Oshawa

Oshawa is an urban riding in Durham Region, east of Toronto, centred on the city of Oshawa — long known as the Automotive Capital of Canada. The city had a population of approximately 149,600 in the 2011 census and sits at the eastern edge of the Greater Toronto Area, bounded by Whitby to the west and Clarington to the east, with Lake Ontario forming its southern boundary.

Candidates

Colin Carrie (Conservative) — Born in Hamilton, Carrie moved to Oshawa at age fifteen and made it his permanent home. He earned a Bachelor of Science in kinesiology from the University of Waterloo and a Doctor of Chiropractic from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1989, practising as a chiropractor in Oshawa before entering politics. He served as a director of the Oshawa Progressive Conservative Party Association prior to the party's 2004 merger with the Canadian Alliance. First elected to Parliament in the 2004 federal election, he was re-elected in 2006 and 2008, and was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health in November 2008. He entered the 2011 campaign as the three-term incumbent.

Chris Buckley (NDP) — Buckley was a lifelong trade unionist who served as president of CAW Local 222, the Canadian Auto Workers union local representing workers at the General Motors complex in Oshawa. As local president, he sat on the CAW's national executive board and was involved in the union's response to major restructuring at GM, including the closure of the truck plant in 2009 and the loss of thousands of auto manufacturing jobs. His candidacy represented a direct link between the labour movement and political representation in a city defined by its relationship with General Motors.

James Cooper Morton (Liberal) — Morton was a lawyer and legal scholar who graduated as silver medallist from Osgoode Hall Law School, clerked with the Chief Justice of Ontario, and practised with the law firm of Tory Tory DesLauriers & Binnington. He served as president of the Ontario Bar Association in 2006-2007 and was adjunct faculty at Osgoode Hall Law School, where he had taught since 1993. He published numerous legal textbooks on topics including evidence and criminal law.

Gail Bates (Green Party), Matthew Belanger (Libertarian), and David Gershuny (Marxist-Leninist) also stood as candidates.

About the Riding

Oshawa's identity has been shaped for nearly a century by General Motors. The GM Oshawa complex, which at its peak employed tens of thousands of workers, remained the city's defining economic institution even as its workforce contracted sharply through the 2000s. The 2008-2009 recession and GM's subsequent bankruptcy and restructuring — including the closure of the Oshawa truck plant in 2009 — sent shockwaves through the local economy, with thousands of direct and spin-off jobs lost. By 2011, production had partially recovered with new vehicle lines, but the city remained acutely aware of its economic vulnerability. Beyond automotive manufacturing, Oshawa had been diversifying its economy through growth in health care and education. Lakeridge Health Oshawa is a major regional hospital, and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), founded in 2002, along with Durham College, was bringing a growing student population and research activity to the city's north end. The area's median age of 39 years in 2011 reflected a mix of established blue-collar families and younger newcomers. Federal issues of paramount concern in the riding included automotive industry policy, the fate of GM jobs, trade agreements affecting manufacturing, and economic diversification support for communities dependent on a single industrial employer.