Oshawa, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Oshawa

General Motors delivered the news on 3 June 2008, only weeks after ratifying a new three-year contract with the Canadian Auto Workers: the Oshawa truck plant would close by the end of 2009, putting as many as 2,600 people out of work. Collapsing pickup sales and record gasoline prices were the stated reasons. CAW president Buzz Hargrove called the decision a breach of the agreement just signed, and members of Local 222 blockaded General Motors of Canada's Oshawa headquarters for twelve days until a Superior Court injunction ended it on 12 June. Three months later the federal campaign began. The riding covers most of the city of Oshawa, on the Lake Ontario shore east of Toronto; the northern and western fringes — north of Winchester Road, west of Simcoe Street above Rossland Road, and west of Oshawa Creek above King Street — belong to the neighbouring Whitby—Oshawa seat.

Candidates

Colin Carrie (Conservative) — Carrie was the two-term incumbent and, since February 2006, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry — the department carrying the automotive file. Born in Hamilton in 1962, he studied kinesiology at Waterloo, qualified as a chiropractor at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1989 and built a practice in Oshawa. He had been an executive member of the Durham Chiropractic Society and chaired Spinal Health Week in Durham Region. He won the seat in 2004 in a tight three-way race and held it in 2006.

Mike Shields (NDP) — Shields led CAW Local 222, which represents the workforce at the Oshawa General Motors complex, and chaired the union's master bargaining committee for the company. He listed his occupation as negotiator and lived in Courtice. He had led the local through the June closure announcement and the blockade that followed.

Sean Godfrey (Liberal) — Godfrey was a paediatrician who had been on staff at Lakeridge Health Oshawa since 1999.

Pat Gostlin (Green Party) — Gostlin was a retired teacher.

Peter Vogel of the Christian Heritage Party, David Gershuny of the Marxist-Leninist Party and Alex Kreider of the Canadian Action Party also stood.

About the Riding

Oshawa had roughly 141,600 residents at the 2006 census and a century of history tied to a single company. General Motors of Canada grew out of the McLaughlin carriage works, keeps its national headquarters in the city, and built the neighbourhoods, union halls and service businesses that surround its plants. The complex once employed tens of thousands; by 2008 the workforce had shrunk considerably and the truck plant announcement pointed to further contraction. Parts suppliers across Durham Region depend on the same assembly lines, so the effects reach well past the GM payroll.

That dependence shaped the entire campaign. Candidates were pressed on federal support for the auto industry, on trade rules governing vehicle imports, and on what Ottawa could do when a multinational chooses to close a Canadian plant. The financial crisis that broke worldwide during the final weeks only sharpened the questions, since credit conditions would ultimately determine whether the manufacturers survived.

The city had been building alternatives. Durham College shares a campus in the city's north end with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, established in 2002, and the two had brought a fast-growing student population into a city that had never had a university. Lakeridge Health Oshawa serves as the regional hospital for eastern Durham, and the downtown, the port and the Oshawa Creek corridor were the focus of redevelopment efforts. Crime and sentencing legislation and federal infrastructure spending featured in the local debate, but nothing displaced the auto question.