Here’s what you need to know about the suburban and rural riding in the city’s east end that has been a Liberal stronghold for decades.
Quick Facts
- Size of the riding: 205.8 square kilometres
- Population: 139,309 (2021)
- Density: 676 people per square kilometre
- Median household income: $112,040 (2021)
- Median age: 41.2 (2021)
- Knowledge of official languages: English (44.0 per cent), French (2.8 per cent), English and French (52.3 per cent), neither English nor French (0.8 per cent)
Where is Orléans located?
The riding of Orléans is found on Ottawa’s eastern flank. It lies east of Vanier and south of the Ottawa River, and includes the suburbs of Orléans, Blackburn Hamlet, Queenswood Heights, Fallingbrook and Cardinal Creek. The riding stretches south to Mitch Owens Road, and includes large swathes of rural land on both sides of Highway 417.
What is the recent electoral history of Orléans?
Incumbent Liberal Stephen Blais, a former city councillor, was re-elected by Orléans voters in the June 2022 provincial election. He first won his seat in the legislature in a 2020 by-election following the resignation of Liberal MPP Marie-France Lalonde, who left provincial politics for the federal arena.
Orléans has been a Liberal stronghold at the provincial level for more than two decades. In 2022, Blais won with 46 per cent of the popular vote, making it seven elections in a row that Orléans voters sent a Liberal MPP to Queen’s Park. The last time Orléans was represented by anyone other than a Liberal was in 1999 when Progressive Conservative Brian Coburn took the riding.
Liberal Phil McNeely defeated Coburn in 2003 and served as the riding’s MPP until 2014, when Lalonde won the first of her two election victories.
Evening Update
Who are the candidates running in Orléans?
Liberal Stephen Blais, the incumbent, has deep roots in politics. After graduating from the University of Ottawa with a political science degree, Blais helped get Jim Watson elected to the provincial legislature, after which he worked in Watson’s office as a special assistant. Then, while working in media relations at Carleton University, he was elected as a trustee to the Ottawa Catholic School Board. In October 2010, he was sent by voters to Ottawa city hall in the first of his three successful municipal elections. At city hall, he served as chair of the Ottawa Transit Commission, and later, the transportation committee.
Progressive Conservative candidate Steve Plourde is a decorated veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, where he served as Chief of Staff of Canadian Forces Health Services. A graduate of Royal Military College (RMC), he also holds a master’s degree in healthcare management. In 2014, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General for his role in leading a clinical mentorship team to Kabul, Afghanistan, where they implemented a comprehensive health services plan for the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). After he retired from the military as a colonel, Plourde worked as a management consultant.
Michelle Peterson, president of the Greater Avalon Community Association, is running for the Green Party. A native of Orléans, Peterson is a registered psychotherapist who specializes in couples therapy, communication and trauma. She has also served as director of operations at Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes, a francophone organization that supports women who have survived sexual or domestic violence. Peterson has previously contested a federal election (2019) and a provincial election (2022) in Orléans, and, according to her website, she intends to continue her political quest “until Orléans residents are ready to believe in her and the Green vision.”
NDP candidate Matthew Sévigny is a student at the University of Ottawa, where he’s pursuing a degree in political science and Indigenous studies. He serves as vice-president of bilingualism and francophone affairs at the uOttawa NDP Campus Club. Sévigny describes himself as a community activist, and a member of the francophone, LGBTQ+ and disabled communities. “As someone with mental health disabilities,” he says on LinkedIn, “I have always been an advocate for others going through similar experiences, whether that be in academia, relationships, politics and many more. My ultimate goal is to bring issues of mental health disabilities and the hardships of them to the forefront of the collective Canadian conscious.”
