Ottawa West—Nepean, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Ottawa West—Nepean

The riding takes in the Ottawa River shoreline at Britannia and Crystal Beach, the postwar streets around Carlingwood, Lincoln Heights and Queensway Terrace, and then crosses Highway 417 southward into Centrepointe, Parkwood Hills and Qualicum. Its southern half lay in the City of Nepean until the 2001 municipal amalgamation folded it into Ottawa.

Candidates

John Baird (Conservative) — Baird was Minister of the Environment, a post he had held since January 2007 after a year as President of the Treasury Board. Born in Nepean, he was elected to the Ontario legislature in 1995 while in his twenties and served in the cabinets of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves with the community and social services, energy and francophone affairs portfolios, as well as a turn as government whip, before moving to federal politics in 2006. The environment file put him at the centre of the campaign's argument over the Liberal carbon tax plan. As Treasury Board president he had also been the minister who held back the two hundred million dollars promised to Ottawa's north-south light rail project until after the November 2006 municipal election, so that the incoming council could decide its fate; that council then cancelled the contract.

David Pratt (Liberal) — The Liberals recruited Pratt, a former defence minister, to take on a senior member of the Conservative cabinet, and he left a post with the Canadian Red Cross in July 2008 to run. He represented Nepean—Carleton from 1997 until Pierre Poilievre unseated him in 2004, chaired the Commons committee on national defence and veterans affairs, and served as Canada's special envoy to Sierra Leone before Paul Martin appointed him Minister of National Defence in December 2003.

Marlene Rivier (NDP) — Rivier is a psychological associate and member of the College of Psychologists of Ontario with a career in health care. She had lived in the area all her life and was a repeat candidate for the party in the riding.

Frances Coates (Green) — Coates, a business administrator, stood for the Green Party.

David Page ran as an independent and Alex McDonald for the Communist Party.

About the Riding

Ottawa West—Nepean mixes older inner-suburban streets built in the 1950s and 1960s with the subdivisions that spread across former Nepean farmland through the 1990s. Bayshore, in the west, combines large-format retail with apartment towers and a lower-income tenant population; Centrepointe and Qualicum are mostly owner-occupied single-family housing. The result is a riding with a broad income range and a notable South Asian, Chinese and Arab population alongside established anglophone and francophone families.

The federal public service employs more residents than any other single sector, and a further slice of the workforce commutes northwest to the technology firms of the Kanata corridor — an anxious constituency in 2008, with Nortel Networks, the region's long-time technology anchor, in visible difficulty. Algonquin College's Woodroffe campus is the largest institutional employer inside the boundaries, and the Carlingwood and Bayshore shopping centres are the commercial landmarks at either end.

Transit remained an open wound across the west end after council terminated the north-south light rail contract in December 2006, leaving the region with no approved rapid transit expansion and the city facing a contractor's lawsuit. Congestion on Highway 417 and the reach of bus service to Bayshore and Crystal Beach were the other standing complaints.

Above all, the seat drew attention because of who held it. Baird was one of the most prominent ministers in the Harper government, and the Liberals answered by recruiting a former defence minister, making Ottawa West—Nepean one of the more closely watched contests in the capital region as markets fell through late September and early October.