Vaudreuil-Soulanges, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Vaudreuil-Soulanges

Wedged between the Ottawa River and Lac Saint-Louis at the western approach to Montreal, this riding follows the regional county municipality of the same name. Vaudreuil-Dorion anchors the northeast, with Saint-Lazare, Hudson and Rigaud inland and L'Île-Perrot, Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot and Pincourt sharing Île Perrot between the Lake of Two Mountains and Lac Saint-Louis. Southwest of there the district thins into farm country through Les Cèdres, Coteau-du-Lac and Saint-Zotique, ending at the Ontario line.

Candidates

Meili Faille (Bloc Québécois) — Born in Montreal on 18 June 1972 and living at Rigaud, Faille studied applied science and chemical engineering at the University of Ottawa and took a business administration degree at the Université du Québec en Outaouais. She held posts in federal ministerial offices from 1989 to 1992, at Employment and Immigration and then the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and spent 1996 to 2004 as a project leader and consultant with the technology services firm Groupe LGS. Elected in 2004 and again in 2006, she carried the citizenship and immigration file for the Bloc and was vice-chair of the Commons committee on that subject.

Michael M. Fortier (Conservative) — A Montreal lawyer and investment banker who lived in Mont-Royal, Fortier had been a partner at Ogilvy Renault, ran the firm's London office from 1992 to 1996, and later worked at Crédit Suisse First Boston, TD Securities and RBC Capital Markets. He co-chaired Stephen Harper's 2003 leadership campaign and the Conservative national campaign in 2006, and had stood for office once himself, as a Progressive Conservative in Laval West in 2000. Harper named him to cabinet on 6 February 2006 as Minister of Public Works and Government Services and to the Senate later that month, an arrangement opposition parties attacked because a minister running a large spending department sat in the upper chamber rather than the Commons. He moved to International Trade on 25 June 2008. Fortier had said in November 2006 that he would seek this seat, and gave up the Senate appointment on 8 September 2008 to do it, which made Vaudreuil-Soulanges one of the most closely watched contests in Quebec.

Brigitte Legault (Liberal) — Legault, a Montrealer, ran for a party that had put Marc Garneau on the ballot here two years earlier. Little else about her background was documented during the campaign.

Maxime Héroux-Legault (NDP) — A first-time candidate living at Notre-Dame-de-l'Île-Perrot, Héroux-Legault stood for a party that had never been competitive here.

Jean-Yves Massenet (Green Party) — Massenet, of Hudson Heights, was the Green candidate.

About the Riding

Few parts of Quebec were filling up faster. The regional county municipality counted 120,935 residents at the 2006 census, better than 18% above its 2001 figure, the increase driven by young families priced out of the island of Montreal. Vaudreuil-Dorion serves as the commercial hub; Saint-Lazare grew quickly as a low-density bedroom community with a strong equestrian streak; Hudson, on the Ottawa River, keeps an older anglophone character and gives the riding one of the larger English-speaking minorities in Quebec off the island.

Geography made the area a freight corridor long before it became a suburb. Autoroutes 20 and 40 both cross it, the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific main lines run through it, and the historic Soulanges canal traces the St. Lawrence shore. Distribution warehousing and light industry cluster along those routes, while commuter trains on the Vaudreuil–Hudson line carry residents downtown each morning.

The campaign coincided with a large federal commitment on the ground here. On 25 September 2008 the public-private agreement for the western section of Autoroute 30 was concluded — a 42-kilometre link from Vaudreuil-Dorion south across the Soulanges canal and the St. Lawrence to Châteauguay, with Ottawa putting up $704.5 million toward a project costed at roughly $1.5 billion. Farmland protection, pressure on schools and water systems, and the cost of getting to work in Montreal were the recurring local concerns, alongside the arts-funding cuts and the economy that dominated the Quebec campaign.