Through boundary and population changes, Ottawa-Vanier has remained staunchly Liberal. Its last non-Liberal MPP was PC Jules Morin, elected in 1967, but defeated in the following election.
Quick Facts
- Population: 118,806 (2021)
- Land area of the riding: 39 square kilometres
- Density: 3,013 people per square kilometre
- Median total household income in 2020: $76,000
- Median age: 40.4 years
- Knowledge of official languages: English only (47.4 per cent), French only (3.9 per cent), English and French (47.3 per cent), neither English nor French (1.3 per cent)
Where is Ottawa-Vanier?
Covering a large portion of core and eastern Ottawa and extending to the Greenbelt, the riding’s boundaries run roughly west of the Rideau Canal with the Ottawa River to the north and Highway 417-174 forming its southern boundary. The riding includes an irregular section near the highway split extending down past Innes Road and including the Pineview neighbourhood, while the riding’s eastern edge follows Green’s Creek.
Ottawa-Vanier includes a diverse scope of urban neighbourhoods, from Lowertown and Sandy Hill in the west to New Edinburgh, Rockcliffe Park, Vanier, Overbrook and other neighbourhoods further east, out to Beacon Hill.
Within its boundaries is the University of Ottawa, surrounding student neighbourhoods and Collège La Cité, the ByWard Market business and entertainment district, the Montfort and Bruyère hospitals, and a long stretch of the Rideau River as well as the Sir George-Étienne Cartier Parkway corridor.
Recent electoral history
Through boundary and population changes, Ottawa-Vanier has remained staunchly Liberal at both the provincial and federal levels. Its last non-Liberal MPP was PC Jules Morin, elected in 1967, but defeated in the following election.
Evening Update
Lucille Collard is the latest in a line of francophone Liberal women to represent the riding at Queen’s Park. She picked up more than 50 per cent of the vote in a 2020 by-election, following the resignation of Nathalie DesRosiers to take a job at the University of Toronto’s Massey College.
DesRosiers had held onto her seat by a margin of more than 6,000 votes in 2018 even as the Liberals were swept from power.
Prior to DesRosier’s election, Madeleine Meilleur served the riding for nearly 13 years.
Collard won the 2022 election with 41 per cent of the vote, a 6,000-vote margin over NDP challenger Lyra Evans.
Recent voting trends have propelled New Democrat candidates to runner-up status in the riding in the past three elections, supplanting the Progressive Conservatives, who historically enjoyed the second-highest vote totals in the riding.
Ottawa-Vanier also has a Francophone and female Liberal representative federally.
Mona Fortier, currently the party’s Chief Government Whip after serving as president of the Treasury Board, has been the MP since 2017.
Who are the candidates running in Ottawa-Vanier?
Francophone and minority rights activist Myriam Djilane is representing the NDP after running in the 2020 by-election, when she garnered 25 per cent of the vote. Evans ran for the provincial NDP in the 2018 and 2022 general elections.
The NDP said Djilane “is committed to ending the hallway medicine crisis, fixing crumbling schools and investing in education, tackling the climate emergency and the affordable housing crisis, and advocating for Franco-Ontarians.”
Marilissa Gosselin, a senior policy adviser, is running for the Progressive Conservatives.
Former PC candidate Patrick Mayangi finished third in the 2020 by-election with 11.7 per cent of the vote and again in the general election two years later, when he increased that share to 20 per cent.
The Green Party saw its popularity nearly double in the riding in 2022, with candidate Christian Proulx receiving 7.8 per cent of the votes (3,019 votes), up from 4.1 per cent (1,955 votes) in 2018.
