Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell reached from the Ottawa River south and east across nearly 2,940 square kilometres of eastern Ontario farmland, sharing a long border with Quebec. Under the boundaries in force in 2008 it took in the whole of the United Counties of Prescott and Russell, the Township of North Glengarry, and the part of the City of Ottawa lying east of Cardinal Creek and Boundary Road, a wedge of countryside running out past Navan and Cumberland. Hawkesbury, Rockland, Casselman, Embrun, Russell, Alexandria, Vankleek Hill, Plantagenet, Limoges and Bourget are its principal centres, and roughly 104,300 people lived in the riding at the 2006 census.

Candidates

Pierre Lemieux (Conservative) — Lemieux took the seat in 2006, ending a Liberal hold on this corner of eastern Ontario that stretched back to the 1960s. Trained at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he earned a mechanical engineering degree and a master of science, he spent twenty years in uniform and retired from the Canadian Forces as a lieutenant-colonel. He then moved into Ottawa's technology sector, working for the fibre-optics manufacturer JDS Uniphase, and later ran his own consulting business. He lives in Cumberland and campaigns in both official languages, as any candidate must in this riding.

Dan Boudria (Liberal) — Boudria worked in the federal government's training school for public servants and had previously served as a political adviser. His father, Don Boudria, represented the riding from 1984 to 2006 and served as government House leader; the elder Boudria managed his son's campaign, prompting Lemieux to complain that the Liberals were in effect running two candidates.

Jean-Sébastien Caron (NDP) — Caron, from Casselman, carried the New Democratic banner in a riding where the party had not previously been a serious contender.

Sylvie Lemieux (Green Party) — An engineer from Cumberland, Lemieux put the Green platform to farm and small-town audiences.

About the Riding

Few federal seats operate in both official languages as completely as this one. Close to two-thirds of residents give French as their mother tongue, and the proportion who can conduct business in both official languages is among the highest anywhere in the country. That shapes federal politics here directly: the health of francophone minority institutions, bilingual service delivery, and support for French-language schooling and health care are standing local issues rather than abstractions.

Farming underpins the economy. The clay and loam lowlands between the Ottawa and South Nation rivers support dairy herds, cash crops and beef operations, and the agri-food processing that follows from them. Supply management and the state of Canada's trade negotiations mattered a great deal in the barns and co-ops around St-Isidore and Maxville. Hawkesbury, on the Ottawa River with a bridge across to Grenville, Quebec, is the industrial and retail centre of the eastern end; the Canadian International Paper mill that had employed the town for eighty-four years closed in 1982, and the Amoco plant followed around the turn of the century. Alexandria serves the Glengarry side, and Maxville hosts the Glengarry Highland Games, a reminder of the Scottish settlement that dates to the late eighteenth century.

The western end of the riding is a different story. Rockland, Embrun, Russell and Limoges grew rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s as bedroom communities for federal public servants and other Ottawa commuters, filling in with new subdivisions and pushing questions about water and sewer capacity, school construction and Highway 417 congestion up the local agenda. Highway 417 links Ottawa to Montreal through the middle of the riding, and County Road 17 follows the river through Rockland and Hawkesbury. The combination of an agricultural east, a commuter west, and a francophone majority throughout gave the 2008 contest its particular shape.