Vancouver South, BC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Vancouver South

Vancouver South was the wedge of the city lying south and east of Granville Street and 41st Avenue, running down to the north arm of the Fraser River and out east to Tyne Street and 49th Avenue — twenty-seven square kilometres and about 120,000 people. Marpole sat in the west, Oakridge and the southern Cambie corridor in the middle, Sunset around Main and Fraser, and Victoria-Fraserview, southern Killarney and Champlain Heights to the east. It was residential almost throughout, its character set by the commercial strips on Main, Fraser, Victoria and Marine Drive rather than by any single centre.

Candidates

Ujjal Dosanjh (Liberal) — Dosanjh was the sitting member, first elected in 2004 and appointed federal minister of health within weeks. Before that he had a long provincial career: elected to the legislature in 1991, attorney general of British Columbia from 1995, and premier from 2000 to 2001. He was born in Punjab, moved to England at seventeen and to Canada in 1968, worked in a sawmill while studying, took a degree at Simon Fraser University and a law degree at UBC, and opened his own practice in 1979. In opposition he served as the Liberals' health critic.

Wai Young (Conservative) — Young was born in Hong Kong and came to Canada as a small child, growing up in the riding and attending Killarney Secondary before taking a sociology degree at the University of British Columbia in 1982 and postgraduate courses at Simon Fraser and BCIT. She worked for the provincial children's ministry and for federal immigration, then in 1993 set up a consultancy helping community organisations secure government funding, with clients including S.U.C.C.E.S.S. and the Chinatown business improvement association. Three decades of volunteering in the city's social-service sector included the presidency of the Strathcona Community Centre Association. This was her first run for Parliament.

Ann Chambers (NDP) — A community health worker living in Vancouver, Chambers stood for the New Democrats, focusing on health care access and affordability.

Csaba Gulyas (Green) — An information technology and audiovisual consultant based in Vancouver, Gulyas carried the Green campaign.

Charles Boylan, an English-as-a-second-language instructor, also ran for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

No group formed a majority in Vancouver South. Chinese Canadians were the largest, concentrated in Oakridge, Marpole and Victoria-Fraserview; Punjabi-speaking families were heavily represented in Sunset, where the Khalsa Diwan Society's Ross Street gurdwara, designed by Arthur Erickson and opened in 1970, and the Punjabi Market near Main and 49th served as commercial and cultural anchors. Filipino and Vietnamese communities were substantial as well. Immigration policy — processing times, family sponsorship, credential recognition — was not a peripheral issue here but a constituency service workload.

The most visible change in 2008 was underground. Canada Line crews had been working north up Cambie Street since late 2005, and the cut-and-cover trench that ran through the corridor for most of 2007 left merchants reporting heavy sales losses and demanding compensation. The stations at Marine Drive, Langara and Oakridge-41st were due to open in 2009, and the prospect of rapid transit had begun to reshape planning around Oakridge Centre and the Marpole industrial lands, though the redevelopment itself lay in the future.

Beyond retail and services, employment came from Langara College, the shopping centres at Oakridge and Champlain Heights, light industry along the river, and the commuting flow to Richmond and downtown. Incomes varied widely between the western side of the riding and the more modest streets east of Fraser.

Vancouver South had returned Liberals continuously since 1993, first under Herb Dhaliwal and then Dosanjh, but Conservative organisers had spent the previous two years courting immigrant voters across the Lower Mainland on taxes, crime and family policy, and treated this riding as one of their best chances in the city. The federal inquiry into the Air India bombing, called in 2006 and still at work on its report, kept the question of political extremism in local circulation; Dosanjh had spoken against it for decades.