Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert

Two communities of very different character on Montreal's South Shore made up this Montérégie riding: the city of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville and the borough of Saint-Hubert within Longueuil. Together they covered about 109 square kilometres east of the Champlain Bridge corridor, close enough to the metropolitan core to function as commuter territory but with an industrial base of their own.

Candidates

Carole Lavallée (Bloc Québécois) — The sitting member, first elected in 2004 and returned in 2006. Born in Montreal in January 1954, she freelanced as a journalist for regional and national outlets, owned a communications agency in Joliette between 1986 and 1990, and directed communications for the Parti Québécois from 1989 to 1994. A founding member of the Bloc Québécois in 1991, she ran the party's communications and then advised its leader before standing for office herself. She was the Bloc's labour critic from 2004 and picked up the arts and culture side of the Canadian heritage file in 2008, as the federal government's cancellation of several cultural programs that summer became one of the most contested questions of the Quebec campaign.

Pierre Diamond (Liberal) — A Boucherville resident, he stood for the Liberal Party.

Nicole Charbonneau Barron (Conservative) — From Saint-Bruno, she was the Conservative nominee.

Vesna Vesic (NDP) — Also from Saint-Bruno, she carried the New Democratic nomination.

Simon Bernier (Green Party) — The Green candidate, from Longueuil.

About the Riding

Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville had 24,388 residents in 2006 and had only just regained its independence. Folded into the enlarged city of Longueuil in 2002 under Bill 170, it was reconstituted as a separate municipality on 1 January 2006 following a referendum, while staying inside the Longueuil agglomeration for shared services — an arrangement whose tax bills and council disputes were still being sorted out when the federal campaign began. The town sits at the foot of Mont Saint-Bruno, one of the Monteregian hills, whose wooded slopes and lakes are protected as a provincial park, and it has a long-settled English-speaking minority alongside its French-speaking majority.

Saint-Hubert, with 77,028 residents in 2006, is three times larger and remained a borough of Longueuil, housing that city's hall and much of its administration. Its defining asset is the airport. Montréal/Saint-Hubert dates to 1927 and is one of the busier fields in the country measured by aircraft movements. The Canadian Forces base there closed in 1995, but a garrison stayed on the site, including 438 Tactical Helicopter Squadron. Immediately next to the field stands the head office of the Canadian Space Agency. Pratt & Whitney Canada designs and builds jet engines at a plant nearby, and the regional carrier Pascan Aviation flies out of the borough.

Aerospace is the single most important industrial sector on this stretch of the South Shore, which makes federal decisions on research funding, defence procurement and space programs unusually visible to local voters — and made the freezing of credit markets during the campaign a live concern for suppliers as well as their workers. The rest of the riding divides between detached houses and a high ownership rate in Saint-Bruno, and denser postwar subdivisions, strip commercial development and industrial parks in Saint-Hubert. Highways 30, 112 and 116 and the Champlain Bridge carry a heavy daily commute into Montreal, and congestion on the South Shore approaches was a standing grievance. Both communities are overwhelmingly francophone.