Abbotsford, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Abbotsford

The riding sat on the south bank of the Fraser about 70 kilometres east of Vancouver, drawn in 2003 out of parts of two earlier seats — a little over half its population from Fraser Valley, the rest from Langley—Abbotsford. Its 411 square kilometres took in the whole City of Abbotsford, nearly 124,000 people at the 2006 census and British Columbia's fifth-largest city, together with the Matsqui Main and Upper Sumas reserves. Subdivisions on the uplands looked down over the flat, drained expanse of Sumas Prairie.

Candidates

Ed Fast (Conservative) — Fast was born in Winnipeg in 1955, grew up in Vancouver, and took his arts and law degrees at the University of British Columbia, finishing law school in 1982. He co-founded an Abbotsford firm and practised there for two decades. Elected an Abbotsford school trustee in 1985 and to city council in 1996, he served three council terms, part of that time as deputy mayor and as head of the civic parks, recreation and culture commission. He entered the Commons in 2006 on the retirement of Randy White, sat on the Canadian heritage and transport committees, chaired the B.C. Conservative caucus, and sponsored a private member's bill that doubled the maximum sentence for internet luring of children, which became law in 2007.

Lionel Dominique Traverse (Liberal) — Traverse was a physician practising in Abbotsford. The Liberals had not carried this part of the Fraser Valley since 1968, when Ervin Pringle took Fraser Valley East for a single term.

Bonnie Rai (NDP) — Rai tutored English as a second language in Abbotsford and stood for the New Democrats, whose provincial counterparts had also struggled in the eastern Fraser Valley.

Karen Durant (Green) — A businesswoman living in the city, Durant ran for the Green Party, whose arguments about farmland preservation and water quality had local purchase.

Tim Felger, an Abbotsford shop owner and long-standing advocate of legalising and taxing cannabis, ran under the Radical Marijuana banner.

About the Riding

Roughly three-quarters of Abbotsford's land base sat in the Agricultural Land Reserve, and the farms on it were the most intensive in the country. Dairy barns, poultry operations, blueberry and raspberry fields and greenhouse vegetable production together produced higher farm-gate receipts than any other municipality in British Columbia and, per hectare, the highest farm sales in Canada. Supply management for dairy, eggs and poultry was therefore not a theoretical trade issue here, and the avian influenza outbreak that had forced mass culls across the valley in 2004 was recent enough to shape how growers heard talk about federal disease response.

The city's institutions had changed that year. On 21 April 2008 the University College of the Fraser Valley was granted full university status and became the University of the Fraser Valley, with its main campus in Abbotsford. The municipally owned Abbotsford International Airport handled scheduled passenger service, aircraft maintenance and cargo, and hosted an August airshow that drew crowds from across the region. Trans-Canada Highway traffic and the Huntingdon crossing into Washington State made trucking and warehousing a significant employer.

Abbotsford's religious life was unusually prominent for British Columbia. Mennonite and Dutch Reformed families who had moved west from the prairies in the mid-twentieth century founded churches and private schools throughout the city, and a Sikh community dating to the first decade of the twentieth century maintained the Gur Sikh Temple on South Fraser Way, built in 1911 and the oldest standing gurdwara in North America.

Crime dominated local news going into the campaign. Gang and gun violence in the Fraser Valley had risen sharply through 2007 and 2008, much of it tied to the drug trade, and the Conservative platform's emphasis on mandatory minimum sentences found a receptive audience. Housing costs, which had pulled Vancouver families east along Highway 1, and the future of farmland under development pressure rounded out the local agenda.