Mégantic—L'Érable, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Mégantic—L'Érable

This riding covered the Appalachian uplands of south-central Quebec: the whole of the regional county municipalities of L'Amiante and L'Érable, and most of Le Granit, running from the maple country north of the Bois-Francs down to the Maine border at Lac-Mégantic. Some 87,000 people lived across 5,580 square kilometres of farm lots, woodlots and small manufacturing towns, with Thetford Mines, Plessisville, Princeville and Lac-Mégantic serving as the main centres.

Candidates

Christian Paradis (Conservative) — Paradis was the riding's most prominent federal figure in decades. A Thetford Mines lawyer in his mid-thirties who had studied civil law at the Université de Sherbrooke and corporate law at Université Laval, he unseated Bloc member Marc Boulianne in January 2006 and moved quickly into government: Secretary of State for Agriculture in January 2007, then Minister of Public Works and Government Services on 25 June 2008, less than three months before the election was called.

Pierre Turcotte (Bloc Québécois) — A notary practising in Thetford Mines, Turcotte took on the job of winning back a seat the Bloc had held from 2004 until Paradis took it.

Nicole Champagne (Liberal) — Champagne, also of Thetford Mines, carried the Liberal banner in a riding where the party's federal vote had eroded across two consecutive contests.

Bruno Vézina (NDP) — Vézina came from Irlande, a small municipality in the hills west of Thetford Mines.

Jean-R. Guernon (Green Party) — Guernon, of Saint-Ferdinand, completed the ballot for the Greens.

About the Riding

Thetford Mines was the largest city and the most singular economy in the riding. Asbestos had been dug from the hills around it for well over a century, and the LAB Chrysotile operation was still working there in 2008. Canada exported roughly 175,000 tonnes of chrysotile that year, most of it to developing countries, and Ottawa's defence of that trade in international forums was a live political question — one that read very differently inside the riding, where the mine meant paycheques, than it did elsewhere. The city had spent years trying to broaden its base into machining, plastics and metal fabrication.

Plessisville, seat of the L'Érable regional county municipality, built its identity on maple. The Citadelle producers' cooperative had been packing syrup there since 1928 and grew into one of the world's largest handlers of the product, and the town had been calling itself the world maple capital since 1976. Cranberry, dairy and grain operations filled out the agricultural economy of Princeville and the surrounding parishes.

At the southeastern end, Lac-Mégantic sat on its lake near the Maine boundary and served the Le Granit municipalities as their commercial hub, with forestry, tourism and light manufacturing supporting local employment. The dark-sky reserve created in September 2007 — the first of its kind anywhere — extended across the Granit municipalities, though the Mont-Mégantic observatory at its centre stood outside the riding.

Sawmills, furniture plants and metal shops across the riding were already feeling the American housing collapse by the autumn of 2008, and the financial turmoil of September and October gave the campaign a distinctly economic cast. The federal questions with local weight included the future of chrysotile exports and what transition would look like for mining towns, farm income and supply management, softwood lumber, and the highway and telecommunications infrastructure that these dispersed communities depended on.