Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Pierrefonds—Dollard

Two years before this election the municipal map beneath the riding had been redrawn. Dollard-des-Ormeaux voted its way back out of the Montreal megacity and was reconstituted as an independent city on 1 January 2006, while its neighbours to the north and east stayed inside Montreal as the boroughs of Pierrefonds-Roxboro and L'Île-Bizard–Sainte-Geneviève. The federal district takes in all three, filling the northwest shoulder of the Island of Montreal between the Lac des Deux-Montagnes and the Rivière des Prairies.

Candidates

Bernard Patry (Liberal) — Born in Montreal on 30 January 1943, Patry practised as a general practitioner and was among the founders of a medical clinic in Pierrefonds. His public career began at 25 with a seat on the L'Île-Bizard council; he then spent eighteen years in the mayor's chair there. Ottawa followed in 1993. He served as parliamentary secretary to the minister of Indian affairs and northern development from 1996 to 1998, and took the chair of the Commons foreign affairs and international trade committee in 2002, holding it through the 38th Parliament. Between 2005 and 2007 he presided over the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie, the inter-parliamentary body of French-speaking legislatures. He was seeking a sixth consecutive term.

Pierre-Olivier Brunelle (Conservative) — Brunelle, of Sainte-Geneviève, carried the Conservative banner in a district that had returned only two members since it was first contested in 1988: Progressive Conservative Gerry Weiner for a single term, and Patry ever since.

Shameem Siddiqui (NDP) — Siddiqui worked in sales and marketing and lived in Dollard-des-Ormeaux.

Reny Gagnon (Bloc Québécois) — Gagnon ran from Laval, off the island.

Ryan Young (Green Party) — Young ran from Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.

Marsha Fine, an editor, stood for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

Some 105,500 people lived here at the 2006 census, most of them in postwar and later subdivisions laid out between the Trans-Canada Highway and the water. Dollard-des-Ormeaux, the largest single municipality, counted close to 49,000 residents. L'Île-Bizard, joined to the rest of the island by a single bridge, keeps farmland, golf courses and a large municipal nature park across its interior.

No language group holds a majority here. English-mother-tongue residents formed the largest bloc at a little over a third, speakers of neither official language were close behind at about the same share, and French speakers were just under three in ten. A third of all residents were immigrants, with South Asian, Black, Arab and Chinese communities each well established. Immigration and citizenship files consequently made up a heavy share of the constituency office's casework, and federal processing delays were a recurring complaint.

Employment leans on retail along boulevards Saint-Jean, des Sources and Pierrefonds, on light manufacturing, and above all on jobs elsewhere. Highway 40 and the Deux-Montagnes commuter rail line, with stops at Roxboro-Pierrefonds and Sunnybrooke, carried residents into the industrial districts of Saint-Laurent and downtown. Crowding on both, and the long-argued question of pushing rapid transit further west, were standing local grievances.

The campaign ran through the worst weeks of the global financial crisis, and in a district with a large share of retirees and homeowners the state of savings, pensions and credit was an immediate concern. Infrastructure money for aging suburban water and road networks, and shoreline protection along the Rivière des Prairies, also featured in the local debate.