Liberal Leader Mark Carney is the favourite in Nepean, where he faces off against Conservative Barbara Bal, a police officer.
Quick facts
- Size of the riding: 172 square kilometres
- Population: 122,305 (2021)
- Density: 711 people per square kilometre
- Median household income: $121,000
- Median age: 30.8 (2021)
- Estimated number of electors: 87,292
- Knowledge of official languages: English (68.8 per cent), French (0.5 per cent), English and French (28.6 per cent), neither English nor French (2.2 per cent)
Where is Nepean?
The riding sits neatly in the middle of the City of Ottawa. It stretches from Barnsdale Road in the south to the Canadian National Railway line in the north, and east from Highway 416 to the Rideau River. The riding includes the sprawling suburb of Barrhaven, along with the mature neighbourhoods of Arlington Woods, Craig Henry and Tanglewood.
2021 federal election results
- Liberal: 27,348 (45.7 per cent)
- Conservative: 19,953 (33.4 percent)
- NDP: 9,700 (16.2 per cent)
- People’s Party: 16,31 (2.7 per cent)
- Green: 1,162 (1.9 per cent)
Recent electoral history
The federal riding of Nepean has been dominated by the Liberals in recent years. Liberal Chandra Arya won the past three elections with the help of the riding’s large South Asian community. Arya, an engineer and businessman, was the first member of the Liberal caucus to declare himself a candidate to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister in January. But the backbench MP was rejected as a leadership candidate by the Liberal Party, which deemed him “manifestly unfit” for the job without explaining why. His candidacy in Nepean was then revoked by the party — again without an explanation — just days before Prime Minister Mark Carney called an election.
Evening Update
It has been reported that Arya’s candidacy was rejected because of his ties to India. In August 2024, Arya travelled to India on his own accord and met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi while relations between the two countries were at a nadir. The visit came in the aftermath of accusations, levelled by Trudeau, that agents of the Indian government had shot and killed Canadian citizen and Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C.
Who are the candidates running in the Nepean riding?
Liberal leader Mark Carney is the first sitting prime minister to contest an Ottawa riding since Conservative John A. Macdonald, the country’s founding prime minister, ran in Carleton. (Macdonald won Carleton in 1882 and 1887, but sat as Kingston’s MP after the 1887 election.) Born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Carney is an economist with an undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and a master’s and PhD from Oxford University. He spent 13 years with the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs before moving to Ottawa as deputy governor of the Bank of Canada in August 2003. The following year, Carney jumped to the finance department as senior associate deputy minister. He was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada in February 2008, then left that job after five-and-a-half years to serve as governor of the Bank of England. Carney won the Liberal leadership contest on March 9 in a landslide vote. He lives in Rockcliffe.
Conservative Party candidate Barbara Bal grew up on a dairy farm in southern Ontario, the oldest of 10 children. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and sociology from Hamilton’s Redeemer University, and an MBA from the Royal Military College of Canada. Bal spent 10 years as a field officer in the Royal Canadian Artillery reserve while launching her career as a police officer. Now a decorated staff sergeant with the Ottawa Police Service, Bal has worked as a patrol supervisor, recruiting officer, and fraud and criminal investigator. In 2015, she settled a human rights complaint against the service, which triggered a gender audit that found women were disadvantaged by maternity leaves and less likely to be promoted. She contends Carney was parachuted into Nepean riding. “I’ve earned my place here by living, working and raising my family in this community,” Bal said in a video message posted on X, formerly Twitter. She lives in Nepean.
Green Party candidate Greg Hopkins is a child and youth counsellor educated at Carleton University and Algonquin College. He serves on the executive of his public service union and is a member of its collective bargaining team. Hopkins says he will fight to end the federal return-to-work mandate — it makes no sense for the environment, he contends — push for more federal transit funding, and a guaranteed basic income. Hopkins has also vowed to donate all of his MP’s salary to the community. Hopkins lives in Nepean.
Other declared candidates in Nepean include project manager and businessman Eric Fleury of the People’s Party of Canada.
