Once rock-solid Tory, a Liberal won by a sliver in a 2023 by-election in this riding with one foot in the suburbs and one in the country.
Quick Facts
- Size of the riding: 806 square kilometres
- Population: 116,651 (2021)
- Density: 153.3 people per square kilometre
- Median household income: $125,000 (2020)
- Median age: 42.0
- Knowledge of official languages: English (70.3 per cent), French (0.4 per cent), English and French (27.7 per cent), neither English nor French (1.6 per cent)
Where is Kanata-Carleton located?
Kanata-Carleton sprawls over more than 800 square kilometres, bounded to the north and east by the Ottawa River and as far west as Ottawa’s border with Renfrew County, and by Highway 7 to the south.
The current riding boundaries were created in 2013 during the redistribution of federal electoral districts. The provincial riding mirrorred the federal riding of the same name and includes portions of the former provincial riding of Carleton-Mississippi Mills as well as suburban neighbourhoods in Kanata on both sides of Highway 417. (Federal ridings were redistributed in 2023, but the province decided not to adopt these new boundaries.)
Neighbourhoods include Hazeldean, Bridlewood, Beaverbrook, Kanata Lakes and South March. The riding also encompasses the farming communities and towns and villages of West Carleton including Dunrobin, Kinburn, Carp, Constance Bay and Fitzroy Harbour.
The majority (68 per cent) of Kanata-Carleton residents speak English at home, two per cent speak French at home and 4.6 per cent speak both. About 6.2 per cent report speaking another language at home and 16 per cent report speaking another language as well as English, with the remainder speaking multiple languages or combinations of official languages and other languages.
Evening Update
What’s the recent electoral history of the riding?
The predecessor riding Carleton-Mississippi Mills was once a rock-solid Progressive Conservative stronghold. Norm Sterling represented the riding and predecessor provincial ridings from 1977 to 2011 when rural populist Jack MacLaren wrested the Tory nomination from him.
MacLaren beat Liberal challengers in the next two elections by more than 9,000 votes in 2011 and over 10,000 votes in 2014. He was kicked out of the Tory caucus in 2017 after a number of controversies, including a report that he told a vulgar joke about his Liberal counterpart Karen McCrimmon at a fundraiser in Carp.
MacLaren announced that he was joining the Trillium Party, but attracted only four per cent of the vote in 2018, the first provincial election contested in the reconfigured riding. Conservative candidate Merrilee Fullerton won Kanata-Carleton easily with 43 per cent of the vote.
Fullerton, a physician, was appointed Minister of Colleges and Universities and became Minister of Long-Term Care in 2019 only months before the COVID-19 pandemic claimed the lives of thousands of long-term care residents. Fullerton was re-assigned as Minister of Children, Community and Social Services in June 2021 in the midst of a controversy over therapy services for children with autism. She won over 43 per cent of the vote in the June 2022 election, but resigned less than 10 months later, triggering a by-election held in July 2023.
Karen McCrimmon, previously a Liberal MP, won the by-election in a three-way race, winning 34.5 per cent of the vote compared to 32.97 for PC candidate Sean Webster and 29.43 per cent for Melissa Coenraad of the NDP.
Who’s running?
McCrimmon is a 31-year military veteran and the first woman to command a Canadian Air Force flying squadron. She won the federal riding of Kanata-Carleton in the 2015 federal election by a 7,618-vote margin over PC candidate Walter Pamic. She was re-elected in 2019 and served as chair of the federal defence committee following her second win. She did not run in the 2021 federal election. McCrimmon won the by-election for the provincial riding in July 2023 and has been the Liberal critic for education, colleges and universities. She lives in Constance Bay.
The Progressive Conservative Party’s Scott Phelan is a first-term Ottawa Catholic School Board trustee who has worked in IT for 26 years. Phelan is married and has four children and is a hockey coach and volunteer. He lives in Stittsville, just outside the riding.
NDP candidate Dave Belcher was a teacher and volunteer at West Carleton Secondary School starting in 2008. He has worked full-time for the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Association since 2020. Belcher was raised in Stittsville. In 2009 he moved to Kanata, where he lives with his wife and children.
