Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca

The Pacific fleet ties up at one end of this riding and the pavement gives out at the other. Esquimalt, with its dockyard and graving dock, sits immediately west of Victoria; beyond it lie the Westshore municipalities of View Royal, Colwood and Langford, then the hobby farms and forest of Metchosin and the Highlands, then Sooke, and finally the unincorporated Juan de Fuca coast running past Jordan River and Shirley to Port Renfrew. A slice of Saanich around Tillicum and Interurban was attached at the eastern edge. Few districts in the country packed a naval base, a booming suburb and old-growth coastline into so small a compass.

Candidates

Keith Martin (Liberal) — An emergency room physician, Martin first won the seat for Reform in 1993 and held it for the Canadian Alliance. In January 2004 he announced he would not join the merged Conservative Party, sat out the rest of that Parliament as an independent, and returned later the same year as a Liberal, winning again in 2006. His parliamentary work ranged across global health, African development and a long series of private members' initiatives. He was seeking a sixth term and his third as a Liberal.

Troy DeSouza (Conservative) — A municipal lawyer in Victoria advising local governments, DeSouza had served seven years in the Canadian Forces reserves, part of it as an assisting officer representing service members facing summary charges. He had been the Conservative candidate here in 2006, and the party treated the riding as a genuine target given Martin's history of narrow wins.

Jennifer Burgis (NDP) — Semi-retired and living in the Victoria area, Burgis stood for the New Democrats, who had been Martin's closest challengers in the two previous contests and kept a strong base among public-sector workers in Esquimalt and the Westshore.

Brian G. Gordon (Green) — A consultant from the Victoria area, Gordon ran for the Greens in a riding where forest and coastal protection carried unusual weight.

Sooke physician Philip G. Ney ran as an independent, and Brad Rhodes, a small business owner from Victoria, stood for the Canadian Action Party.

About the Riding

CFB Esquimalt anchors the local economy, employing several thousand military and civilian personnel and ranking among the largest employers in Greater Victoria. It is home to Maritime Forces Pacific, the fleet's frigates and Victoria-class submarines, and it is surrounded by supporting industry. The federally owned Esquimalt Graving Dock next door is worked by the shipyard that leases it, which through 2008 completed the last of eight Orca-class training vessels for the navy and, in March of that year, was picked as the West Coast yard for the modernization of the Halifax-class frigates. Procurement decisions made in Ottawa translate here into shifts and contracts, which kept shipbuilding policy and the Afghanistan mission live subjects on the doorstep.

West of the base the landscape changes every few years. Langford and Colwood were among the fastest-growing municipalities in British Columbia, converting semi-rural land into subdivisions, big-box retail and new schools while pressing constantly for highway capacity and better transit into Victoria. Metchosin resisted that pattern on purpose, holding to large lots and farm zoning, and Sooke marketed itself as the gateway to the wild coast.

The most contentious local issue of the period was land. In January 2007 the provincial government allowed Western Forest Products to remove roughly 28,000 hectares of private land from tree farm licences on Vancouver Island, about 12,000 hectares of it from the licence covering the Sooke and Jordan River country inside this riding. The change lifted the land-use rules that came with the licence and opened the door to resort and residential schemes along the Juan de Fuca shoreline, one of which a developer floated publicly in April 2008. The decision was provincial, but it dominated community politics through the federal campaign and fed wider arguments about old-growth logging, salmon streams and public access on the south Island.