The ridings in which some of you voted in the last federal election may not be the ones assigned to you this time. Find out who your candidates are before voting day.
If you are planning to vote in the federal election — as I assume most Canadians definitely will — make sure you know where to cast your ballot before polling day because boundary changes have shifted several communities and thousands of voters into different ridings.
While most voters in Ottawa will see no change, the ridings in which some of you voted in the last federal election may not be the ones assigned to you this time. Notably, residents in Findlay Creek, Carlington, Bells Corners, Blacburn Hamlet, McKellar Park, Mooney’s Bay, Carlsbad Springs, Stittsville and several others will find that they have been moved into new ridings.
For instance, in Orléans, some 13,000 people have been shifted to different ridings. That’s why Elections Canada says you must make sure you know your riding before polling day, April 28. It’s easy to do: Go to the Elections Canada website, punch in your postal code and it will spill out the information you need. Or just call your returning office.
“For some people, there may be changes. There will be some adjustments, and our message to electors is ‘you need to check’ to make sure where you are voting,” says Elections Canada spokesperson Diane Benson. “We do have an extensive voter information campaign and we are going to communicate with voters over the next couple of weeks.”
Benson says voter cards, with all the information you will need to vote without hiccups, would be mailed out April 8, and arrive well before the advance voting days of April 18-21. Keep them handy.
The way the electoral boundaries commission describes ridings is arcane and often indecipherable. Consider this official description of Carleton, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s riding: “Consists of that part of the City of Ottawa as follows: Commencing at the intersection of Hawthorne Road and Hunt Club Road; thence northeasterly along Hunt Club Road to Highway 417 (Trans-Canada Highway); thence generally easterly along said highway to the easterly limit of said city; thence generally southwesterly, northwesterly, and generally northeasterly along the easterly, southerly, westerly, and northerly limits of said city to the northeasterly production of Berry Side Road … ” You follow?
On and on it goes, and other ridings follow a similar pattern. It would do all of us a world of good if the people who wrote these things could use language ordinary folk understand. So, let us try and get behind the gobbledygook and pick out some of the communities affected by the boundary changes.
The city of Ottawa now has nine ridings, with the old Glengarry-Prescott-Russell now stretching into east-end rural communities of Carlsbad Springs, Ramsayville, areas east of Cardinal Creek and Mer Bleue, under the new name of Prescott-Russell-Cumberland.
In one of the significant changes, Orléans, which lost the small east-end rural communities, also lost Blackburn Hamlet to the renamed Ottawa Vanier-Gloucester.
Importantly as well, Bells Corners, long part of Nepean, is part of the renamed Kanata, formerly Kanata-Carleton.
For its part, Carleton has expanded from Hawthorn Road to Renfrew, becoming more rural and taking in such communities as Fitzroy Harbour, Dunrobin, Kinburn and Constance Bay. It also absorbed Stittsville but lost Findlay Creek to Ottawa South. This is no scientific survey, but I asked a friend who lives in Findlay Creek whether he knows that he now votes in Ottawa South, and the answer was no. So, it bears checking.
As for Ottawa South, parts of it, including Billings Bridge, Heron Park and Riverside Park (including Mooney’s Bay) have been shifted to Ottawa Centre. The riding however, lost some neighbourhoods on its western edge, such as McKellar Park and McKellar Heights, to Ottawa West-Nepean. As well, all of Carlington, not just the western part, is now in Ottawa West-Nepean.
This is such a nation-defining election that everyone who can, must vote. There can be no excuses, so make sure you know ahead of time where you are voting. Don’t wait until the last minute, become flustered and perhaps not exercise your franchise.
Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa journalist and commentator. Reach him at [email protected]
