Eglinton—Lawrence, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Eglinton—Lawrence

Eglinton—Lawrence covered twenty-four square kilometres bounded by Eglinton Avenue West to the south, Highway 401 to the north, Yonge Street to the east and a rail line just west of Caledonia Road to the west, spanning parts of three of the municipalities that merged to form Toronto in 1998. Bedford Park, Lawrence Manor, Lawrence Heights, Englemount and Briar Hill—Belgravia fall inside it, along with Yorkdale Shopping Centre and the Allen Road expressway.

Candidates

Joseph Volpe (Liberal) — Volpe had represented the riding since 1988, when he won the nomination against the sitting member, Roland de Corneille. Born in Monteleone di Puglia in 1947, he arrived in Canada with his family in 1955 and spent seventeen years in education: teaching in Stoney Creek, heading a history department in Etobicoke, directing multicultural studies at a Weston college, and helping to found James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School, where he was a vice-principal until his election. Under Paul Martin he was Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development from December 2003 and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration from January 2005. He ran for the Liberal leadership in 2006 in a campaign that drew scrutiny over donations from executives of a pharmaceutical company and their families; Elections Canada concluded that December that he had not breached the financing rules. He was afterwards opposition critic for the Treasury Board.

Joe Oliver (Conservative) — Oliver was making his first run for elected office after a career in finance and regulation. Born in Montreal in 1940, he took a BA in 1961 and a Bachelor of Civil Law in 1964 at McGill and an MBA at Harvard in 1970, then worked as an investment banker with Merrill Lynch and Nesbitt Thomson. He was afterwards executive director at the Ontario Securities Commission and chief executive of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada, the brokerage industry's self-regulatory body.

Justin Chatwin (NDP) — Chatwin, a student, was the New Democratic candidate.

Andrew James (Green) — James, a writer, stood for the Green Party.

About the Riding

The riding divides sharply along Bathurst Street and Allen Road. To the east, Bedford Park and the Lawrence Park fringe are established neighbourhoods of detached houses feeding into the Yonge subway. In the centre, Lawrence Manor and Englemount hold one of the largest Jewish communities in Canada, with synagogues, day schools and kosher retail along Bathurst. To the west, Briar Hill—Belgravia and the streets off Dufferin and Caledonia are working-class, with Italian, Portuguese, Filipino and Latin American families predominating.

Lawrence Heights is the riding's most distinctive piece of urban policy. Built in the 1950s as a public housing project of 1,208 units and cut off from its surroundings by Allen Road and the rail corridor, it had by 2008 become the subject of a proposal to demolish and replace every unit, along with the neighbourhood school and community centre, and to add more than four thousand market homes over about twenty years. Consultations began in June 2008, and who would pay for the replacement housing and where tenants would live during construction were open questions during the campaign.

Employment concentrates in retail and health care. Yorkdale, at Allen Road and Highway 401, is among the highest-grossing shopping centres in Canada; Baycrest, on Bathurst north of Lawrence, is a geriatric hospital, research institute and long-term care campus. The Columbus Centre on Lawrence Avenue West is the cultural hub for the Italian community.

Traffic dominated local debate. Allen Road funnels commuter volume onto surface streets at Eglinton, and the transit plan Toronto adopted in March 2007 proposed a cross-town line along Eglinton at the riding's southern edge, with the federal share unresolved.