Markham—Unionville, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Markham—Unionville

Set in York Region northeast of Toronto, this riding covered the southwestern and central part of the City of Markham. Highway 404 formed its western edge and Steeles Avenue its southern one; 16th Avenue closed it off to the north, and its eastern boundary stepped down from 16th Avenue along McCowan Road, east along Highway 7 and then south along Ninth Line to Steeles. Unionville, Buttonville, Milliken Mills and the Markham Centre office district all lay inside it.

Candidates

John McCallum (Liberal) — McCallum had held the seat since 2000, when the Liberals recruited him to run in the former riding of Markham and he unseated Progressive Conservative Jim Jones. He took a bachelor's degree at Queens' College, Cambridge, a diplôme d'études supérieures at the Université de Paris and a doctorate in economics at McGill. He taught at the University of Manitoba from 1976, then at Simon Fraser, the Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill, where he became dean of arts, and was senior vice-president and chief economist of the Royal Bank of Canada from 1994 until he entered politics. Jean Chrétien brought him into cabinet in 2002, first as Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions and then at National Defence; under Paul Martin he held Veterans Affairs and afterwards National Revenue. In opposition after 2006 he was the Liberal finance critic, which placed him at the front of his party's response to the market turmoil that broke during the campaign.

Duncan Fletcher (Conservative) — Fletcher worked in publishing and lived in Markham.

Nadine Hawkins (NDP) — Hawkins was a Markham businesswoman.

Leonard Aitken (Green Party) — Aitken worked as an information technology analyst.

Allen Small, a retired high school teacher from Markham, completed the ballot for the Libertarian Party.

About the Riding

Markham had changed faster than almost any municipality in Canada. Its population reached 261,573 at the 2006 census, and visible minorities accounted for 65.4% of residents, the highest proportion of any municipality in the country. Just over half of that group was Chinese and slightly more than a quarter South Asian. Within a generation a township of farms and crossroads villages had become a city of subdivisions, office parks and shopping centres.

The economy rested on technology and professional services. IBM Canada had based its head office in Markham since the early 1980s, having moved out from Don Mills, and hundreds of technology firms had settled along the Highway 404, Highway 7 and Highway 407 corridors, drawn by land costs and highway access — enough of them that the city promoted itself as Canada's high-tech capital. Buttonville Municipal Airport, on 16th Avenue near Woodbine, handled corporate and general aviation traffic. Residents who worked outside Markham commuted into Toronto, most by car and some on GO Transit's Stouffville line through Unionville station.

Unionville's preserved nineteenth-century main street was the riding's best-known landmark and a summer destination for visitors from across the region. Milliken Mills in the south and the office and condominium district taking shape around Markham Centre at Warden Avenue and Highway 7 showed the other end of the same story: an older settlement pattern being built over at much higher density.

Federal issues reflected all of this. Immigration processing times and family reunification came up constantly, and the amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act carried through Parliament in the spring 2008 budget bill — which allowed the minister to set processing priorities by instruction rather than by regulation — had been contested through the year and remained live during the campaign. Transportation was the second theme: highway congestion, transit expansion and the cost of commuting. And the technology sector's exposure to American demand and to a high Canadian dollar gave the September market collapse an immediate local edge.