Richmond, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Richmond

The Richmond riding covered Sea Island and the western and northern parts of Lulu Island, on the flat delta where the Fraser River meets the Strait of Georgia. Its boundary ran inland from the Oak Street Bridge along Highway 99 to Cambie Road, then followed a staircase of city roads — No. 4 Road, Francis Road, No. 3 Road — down to Steveston Highway and west to the shore. Everything south and east of that line, Steveston village and the Ironwood and Hamilton districts among it, belonged to the neighbouring seat of Delta—Richmond East. What remained held about 114,000 people in 54 square kilometres: Vancouver International Airport, the No. 3 Road city centre, and the residential grid running west to the dyke.

Candidates

Alice Wong (Conservative) — Wong took a doctorate in curriculum and instruction at the University of British Columbia and spent her career in post-secondary education, latterly managing international programs at Kwantlen University College. She had earlier taught English as a second language and small business courses at Vancouver Community College, where she set up a small business centre that gave immigrant entrepreneurs their first bilingual management training. She lived in Richmond, sat on a string of local boards, founded the Richmond Greenspace Society, and had contested the riding for the Conservatives once before, in 2004.

Raymond Chan (Liberal) — Chan was the sitting member. Born in Hong Kong and in Canada since 1969, he took an engineering physics degree at the University of British Columbia and worked at the TRIUMF laboratory before entering politics. He came to public attention in the late 1980s as founding president of a Vancouver organisation supporting the democracy movement in China. First elected in 1993, he was Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific through the 1990s, lost the riding in 2000, regained it in 2004, and served as Minister of State for Multiculturalism until the Liberals left office in 2006.

Dale Jackaman (NDP) — Jackaman worked in information technology security. He had helped found the Airspace Non-Smokers' Rights Society, the province's leading anti-tobacco lobby of the 1980s and 1990s, and went on to run it. He had carried the New Democrat banner here in 2004.

Michael Anthony Wolfe (Green Party) — A secondary school science teacher in Richmond, active in the city's nature and conservation societies.

Wei Ping Chen, a local realtor, and Dobie Yiu-Chung To both stood as independents.

About the Riding

The airport set the terms of the local economy. Vancouver International, on Sea Island, was the riding's largest employer by a wide distance, and the hotels, freight forwarders, caterers and ground handlers clustered around it employed thousands more. Retail and light industry filled much of the rest, with No. 3 Road the city's commercial spine and the Bridgeport flats carrying warehousing and distribution.

Two construction projects were reshaping that corridor during the campaign. The Canada Line rapid transit route ran the length of No. 3 Road, with service to the airport and downtown Vancouver expected the following year, and the Richmond Olympic Oval on the middle arm of the Fraser was nearing completion for the 2010 Winter Games.

Immigration had remade Richmond over two decades. A large share of residents had been born outside Canada, Chinese Canadians formed the largest single community, and arrivals from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland had rebuilt the retail landscape along No. 3 Road. Much of the campaigning was done through Chinese-language media, and settlement services, family reunification backlogs, credential recognition and seniors' benefits came up repeatedly at the door. The seat had changed hands since 1988 in turn from Progressive Conservative to Liberal, Canadian Alliance and Liberal again, and both main campaigns treated it as winnable.