Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel

Two neighbourhoods that shared a border and little else made up this riding in the northeast of the Island of Montreal. Saint-Léonard was a full borough of 13.5 square kilometres; to its west lay the Saint-Michel district, part of the Villeray—Saint-Michel—Parc-Extension borough, of which the riding took the northern portion — southern Saint-Michel sat in Papineau. Together they packed more than a hundred thousand people into about 20 square kilometres, making this one of the densest seats in Quebec.

Candidates

Massimo Pacetti (Liberal) — Born in Montreal in August 1962, Pacetti trained as an accountant and ran his own practice alongside other business interests before entering federal politics. He served as a commissioner of the Commission scolaire de la Pointe-de-l'Île and won the May 2002 by-election called after Alfonso Gagliano left the seat for a diplomatic posting, then held it in 2004 and 2006. In the Parliament that ended in 2008 he was vice-chair of the House of Commons finance committee.

Lucie Le Tourneau (Conservative) — Le Tourneau ran as the Conservative candidate.

Farid Salem (Bloc Québécois) — Salem, a Longueuil resident, carried the Bloc Québécois banner.

Laura Colella (NDP) — Colella, based in Gatineau, ran for the New Democrats.

Frank Monteleone (Green Party) — Monteleone, of Saint-Léonard, stood for the Greens.

Garnet Colly ran for the Marxist-Leninist Party and Joseph Young ran without affiliation.

About the Riding

Saint-Léonard held 71,730 residents at the 2006 census and was the centre of Italian-Canadian life in Montreal, having overtaken the older Little Italy further west. The stretch of Jean-Talon Street between Langelier and Viau boulevards was known as Via Italia, and the borough's streets were lined with the wide-set brick duplexes, triplexes and fiveplexes built during the postwar boom. Among them was the largest housing cooperative ever built in Quebec: 654 single-family brick bungalows in seven standard models, put up between 1956 and 1962. Saputo, the dairy business the Saputo family started in Montreal in 1954 and whose first plant opened in Saint-Léonard in 1957, still had its head office in the borough. The parish had gone from a rural francophone village to a suburb of tens of thousands within a single generation.

Saint-Michel, annexed to Montreal in 1968, had been shaped by holes in the ground. The Miron and Francon quarries employed much of the district for decades, and when they closed the neighbourhood went into a long decline, with unemployment and social assistance rates well above the city average. The Miron pit became a landfill and then the Complexe environnemental de Saint-Michel, a slow conversion into parkland and biogas recovery. Its rim carried the district's most visible new employers: Cirque du Soleil's international headquarters, the National Circus School, and the TOHU performance hall built to knit the three together.

Across the riding, Italian, Arabic, Spanish and Haitian Creole were all spoken at home in large numbers, and immigrants made up close to half the population. Earnings were low by Montreal standards, particularly in Saint-Michel, and housing costs, language training and employment programmes for newcomers were standing local concerns.

No party but the Liberals had won here or in the predecessor seat since the mid-1970s. Federal decisions with obvious local reach in 2008 included the reductions to federal arts and culture programmes announced that August — an issue with unusual bite in a neighbourhood whose economic revival was being built on circus arts — and the pace of immigration and citizenship processing.