Brampton—Springdale, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Brampton—Springdale

At roughly 59 square kilometres this was a compact seat by Peel Region standards, covering the middle and north of Brampton. It ran from Bramalea Woods and Madoc through Sandringham and the western half of Springdale to the old villages of Heart Lake and Snelgrove on the Caledon line. Almost all of it was residential, and much of it stood on ground that had been farmed within the previous fifteen years.

Candidates

Ruby Dhalla (Liberal) — Born in Winnipeg in 1974, Dhalla took a bachelor of science in biochemistry with a political science minor at the University of Winnipeg in 1995 and qualified as a Doctor of Chiropractic four years later at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. She built a group of multidisciplinary health clinics across the Greater Toronto Area. Long active in Liberal politics in Manitoba and a supporter of Paul Martin, she was named the candidate here by Martin in May 2004 over the objections of the local riding executive, which had preferred someone else, and won the seat that June. She served as the party's health critic after the 2006 election, and in January 2007 Stéphane Dion moved her to social development.

Parm Gill (Conservative) — Born in Moga, Punjab, in 1974 and brought to Canada as a boy, Gill worked in the family's businesses, which included a furniture manufacturing plant and restaurants he ran with his older brother. He had made a first run for Parliament in York West in 2006 against Liberal MP Judy Sgro before seeking the Conservative nomination in Brampton—Springdale.

Mani Singh (NDP) — A real estate representative in Brampton.

Dave Finlay (Green Party) — A Brampton teacher.

Dimitrios Kabitsis, a retired Toronto resident, ran for the Communist Party.

About the Riding

Few cities in Canada grew faster in the first half of the decade. Brampton counted 433,806 residents at the 2006 census, a third more than in 2001, and Springdale and Sandringham took a large part of that increase, going up as complete subdivisions with schools, roads and retail plazas following behind. The result was a young population, large households, and a permanent argument about whether services were keeping up.

Hospital capacity was the most visible version of that argument. Brampton Civic Hospital opened in October 2007 on Bovaird Drive East, just beyond the riding's eastern boundary, replacing the old Peel Memorial. It was among the first public hospitals in Canada designed, built, financed and maintained under a public-private partnership, licensed for 608 beds with fewer than 500 in service on opening day. Its emergency department was full from the start, and complaints about waiting times ran through the city for the following year. Hospitals are a provincial responsibility, but the underlying question travelled into the federal campaign: whether health transfers and settlement funding were tracking a city adding tens of thousands of residents between censuses.

For a great many residents, work was somewhere else. Highway 410 and the Brampton GO line moved commuters south and east toward Mississauga and Toronto every morning, and federal money for transit was a standing request from the city's council. Inside Brampton, the larger employers were in vehicle assembly, food distribution and telecommunications, with a belt of warehousing thickening along the 410.

That left the riding exposed in the autumn of 2008. The North American automotive industry was in acute distress by the time the writs were issued, southern Ontario manufacturing had been shedding jobs all year, and the parts, trucking and warehousing firms that employ Brampton residents felt it directly. Employment insurance eligibility, retraining and the recognition of qualifications earned abroad were all raised at the door, in a riding where a large share of voters had arrived in Canada as adults with credentials Ontario did not accept.