Barrie, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Barrie

The riding matched the City of Barrie exactly, no more and no less, a compact urban seat on the western shore of Kempenfelt Bay in Simcoe County. Highway 400 runs through it, carrying Toronto commuters south each morning and cottage traffic north each Friday, and that road did as much as anything to turn a mid-sized regional centre into one of Ontario's fastest-growing cities.

Candidates

Patrick Brown (Conservative) — Brown turned 30 five months before the election and was already a veteran of local politics. Born in Toronto on 26 May 1978 to a criminal lawyer and a Barrie educator, he attended St. Michael's College School, studied political science at the University of Toronto and took a law degree at the University of Windsor. He served two terms as president of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation from 1998 to 2002 and worked about four years in Magna International's legal department. He won a seat on Barrie council in 2000 at the age of 22 and was re-elected in 2003, setting up a physician recruitment task force with Royal Victoria Hospital to address the city's shortage of family doctors. He lost to Liberal MP Aileen Carroll in 2004 and unseated her in 2006.

Rick Jones (Liberal) — Jones had spent his working life on the question that dominated local politics. He held an urban planning degree from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from York, served as the City of Barrie's planner, and then founded his own consulting practice, working on much of the development that had reshaped the city since he arrived. He carried the Liberal banner in a riding the party had held until 2006.

Myrna Clark (NDP) — A Barrie teacher, Clark was the New Democrats' candidate in a city where the party's federal vote had trailed well behind the two larger parties.

Erich Jacoby-Hawkins (Green Party) — A teacher and local environmental advocate, Jacoby-Hawkins had already carried the Green banner in Barrie in 2004 and 2006 and was among the party's more persistent Ontario candidates.

Paolo Fabrizio (Libertarian), a Barrie baker who had twice run in Vaughan, and Christine Anne Nugent (Marxist-Leninist), a college instructor from Elmvale, also stood.

About the Riding

Barrie's population reached roughly 128,000 at the 2006 census, and the city's problem was less attracting people than servicing them. Roads, water infrastructure, transit and school capacity all lagged behind subdivision construction, and the shortage of family physicians was a standing complaint. Barrie had effectively run out of easily developable land inside its boundary, which made where growth would go next a permanent municipal argument and a running dispute with its neighbours.

Commuting defines a large share of household routines. GO Transit bus service had long run to Toronto, and on 17 December 2007 rail service returned to Barrie for the first time since it was cut back to Bradford in July 1993, the first train out of the new Barrie South station leaving at 5:43 a.m. Extending and improving that service was among the clearest federal-provincial asks from the city.

Employment within Barrie itself is spread across health care, education, retail, information technology and manufacturing. Royal Victoria Hospital serves as the regional referral centre for much of Simcoe County; Georgian College's main campus is a significant employer and a driver of the local rental market. The downtown along Dunlop Street faces the bay, while big-box retail has concentrated along the Highway 400 corridor.

Lake Simcoe gave the campaign a specific federal file. On 16 January 2008 the environment minister announced $18 million in Barrie for the lake's clean-up fund, building on $12 million committed the year before and bringing Ottawa's total to $30 million over five years, aimed principally at phosphorus loading and fish habitat. Otherwise the questions raised locally were the ones raised across southern Ontario that autumn: manufacturing layoffs, the price of gasoline, the proposed carbon tax and the deteriorating economy.