York—Simcoe, ON — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

York—Simcoe

Lake Simcoe's southern shore gives York—Simcoe its shape. The riding runs from the reclaimed farmland of the Holland Marsh in the west, through Bradford West Gwillimbury and East Gwillimbury, to Georgina and the lakefront villages of Keswick, Sutton, Jackson's Point and Pefferlaw, taking in King Township north of Highway 9 and the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation offshore.

Candidates

Peter Van Loan (Conservative) — Van Loan, a Sutton West lawyer, had held the riding since 2004 and carried two of the government's most demanding jobs into the campaign: he was House leader and held the democratic reform portfolio, both taken in the January 2007 shuffle after a year as intergovernmental affairs minister and President of the Queen's Privy Council. He practised municipal and planning law for sixteen years and held an adjunct post at the University of Toronto teaching land use. A party organiser of long standing, he helped assemble the 2003 merger that produced the Conservative Party, and as House leader he was the government's chief tactician through a minority Parliament that had already survived several confidence tests.

Judith Moses (Liberal) — Moses ran for the Liberals from Bradford. She spent her career in the public service — advising the Privy Council Office on machinery-of-government questions, leading an Ontario Cabinet Office task force on central agency reform, serving as acting head of the Indian Commission of Ontario — and finished as a senior assistant deputy minister at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada before moving into consulting.

Sylvia Gerl (NDP) — Gerl lived in Keswick and worked as an advocate for women. She had carried the New Democratic nomination in the same riding at the 2006 election and was making a second attempt.

John Dewar (Green) — Dewar, a systems coordinator from Keswick, was the Green Party candidate.

Paul Pisani, of Newmarket, stood for the Progressive Canadian Party, and Vicki Gunn, an executive director from Sharon, for the Christian Heritage Party.

About the Riding

This was one of the fastest-changing constituencies in Ontario. Bradford West Gwillimbury counted 24,039 residents at the 2006 census and was adding subdivisions as buyers priced out of York Region moved north along Highway 400. East Gwillimbury's villages — Holland Landing, Queensville, Sharon and Mount Albert — were on the same trajectory. Georgina still carried the rhythm of a cottage economy, its population swelling each summer around Keswick and Sutton and thinning again after Labour Day.

At the riding's western edge lay the Holland Marsh, some 7,000 acres of drained black soil split between Bradford West Gwillimbury and King Township. Its family farms turned out more than sixty vegetable crops and gave the area its billing as the soup and salad bowl of Ontario. Growers there were an organised constituency with direct federal interests in crop insurance, labour supply and border inspection.

The lake supplied the riding's signature federal file. Phosphorus loading from farms, septic systems and urban runoff had degraded its coldwater fishery. Ottawa put $12 million toward remediation in 2007, and on 16 January 2008 the environment minister and Van Loan announced a further $18 million, bringing the Lake Simcoe Clean-Up Fund to $30 million over five years. Stream rehabilitation, manure management and sewage upgrades were under way around the shoreline during the campaign.

Commuting shaped daily life. The overwhelming majority of employed residents travelled south to York Region or Toronto, and GO Transit's Bradford line, with its limited service and long headways, drew constant complaint.

The Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, reached by ferry in summer and ice road in winter, was the only First Nation in the riding; ferry service, housing and water infrastructure were standing issues there. Elsewhere the economy rested on agriculture and food processing, construction, seasonal tourism and light manufacturing in Bradford and Keswick.