Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques

The member elected here in 2004 and re-elected in 2006 went into this campaign without a party. Louise Thibault resigned from the Bloc Québécois caucus on 12 April 2007 and sat as an independent for the rest of the Parliament, leaving the Bloc to defend the seat with a new candidate and producing one of the more crowded contests in eastern Quebec. The riding takes in the regional county municipalities of Rimouski-Neigette, Témiscouata and Les Basques, running from the south shore of the lower St. Lawrence inland to the New Brunswick and Maine boundaries.

Candidates

Claude Guimond (Bloc Québécois) — Born in Rimouski on 4 August 1963, Guimond farmed in the region and was the Bloc's choice to replace Thibault.

Pierre Béland (Liberal) — A biologist born in 1947, Béland founded the national ecotoxicology institute for the St. Lawrence at Rimouski and became known internationally for his work on the estuary's endangered beluga population. Radio-Canada named him scientist of the year in 1988, and he took the Acfas Michel-Jurdant prize for environmental science in 1993. He and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion had been friends since childhood.

Gaston Noël (Conservative) — Noël carried the Conservative nomination from Saint-Narcisse-de-Rimouski.

Guy Caron (NDP) — Born in Rimouski on 13 May 1968, Caron took a communications degree at the University of Ottawa in 1992 and a master's in economics at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2001. He led the University of Ottawa student federation for two years, spent two more as national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, and afterward worked for the Council of Canadians and as an economist with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. This was his third campaign in the riding.

Louise Thibault (Independent) — Born in Montreal on 28 May 1946, Thibault was a senior public servant and sat on the municipal council of Le Bic in 2003 before taking the seat for the Bloc in 2004 and serving as its critic for public works and government services. Her break with Gilles Duceppe in April 2007 turned on how far members could depart from the party line on questions she treated as matters of conscience, same-sex marriage among them.

James D. Morrison (Green Party), a consultant, also ran.

About the Riding

Around 84,000 people are spread over close to 8,000 square kilometres, and 98 in every hundred give French as their mother tongue. Rimouski, roughly 42,000 residents, is the administrative and service capital of the Bas-Saint-Laurent: it holds the Université du Québec à Rimouski with its marine sciences institute, the Institut maritime du Québec, the Cégep de Rimouski and the regional hospital. The maritime historic site at Pointe-au-Père marks the sinking of the Empress of Ireland off that shore in May 1914.

Inland, Témiscouata gathers around its long lake, with Cabano, Notre-Dame-du-Lac and Dégelis as its main centres. Les Basques is smaller still, anchored on Trois-Pistoles and its summer ferry across the estuary to Les Escoumins. Sawmilling, dairy, beef, sheep and maple production and coastal tourism carry the rural economy, and all of it is seasonal to a degree that shapes local politics. By the autumn of 2008 the wood sector was under sustained strain from the American housing collapse, a high Canadian dollar and the terms of the 2006 softwood lumber agreement.

Route 185, the Trans-Canada link from Rivière-du-Loup through Témiscouata to the New Brunswick line, was being rebuilt in stages as Autoroute 85 — the Dégelis bypass had opened in 2004 — and federal cost-sharing for the remaining sections was a standing regional demand. Employment insurance rules for seasonal workers remained the most persistent federal grievance across the riding, alongside support for rural health services and the region's colleges and university.