Brossard—La Prairie

Brossard—La Prairie is a federal electoral district on Montreal’s South Shore, situated in the Montérégie region of Quebec. The riding encompasses the city of Brossard, the city of La Prairie, the city of Candiac, and the municipality of Saint-Philippe. Connected to the Island of Montreal by the Champlain Bridge, the riding is part of the rapidly growing suburban belt south of the St. Lawrence River.

Candidates

Hoang Mai (NDP) — Born and raised in Brossard to parents who emigrated from Vietnam in 1967, Mai studied economics at the Université de Montréal before completing a law degree and a master’s degree in private international law at the same institution. He articled at The Hague and practiced corporate law internationally, including stints in Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Mai became active in the NDP following Thomas Mulcair’s 2007 by-election victory in Outremont and had run in Brossard—La Prairie in the 2008 election, finishing fourth.

Alexandra Mendès (Liberal) — Born in Portugal, Mendès immigrated to Canada with her family in 1978. She worked as a constituency assistant to long-serving Liberal MP Jacques Saada, who had represented Brossard—La Prairie from 1997 to 2006, and also taught at the Brossard Portuguese School. Mendès won the riding in the 2008 election, defeating the Bloc Québécois incumbent Marcel Lussier, and was seeking re-election as the sitting MP.

Marcel Lussier (Bloc Québécois) — An engineer who spent 22 years at Hydro-Québec as an environmental engineering specialist, Lussier had represented the riding from 2006 to 2008 as a Bloc Québécois MP. He served as the party’s environment critic during his time in Parliament and was seeking to reclaim the seat in 2011.

Maurice Brossard (Conservative) — Brossard was the Conservative Party candidate in the riding for the 2011 election.

Kevin Murphy ran for the Green Party and Normand Chouinard for the Marxist-Leninist Party.

About the Riding

Brossard—La Prairie had a population of approximately 128,000 as of 2011, reflecting rapid suburban growth on Montreal’s South Shore. Brossard, the riding’s largest municipality with roughly 79,000 residents, is one of Quebec’s most culturally diverse cities, with significant communities of Chinese, Arab, South Asian, and Latin American origin alongside its francophone majority. The city’s economy is driven by its retail and service sectors, centred on Boulevard Taschereau and the Quartier DIX30 lifestyle centre, one of Canada’s largest open-air shopping complexes. An industrial park hosts light and medium manufacturing. La Prairie, at the confluence of the Saint-Jacques River and the St. Lawrence, is one of Quebec’s oldest communities, dating to the seventeenth century, and is home to Canada’s first railway terminus. Candiac and Saint-Philippe are newer residential communities that experienced significant development in the 2000s. With heavy reliance on commuter routes to Montreal, issues of transportation infrastructure — particularly the condition of the Champlain Bridge and access to public transit — were major federal concerns heading into 2011.