Nepean—Carleton, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Nepean—Carleton

Stretching over roughly 1,128 square kilometres, Nepean—Carleton took in the part of the City of Ottawa lying east and south of a line that ran along the southeastern limit of the former Goulbourn township, up McCordick and Eagleson roads, around the southern and eastern edges of the former City of Kanata, then along Highway 417, Richmond Road, Merivale Road, Hunt Club Road and the Rideau River before working east to Boundary Road. That put the fast-filling suburbs of Barrhaven and Riverside South at one end and the farm townships of the old Carleton County — Rideau and Osgoode — at the other, and gave the riding one of the largest electorates in the country.

Candidates

Pierre Poilievre (Conservative) — Born in Calgary in 1979 and adopted as an infant by a pair of schoolteachers, Poilievre attended Henry Wise Wood High School and studied international relations at the University of Calgary. In 1999, as a second-year student, he won Magna International's national essay competition with a submission titled "Building Canada Through Freedom," collecting a $10,000 prize and an internship. He worked on Stockwell Day's Canadian Alliance leadership campaign in 2000 and afterward in Day's Ottawa office, and in 2003 co-founded 3D Contact, a political communications and research firm. He took the Conservative nomination here at 24 and unseated Liberal defence minister David Pratt in 2004, then held the seat in 2006. From February 2006 until dissolution he served as parliamentary secretary to the president of the Treasury Board.

Ed Mahfouz (Liberal) — A teacher living in Ottawa, Mahfouz took on the Liberal nomination in a riding the party had lost twice in a row.

Lori Gadzala (Green Party) — A marketing consultant working out of Manotick, Gadzala ran the firm South River Partners. She had also been the Green candidate here in 2006.

Phil Brown (NDP) — A planner by training, Brown earned a master's degree from the University of Toronto's School of Urban and Regional Planning in 1976 and had worked with a number of social service agencies. He carried the NDP banner in this riding in 2004.

About the Riding

Two very different places shared one ballot. Barrhaven had grown from a small subdivision in the early 1980s into a community of tens of thousands; together with neighbouring Gloucester-South Nepean it counted 63,710 residents at the 2006 census and was still adding streets. New arrivals were overwhelmingly young families, and the resulting strain on schools, arterial roads, bus service and the long-promised Strandherd–Armstrong bridge across the Rideau dominated municipal debate.

South of the subdivisions the landscape changes within a few kilometres. Manotick sits on the Rideau around Watson's Mill, a stone gristmill of 1860 still able to grind. Greely, Metcalfe, Osgoode, Kars and North Gower are villages set among cash-crop farms, dairy operations and hobby acreages. Rural residents raised a different set of concerns entirely: well water, road maintenance, rural policing and the steady conversion of farmland to housing.

The federal public service underwrote much of the local economy, with departmental offices downtown and National Defence headquarters drawing commuters from across the riding.

Poilievre had held the seat through two general elections and made himself one of the more visible junior members of the government caucus. The Conservatives treated the seat as reliably theirs, and the more open local question was which of the three challengers would emerge as the main alternative.