Calgary Centre-North, AB — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Calgary Centre-North

The 2003 redistribution cut this seat out of three older ones — Calgary Centre, Calgary—Nose Hill and Calgary Northeast — named it Calgary North Centre, then renamed it Calgary Centre-North in 2004, when it was first contested. Its 48 square kilometres ran north from the Bow River to Beddington Trail, bounded on the east by Deerfoot Trail and on the west by Crowchild Trail, Shaganappi Trail, John Laurie Boulevard and 14 Street NW, the line that traces the south and east flanks of Nose Hill Park. Bridgeland–Riverside, Renfrew, Crescent Heights, Tuxedo Park, Mount Pleasant, Capitol Hill, Banff Trail, Brentwood, Charleswood, Collingwood, Highwood, Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills and Beddington Heights all fell within it — century-old inner-city blocks at one end, postwar and 1970s bungalow suburbs at the other.

Candidates

Jim Prentice (Conservative) — Born in South Porcupine, Ontario in 1956 and raised in Alberta from 1969, Prentice practised law and served as a commissioner on the Indian Claims Commission before finishing second for the Progressive Conservative leadership in 2003 and winning this seat in 2004. He entered cabinet as Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development when the Conservatives took office in February 2006 and moved to Industry in August 2007. That second portfolio produced two of the government's more contested decisions of 2008: in May he refused to approve the $1.3-billion sale of MacDonald Dettwiler's space division to an American buyer, the first outright rejection of a foreign takeover since the Investment Canada Act came into force in 1985, and in June he introduced copyright legislation that drew sustained online opposition before dying on the order paper at dissolution. He was the sitting member.

John Chan (NDP) — An environmental protection officer working in Calgary, Chan ran for the New Democrats.

Eric Donovan (Green Party) — A professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary, Donovan studies the aurora and near-Earth space and ran the university's side of a continent-wide network of all-sky cameras built for NASA's THEMIS mission. He carried the Green nomination.

Doug James (Liberal) — A professional engineer in Calgary, James stood for the Liberals.

Jason E. McNeil (Libertarian) — A software developer, McNeil ran for the Libertarian Party.

Peggy Askin (Marxist-Leninist) — A retired communications worker, Askin was the Marxist-Leninist candidate.

About the Riding

At the 2006 census the riding held 114,615 people, down 2.2% from 2001 — a quiet fact that mattered locally, since Calgary as a whole was adding tens of thousands of residents a year while these established neighbourhoods emptied out household by household as families shrank and young people moved to the suburbs. The response was redevelopment: infill housing in Renfrew and Mount Pleasant, condominium towers along Centre Street and in Bridgeland, and a long municipal argument about density that ran through nearly every community association in the riding.

The Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and the Alberta College of Art and Design sit together on the ridge above 16 Avenue NW, giving the area a large student and staff population and a rental market to match. Centre Street North carries one of the city's main Chinese and Vietnamese commercial strips north of the Bow. Most working residents commuted to the downtown office core, close enough that transit and cycling were live municipal questions rather than abstractions.

Federally, the 2008 campaign here ran on national arguments — the Liberal carbon tax proposal, the state of the economy as markets fell through September and October — layered over Prentice's own record at Industry. Copyright reform had generated an unusual volume of constituent mail for a technical bill, and the government's use of foreign investment review had drawn both praise and criticism from the business community that fills the towers a few blocks south of the riding line.