Pontiac, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Pontiac

Pontiac went into the 2008 campaign represented by one of the heavier hitters in the federal cabinet — an unusual position for a district that is mostly bush, farmland and small river towns. The riding runs from the western end of Gatineau along the Ottawa River to the Ontario boundary and then north into the Canadian Shield, covering the regional county municipalities of Pontiac, Les Collines-de-l'Outaouais and La Vallée-de-la-Gatineau together with the Aylmer sector of the City of Gatineau.

Candidates

Lawrence Cannon (Conservative) — Born in Quebec City on 6 December 1947 into a political family — his maternal grandfather, Charles "Chubby" Power, was minister of national defence for air under Mackenzie King — Cannon took a political science degree at the Université de Montréal in 1971 and an MBA at Université Laval in 1979. He worked in Premier Robert Bourassa's office until 1976 and served on Cap-Rouge council before entering the National Assembly for La Peltrie in 1985. As Quebec's minister of communications from 1990 to 1994 he oversaw the rollout of the province's 911 service. He returned to municipal politics on Gatineau council for Val-Tétreau in 2001 and chaired the Société de transport de l'Outaouais from 2002 to 2005, the years in which the agency developed its Rapibus busway plan. Named Stephen Harper's Quebec lieutenant in September 2005, he unseated Liberal David Smith here in 2006 and was sworn in as minister of transport, infrastructure and communities on 6 February 2006.

Cindy Duncan McMillan (Liberal) — A farmer from Wakefield, Duncan McMillan made her first federal run for a party that had held Pontiac and its predecessor district without interruption from 1993 until Cannon's win.

Marius Tremblay (Bloc Québécois) — Tremblay stood for a party that had never carried this seat.

Céline Brault (NDP) — A teacher from Chelsea.

André Sylvestre (Green Party) — Sylvestre ran from Cantley, and Benoit Legros of La Pêche stood for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

Just under 100,000 people were spread across this territory at the 2006 census. Close to three-quarters gave French as their mother tongue. The English-speaking quarter is long settled, concentrated in the Pontiac proper around Shawville, Bristol, Clarendon and Sheenboro and in the Gatineau hills near Chelsea and Wakefield. The Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community sits beside Maniwaki, and the Algonquins of Barriere Lake are at Rapid Lake, well to the northwest.

The southern third functions as the Outaouais commuter belt: Chelsea, Cantley, La Pêche and Aylmer house thousands of federal public servants who cross into Ottawa each morning, and Gatineau Park's conservation lands run through the middle of them. North of the escarpment the economy is forestry, sawmilling, mineral exploration, outfitting and tourism, and by the autumn of 2008 that economy was in visible trouble as Outaouais mills cut shifts and closed. The Pontiac's farms run to beef and dairy, and the Shawville Fair over the Labour Day weekend is the county's largest gathering.

Federal questions that mattered locally in 2008 were correspondingly split. In the north: aid for forestry communities, employment insurance for seasonal workers, and on-reserve housing and water infrastructure. In the south: the size and stability of the federal public service payroll, the condition of the interprovincial bridges over the Ottawa River, and infrastructure money for rural roads. The financial crisis unfolding through the campaign sharpened all of it.