Saint-Lambert, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Saint-Lambert

The seat was empty when the campaign began. Bloc Québécois MP Maka Kotto had quit the Commons on 5 March 2008 to move to provincial politics, and won the Bourget by-election for the Parti Québécois that May. A federal by-election in Saint-Lambert was called for 8 September to replace him; it was cancelled on 7 September, the day before voting, when Parliament was dissolved and the general election called. The five candidates already nominated carried straight on into the longer campaign.

The riding itself was a compact piece of the South Shore facing Montreal across the river — roughly 25 square kilometres taking in Saint-Lambert itself, the Longueuil borough of Greenfield Park, the western districts of the pre-2002 city of Longueuil, and the small former town of LeMoyne between them.

Candidates

Josée Beaudin (Bloc Québécois) — Born in Saint-Lambert in December 1961, Beaudin worked as an administrator and had spent years in community organisations on the South Shore. She lived in Belœil. Nominated for the aborted September by-election, she became the Bloc's replacement for Kotto in the general campaign.

Roxane Stanners (Liberal) — A Montreal lawyer who had worked as a Crown prosecutor, Stanners had likewise been confirmed for the cancelled by-election before the campaign was folded into the general election.

Patrick Clune (Conservative) — A Saint-Lambert businessman whose career was in film and television post-production, Clune founded Digital Cut, a digital post-production laboratory. He had already carried the Conservative banner in the riding in 2004 and 2006.

Richard Marois (NDP) — Marois, of Brossard, ran for the New Democrats.

Diane Joubert (Green Party) — Joubert, a Saint-Lambert resident, stood for the Greens.

About the Riding

The city of Saint-Lambert counted 21,599 residents at the 2006 census and had spent the preceding years untangling itself from an amalgamation it never wanted. Merged into Longueuil in 2002, it carried a demerger referendum in June 2004 and was re-established as a separate municipality on 1 January 2006 — without LeMoyne, which stayed with Longueuil. Splitting services and tax rolls was still live local business in 2008.

Greenfield Park remained a borough of Longueuil and was the only one of them with official bilingual status. Incorporated in March 1911, it had grown as an English-speaking commuter suburb, and English was still the first language of close to two in five residents. Its spine was Taschereau Boulevard, which carried the shopping centres and Hôpital Charles-LeMoyne, the largest hospital on the South Shore. LeMoyne, wedged in between, was a compact working-class enclave of a few thousand people.

Across the riding's roughly 92,000 residents, French was the mother tongue of about three-quarters and English of just under one in eight, a mix that gave Saint-Lambert a different political texture from the surrounding Montérégie seats. Little industry remained inside the boundaries; residents commuted to jobs on the island in professional services, health care and administration.

Two pieces of federal infrastructure sat at the riding's edges. The Saint-Lambert Lock, the first lock of the St. Lawrence Seaway, was where ocean vessels bound for the Great Lakes began their climb. The Victoria Bridge ran from the riding into Pointe-Saint-Charles, and the Champlain Bridge crossing began a short distance away in Brossard; both were federal responsibilities, and the condition of the Champlain span was already a recurring subject at South Shore municipal councils. Commuter congestion, bridge maintenance and the cost of transit connections were the local issues most directly tied to Ottawa.