Montcalm, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Montcalm

Three pieces of Lanaudière made up this riding: Mascouche, the Terrebonne districts of Lachenaie and La Plaine, and the whole of the Montcalm regional county municipality behind them. The 901-square-kilometre wedge began at the Rivière des Mille Îles, about 35 kilometres north of downtown Montreal, and ran north into farmland, lakes and woodlots. It was among the fastest-growing seats in the province: 122,825 people lived there in 2006, up more than 16 per cent in five years.

Candidates

Roger Gaudet (Bloc Québécois) — Gaudet was a Saint-Liguori man through and through. Born there in 1945 and a restaurant owner before entering public life, he sat on the village council from 1985, became mayor in 1989 and prefect of the Montcalm regional county municipality in 1993. He reached Ottawa through a by-election in December 2002 in the old riding of Berthier—Montcalm, won Montcalm at the two general elections that followed, and served as the Bloc's critic on public works and government services.

David Grégoire (Liberal) — Grégoire ran for a party that had not been competitive in Lanaudière's rural seats for years.

Marie-Josée Beauchamp (NDP) — Beauchamp campaigned for New Democrats who had never finished better than a distant fourth here.

Claude Marc Boudreau (Conservative) — Boudreau, of Lachenaie, stood for the Conservatives, who were trying to extend gains made in the Quebec City region and the Beauce into the exurbs north of Montreal.

Michel Paulette (Green Party) — Paulette, of Mascouche, had been the riding's Conservative candidate in 2006 and appeared this time under the Green banner.

About the Riding

Mascouche drove the riding's growth. Sitting where Autoroute 25 meets Autoroute 640, it absorbed thousands of young households leaving the island of Montreal for cheaper ground, and Terrebonne's La Plaine and Lachenaie districts added the same kind of subdivision expansion on the western flank. Road and transit capacity did not keep pace, and commuters from this corner of Lanaudière queued daily for the crossings into Laval and Montreal.

Two projects meant to relieve that pressure were live during the campaign. Work had begun in March 2008 on a tolled Autoroute 25 bridge over the Rivière des Prairies, the province's first road built as a public-private partnership. A commuter rail line to Mascouche had been announced in March 2006 and was still working its way through environmental hearings in the autumn of 2008.

North of the subdivisions the character changed. Sainte-Julienne was the seat of the regional county municipality; Saint-Lin—Laurentides was its most populous town; Saint-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Saint-Calixte and Saint-Liguori filled in the map. The southern half of the MRC was a productive agricultural plain of dairy, hogs, grain and market gardening, while the northern half turned to forest, lakes and cottage country, with recreation and tourism supplying a share of local income. Residential construction employed a substantial slice of the workforce across both halves.

The seat had been sovereigntist ground since it was drawn in its current form for the 2004 election, and Gaudet's network of former municipal colleagues across the MRC reinforced that. The federal questions carrying weight here were practical: highway and transit capacity for a fast-growing suburban population, farm support and the protection of agricultural land against subdivision pressure, and the manufacturing and construction employment that a weakening economy was beginning to threaten as the campaign ran into the financial crisis of October 2008. Bilingual services and immigration, the staples of Montreal island campaigns, barely registered in a constituency that was overwhelmingly francophone and locally born.