Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC — 2008 Federal Election Results Map

Verchères—Les Patriotes

From the eastern edge of Boucherville downriver to the steel mills at Contrecœur, Verchères—Les Patriotes occupies a strip of the St. Lawrence's south shore in the Montérégie, with farmland running inland behind it. Sainte-Julie, Varennes, Verchères, Saint-Amable, Contrecœur and Calixa-Lavallée make up the riding, which sits close enough to Montreal for daily commuting yet keeps a distinct riverside and rural identity.

Candidates

Luc Malo (Bloc Québécois) — Born at Contrecœur on 2 November 1973, Malo knew the riding from the inside before he ever ran for it. He worked from 1996 to 2001 as a political attaché and then chief of staff to Stéphane Bergeron, the area's member of Parliament, returned as an attaché in 2003 and 2004, and served as a research associate in 2005. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the Université de Sherbrooke. Malo won the seat in 2006, was the Bloc's critic for sport, and was seeking a second term.

François Fournier (Liberal) — Fournier, who lived in Montreal, ran for the Liberals in a riding the Bloc had held since its creation. Little biographical information about him circulated during the campaign.

Raphaël Fortin (NDP) — Fortin, also a Montreal resident, stood for the New Democrats, who had no organizational base to speak of here.

Benoît Dussault (Conservative) — Dussault, of Brossard, was the Conservative candidate.

Annie Morel (Green Party) — Morel, a Montrealer, ran for the Greens.

None of the four candidates opposing Malo gave an address inside the riding.

About the Riding

Voting is close to a civic habit in these towns. Turnout here had run at the top of the national table election after election, well clear of the Quebec and Canadian averages. The name gestures at the 1837–38 Patriote rebellions, and the older communities carry that history openly, along with the seigneurial past commemorated at Verchères, where Madeleine de Verchères's 1692 defence of the family fort remains the village's best-known story.

Sainte-Julie is the largest municipality, a fast-growing residential city just off Autoroute 20 that drew young families through the 1990s and 2000s. Varennes pairs an old riverfront village core with heavy industry and research. Hydro-Québec's research institute, opened there in 1970, employs several hundred engineers and scientists, but the town's petrochemical park was in trouble: Petromont announced on 12 February 2008 that it would shut its Varennes and Montreal-East plants, ending roughly 325 jobs. Contrecœur is the riding's industrial anchor, home to ArcelorMittal's electric-arc furnace and direct-reduced-iron complex, one of the largest private employers on this stretch of the river.

Ottawa has a direct property interest here as well. The Montreal Port Authority bought the existing Contrecœur terminal and the land around it — 468 hectares, with four kilometres of shoreline — between 1988 and 1992, holding it against future container growth downriver from the main Montreal docks. What that reserve would eventually be used for was a standing question for the municipality.

Most of the land area sits inside Quebec's protected agricultural zone while most of the people live in the towns along the water and the Autoroute 20 corridor, and the friction between the two runs through local politics. Dairy, field crops and market gardening all matter. Heading into October 2008, the questions raised most often were industrial emissions and river water quality, road and transit links to Montreal and Longueuil, the softening manufacturing economy, and the federal cuts to cultural programs that had become a flashpoint across Quebec.