, gave the riding one of the largest Indigenous populations in Quebec.

Resources drove everything else. Hydro-Québec's Manic-Outardes complex, built through the 1960s and 1970s, remains one of the largest generating systems in the province. In early March 2008 the Quebec government and Alcoa announced a $1.2-billion modernization of the Baie-Comeau aluminum smelter, tied to power supply contracts running to 2040, an interest-free $228-million loan spread over thirty years and employment commitments covering Alcoa's three Quebec smelters — the largest industrial announcement the region had seen in years. At Sept-Îles, iron ore coming down the rail line from the Labrador Trough and the Alouette aluminum smelter sustained the port, which opened a rail transshipment facility that same year.

The campaign also overlapped a major consultation. Hydro-Québec's Romaine River project — four dams and generating stations totalling about 1,550 megawatts north of Havre-Saint-Pierre — went through its public information and consultation period from 4 September to 19 October 2008, almost exactly the span of the campaign, with formal environmental hearings to open at Havre-Saint-Pierre at the end of October. Jobs, environmental review and Innu consent were being argued in the same weeks voters were being canvassed.

Forestry, pulp and paper and the fishery filled out the rest of the economy, all of them seasonal, which is why employment insurance eligibility and the gap between the end of benefits and the return to work — the trou noir — mattered here more than almost any other federal file. The riding is predominantly francophone, with Innu speakers in the Innu communities and English speakers concentrated on the Lower North Shore.