Newmarket—Aurora, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Newmarket—Aurora

Newmarket—Aurora covered roughly 62 square kilometres of York Region, some 50 kilometres up Yonge Street from downtown Toronto. Created for the 2004 election out of parts of York North and Vaughan—King—Aurora, it joined all of Newmarket to the part of Aurora north of Wellington Street and a slice of East Gwillimbury south of Green Lane and west of Highway 404.

Candidates

Lois Brown (Conservative) — Born in Stouffville in January 1955, Brown worked as a consultant and was active in Newmarket community organizations, among them the Royal Canadian Legion branch and the North Newmarket Lions Club. She had first been nominated for this riding by the Canadian Alliance, but lost the nomination to Belinda Stronach once the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged ahead of the 2004 vote. She won the Conservative nomination for 2006 and ran against Stronach directly. With the seat open in 2008 she was the party's candidate for a third straight campaign.

Tim Jones (Liberal) — Jones won a seat on Aurora council in 1978 and later served as the town's mayor and as a York regional councillor until 2006. He carried the Liberal nomination in a seat the party held only because of a floor crossing.

Mike Seaward (NDP) — Seaward lived in Aurora, worked as a shipper and was president of United Steelworkers Local 8412. He had been the Ontario NDP's candidate in the corresponding provincial riding at the October 2007 election.

Glenn Hubbers (Green Party) — A professional engineer and project manager who had worked in the energy industry since graduating from McMaster University in 1989, Hubbers helped found the riding's federal Green association in 2005, ran for it in 2006 and won its nomination again in 2007.

Dorian Baxter, an Anglican clergyman who leads an independent congregation in Newmarket and is known for using Elvis Presley's music in his services, ran for the Progressive Canadian Party for a second time. Ray Luff, a Newmarket consultant, stood for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

The seat had existed for only two previous elections and one person shaped both. Belinda Stronach won it for the Conservatives in 2004, crossed to the Liberals in May 2005 and was re-elected under that banner in 2006. On 11 April 2007 she announced she would not run again, returning to Magna International as executive vice-chairman and leaving the riding genuinely open for the first time.

Magna's presence is more than symbolic. The auto parts company's global headquarters sits in Aurora, and manufacturing — automotive parts above all — was the riding's leading industry. That mattered acutely in 2008. In June, Progressive Moulded Products, a Vaughan-based interior-parts maker running ten Ontario plants, sought creditor protection, abandoned its restructuring within weeks and shut down, putting more than 2,000 people out of work.

For the most part, though, this is a prosperous commuter belt. The 2006 census recorded an average family income of about $118,000 and unemployment near 3.6%, both better than the national figures. Newmarket, with roughly 74,000 residents, is the larger of the two towns and serves as the administrative and retail centre for northern York Region, anchored by Upper Canada Mall on Yonge Street and by Southlake Regional Health Centre. Only the northern half of Aurora fell inside the boundary, including the older streets around Yonge and Wellington that grew out of the hamlet of Machell's Corners after the railway reached it.

GO Transit's Barrie line stopped in both towns, and the drive south on Highway 404 filled every morning. Commuting times, the northward march of subdivisions into farmland, and the health of the manufacturing base were the issues that recurred on doorsteps through the autumn campaign.