Ottawa—Vanier, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Ottawa—Vanier

Rideau Hall, the ByWard Market and the rooming houses of Vanier all sit in the same riding. Ottawa—Vanier begins at the Ottawa River and runs south and east through Lowertown, Sandy Hill, New Edinburgh, Rockcliffe Park, Manor Park, Vanier, Overbrook and Cyrville before reaching the suburban pockets of Carson Grove, Pineview and Beacon Hill. The Rideau Canal and Rideau River bound it on the west, Highway 417 on the south, and Green's Creek and Blair Road on the east.

Candidates

Mauril Bélanger (Liberal) — Bélanger had represented the riding since a February 1995 by-election. Born in Mattawa, a logging town where the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers meet, he graduated from the University of Ottawa in 1977 after serving as president of its student federation, worked for transport minister Jean-Luc Pépin in the early 1980s, and later served as chief of staff to the chair of Ottawa-Carleton regional council. Under Paul Martin he was deputy government House leader and chief government whip before entering cabinet with responsibility for official languages, democratic reform and internal trade, and as associate minister of national defence. In opposition after 2006 he moved through a series of critic portfolios, ending with official languages, Canadian Heritage and la Francophonie. He was among the leading figures in the fight against the Ontario government's 1997 plan to close the Montfort Hospital.

Patrick Glémaud (Conservative) — Glémaud practised law as counsel with the federal Department of Justice. Stephen Harper appeared alongside him at an Ottawa campaign event in September 2008.

Trevor Haché (NDP) — Haché worked as an outreach and information coordinator and had won the local nomination shortly before the election was called. He argued that contacting voters directly mattered more than lawn signs, and put his organisation into door-knocking and phone canvassing.

Akbar Manoussi (Green) — Manoussi had carried the Green Party of Ontario's banner in the riding at the 2007 provincial election and ran the federal party's local riding association. He sat as an advisory member on the RCMP's cultural diversity committee for the National Capital Region.

Robert Taylor-Larter (Independent), Christian Legeais (Marxist-Leninist) and Michel St-Onge (Canadian Action Party) completed the ballot.

About the Riding

Vanier was an independent city until the 2001 amalgamation, and it remains the historic heart of francophone Ottawa, though its French-speaking share had been shrinking for years as newcomers and students moved in. The Montfort Hospital, the francophone teaching hospital that survived a provincial closure order after a long legal and political fight, is both a major employer and a marker of Franco-Ontarian identity in the east end.

The range of incomes here is unusually wide. Rockcliffe Park and New Edinburgh hold diplomatic residences, Rideau Hall and some of the most expensive housing in the city; a few blocks away, parts of Vanier and Overbrook have among the lowest household incomes in Ottawa, with rooming houses, subsidised units and a long-established set of social service agencies. Lowertown and Overbrook are home to substantial Somali, Lebanese and Haitian communities.

Work is shaped by the federal government, the University of Ottawa on the Sandy Hill side, and the hospitality trade of the ByWard Market. The student rental market in Sandy Hill and Lowertown is a standing municipal irritant.

Federal services in French were the file that most reliably surfaced here in 2008. The Conservative government's 2006 decision to cancel the Court Challenges Program, which official-language minority organisations had used to press their claims in court, remained a grievance among francophone groups, and Bélanger had made it his own. Poverty and affordable housing in Vanier and Overbrook, settlement supports for newcomers, and services for an older-than-average population filled out the rest.