Ottawa—Orléans, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Ottawa—Orléans

This is Ottawa's east end. The riding runs from the Ottawa River down to Highway 417, bounded on the west by Green's Creek, Montreal Road and Blair Road, and on the east by Trim, Wall and Boundary roads. Orléans supplies most of the population; beyond the subdivisions the riding takes in Blackburn Hamlet, older parts of the former municipalities of Gloucester and Cumberland, the Mer Bleue bog and the farmland around Ramsayville.

Candidates

Royal Galipeau (Conservative) — Galipeau took the seat in 2006, ending a long run of Liberal representation in the east end, and served through the 39th Parliament as Deputy Chair of Committees of the Whole, one of the Speaker's presiding officers. Born at St-Isidore, he won a seat on Gloucester city council in 1982 and was also a trustee of the Ottawa Public Library. He had spent earlier years on the staff of Liberal members of Parliament from the Ottawa area before joining the Conservative Party in 2005.

Marc Godbout (Liberal) — Godbout was trying to win back a seat he had already held once, having taken it in 2004 and lost it to Galipeau two years later. He holds a master's degree in education from the University of Ottawa and started out teaching high school history, later serving as director general and secretary-treasurer of the Conseil des écoles catholiques de langue française du Centre-Est de l'Ontario and as an assistant deputy minister responsible for elementary and secondary education in Ontario. He reached Parliament by beating the sitting Liberal MP, Eugène Bellemare, for the nomination in 2004, campaigning on moving federal offices and jobs east.

Amy O'Dell (NDP) — O'Dell worked as an employment counsellor.

Paul Maillet (Green) — Maillet spent twenty-five years in the Department of National Defence as an aerospace engineering officer and executive, retiring from the air force as a colonel in 2001. When the department set up an ethics directorate in the wake of the Somalia affair, he became its first Director of Defence Ethics, a post he held for four years. He then built a consultancy advising federal departments on organisational ethics, and served as vice-chair of the Ethics Practitioners' Association of Canada. He had lived in Orléans for years and chaired the Gloucester Arts Council board.

About the Riding

Orléans is among the largest suburban communities in the National Capital Region, and it filled in quickly through the 1990s and 2000s as subdivisions pushed south and east across farmland. Most of what the riding argues about federally follows from that: whether roads, schools, transit and services keep up with the households arriving each year.

It also has one of the heaviest francophone populations of any Ontario riding, and the bilingual character shows in its school boards, parishes, community associations and shop signs. French-language federal services and the government's record on official languages count for more here than in most Ontario seats.

Work is tied overwhelmingly to the federal public service. Large numbers of residents commute west along Highway 174 and the Transitway to offices downtown and across the region, which keeps commuting times, road capacity and the eastward reach of rapid transit in play every campaign. Place d'Orléans anchors the retail trade of the east end, and technology and professional services firms along the 174 corridor supply much of the private-sector work.

Heading into October 2008 the contest was a straight rematch between Galipeau and Godbout, fought over federal jobs and offices in the east end, services in French, the strain of suburban growth, and — as the financial crisis deepened — the security of public service employment.