Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry

This riding occupies Ontario's southeastern corner, where the province meets Quebec and the St. Lawrence River meets New York State. It combines the separated city of Cornwall with the townships of South Glengarry, South Stormont, North Stormont, South Dundas and North Dundas. Highway 401 runs its length between Montreal and Ottawa's southern approaches, and the Seaway International Bridge crosses to the United States through the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne.

Candidates

Guy Lauzon (Conservative) — Lauzon was the sitting member, having won the seat in 2004 from long-serving Liberal Bob Kilger and held it in 2006. In the Parliament that ended in September 2008 he served as a deputy whip, chaired the Commons Standing Committee on Official Languages from 2006 to 2007, and was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. He had spent twenty-two years in the federal public service, including a term as a local Public Service Alliance of Canada president, and afterward managed Tri-County Protein, a soybean processing plant at Winchester. He lived at St. Andrews West.

Denis Sabourin (Liberal) — Sabourin came to the race from Parliament Hill. He spent eleven years as executive assistant to Bob Kilger while Kilger represented the predecessor riding, and later served as chief of staff to Yukon Liberal MP Larry Bagnell. He lived at Monkland, in North Stormont.

Darlene Jalbert (NDP) — Jalbert lived in Cornwall and worked in a support role at the Workers Health and Safety Centre, the training body attached to Ontario's workplace health and safety system.

Howard Galganov (Independent) — Galganov was a Montreal advertising executive and radio host who founded the Quebec Political Action Committee after the 1995 referendum and led public campaigns against Quebec's commercial sign rules. He later settled at Williamstown in South Glengarry. On 16 June 2008 the neighbouring Township of Russell adopted a bylaw requiring new commercial signs to carry both official languages; Galganov and Russell business owner Jean-Serge Brisson took it to court as an infringement of freedom of expression. He ran on opposition to official bilingualism.

David Rawnsley (Green Party) — Rawnsley was retired and also lived at Williamstown.

Dwight Dugas, a labourer from Cornwall, stood for the Canadian Action Party.

About the Riding

Cornwall, with about 46,000 residents, is the riding's only city and among the most thoroughly bilingual communities in Ontario. Its industrial era ended abruptly when Domtar shut its fine papers mill for good in 2006, closing out more than a century of papermaking and eliminating roughly 900 positions in a city built on textiles and paper. What came after was smaller and differently shaped: contact centres, distribution work and health care. Shoppers Drug Mart announced in 2008 that it would build a 550,000-square-foot distribution centre in the Cornwall Business Park, to be run by Matrix Logistics and to employ more than 130 people full time. Cornwall Community Hospital and the local campus of St. Lawrence College anchor institutional employment.

Away from the river the riding is farm country. Dairy operations dominate Glengarry and Stormont, with cash crops and cattle through Dundas, which put supply management and the state of world trade talks on the agenda at candidate meetings. Language policy carried unusual weight, given Cornwall's Franco-Ontarian population and Galganov's presence on the ballot. Border management was the other constant: cross-river traffic, the federal customs post on Cornwall Island and the relationship between Ottawa and Akwesasne all bore directly on the local economy.