Saint-Jean, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Saint-Jean

This riding took in the northern and western portions of the Le Haut-Richelieu regional county municipality, 734 square kilometres of Montérégie farmland and suburb along the Richelieu River southeast of Montreal. Nine municipalities made it up: Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Mont-Saint-Grégoire, Lacolle, Saint-Alexandre, Sainte-Anne-de-Sabrevois, Saint-Paul-de-l'Île-aux-Noix, Saint-Blaise-sur-Richelieu, Sainte-Brigide-d'Iberville and Saint-Valentin.

Candidates

Claude Bachand (Bloc Québécois) — The sitting member. Born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in January 1951 and an educator by profession, Bachand had represented the riding since taking it in October 1993 and was returned in 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2006. He served as the Bloc Québécois critic for national defence and had earlier worked on Aboriginal affairs, sitting on the Commons committee responsible for that subject in the 1990s. The defence portfolio gave him an unusual overlap between subject and constituency, since the Canadian Forces' main recruit and officer training establishment sits in his home city and the Afghanistan deployment and its extension had been among the most contested questions of the previous Parliament.

Claire Ste-Marie (Liberal) — A Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu resident, she stood for the Liberal Party.

Marie-Josée Mercier (Conservative) — Also from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, she was the Conservative nominee.

Philippe Refghi (NDP) — From Longueuil, he carried the New Democratic nomination.

Pierre Tremblay (Green Party) — The Green candidate, from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

Guy Berger (Independent) — Also a resident of the city, he ran without a party affiliation.

About the Riding

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu had 87,492 residents in 2006, the result of a 2001 amalgamation that joined the old city with Saint-Luc, Iberville, Saint-Athanase and L'Acadie. Military installations have shaped the place since Fort Saint-Jean was built on the west bank in 1666 to guard the water route toward Lake Champlain. The garrison remains the Canadian Forces' principal recruit and officer training establishment, putting thousands of new members through basic training each year, and the Royal Military College Saint-Jean, which stopped granting degrees in 1995, had reopened in the autumn of 2007 at the college level. Downriver at Saint-Paul-de-l'Île-aux-Noix, the 19th-century British fortifications of Fort Lennox occupy an island in the Richelieu.

The Chambly Canal, opened in 1843, runs 20 kilometres downstream along the west bank to Chambly and now serves recreational boaters. Every August the city fills for its international balloon festival, among the largest hot air balloon gatherings in the country. Local manufacturing rests on textiles, wood products, sporting goods and metal fabrication, and the Carrefour Richelieu shopping centre with about 115 stores serves the wider Haut-Richelieu. Outside the city the land is farmed intensively — grain and vegetables on the river flats, apple orchards on the slopes of Mont Saint-Grégoire, another of the Monteregian hills — and the southern villages, Lacolle among them, sit on the United States border.

Three sets of questions ran through the 2008 campaign here. Defence policy and the future of the Afghanistan mission carried weight in a city whose economy is tied to the military. Job losses in Quebec's textile and light manufacturing sectors had been heavy through the decade and were sharpening as the autumn financial crisis unfolded. And the border, minutes from the southern edge of the riding, kept cross-border trade, security requirements and travel documents on the local agenda. French is the mother tongue of the great majority of residents.