Toronto Centre, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Toronto Centre

Toronto Centre had already voted once in 2008. Bill Graham, the riding's member since 1993 and a former minister of foreign affairs and of national defence, resigned his seat in July 2007, and a by-election on 17 March filled the vacancy. The riding is barely 13 square kilometres. It runs from the eastern edge of the financial district to the Don River, and from the harbour north through the downtown east side to Rosedale and Moore Park, gathering in Cabbagetown, St. James Town, Church and Wellesley, Regent Park, the Garden District, Moss Park, Corktown, the Distillery District and part of St. Lawrence.

Candidates

Bob Rae (Liberal) — Rae won the March by-election and went into the general election as the incumbent after less than seven months in the seat. He studied modern history at the University of Toronto, went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and returned to take a law degree. First elected to the Commons as a New Democrat in 1978, he became leader of the Ontario NDP and served as premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995. He afterward practised law in Toronto, took on public inquiry and mediation work, and joined the Liberal Party, finishing third at its 2006 leadership convention. Stéphane Dion named him the party's foreign affairs critic as soon as he reached the Commons.

David Peter Gentili (Conservative) — Gentili was a political staffer in Toronto.

El-Farouk Khaki (NDP) — Khaki was a Toronto refugee and immigration lawyer whose practice centred on asylum claims by people facing persecution abroad, and a long-standing advocate on immigration and HIV issues, recognised for that work in 2007. He had won the New Democratic nomination on 30 April 2007 and fought the March by-election, making this his second campaign in the riding in seven months.

Ellen Michelson (Green Party) — Michelson was an educator and writer living in the riding.

Four others were on the ballot: Johan Boyden for the Communist Party, Liz White for the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party, Philip Fernandez for the Marxist-Leninist Party, and Gerald Derome as an independent.

About the Riding

The riding sets extremes of wealth and poverty within a few blocks of each other. Rosedale and Moore Park, at its northern end, are among the country's most expensive residential districts. A short walk east, the apartment towers of St. James Town make up one of the most densely populated neighbourhoods in Canada and house thousands of recent immigrants. Regent Park, in the southeast, is Canada's oldest and largest social housing project; demolition on its 69-acre site began in 2005 under a plan to rebuild it as a mixed-income community, with the Daniels Corporation as Toronto Community Housing's development partner, and construction was under way through 2008.

The riding is also a workplace for hundreds of thousands. Office towers along its western edge, St. Michael's Hospital, Ryerson University's downtown campus and the media, design and hospitality businesses of the east downtown draw commuters in daily. Church and Wellesley is the centre of the city's nightlife and of social service networks serving a large resident population, and the Distillery District had become a cultural destination.

Housing dominated the local campaign: rental affordability, homelessness and shelter capacity, and the absence of a national housing program. The federal cuts to arts and cultural promotion announced in August 2008, which ended the PromArt and Trade Routes programs, landed hard in a riding thick with cultural workers and became one of the campaign's national flashpoints. Poverty reduction, settlement services, transit funding and public health carried through the debates as well.