Orléans voters will be heading to the polls on April 28 to cast their ballot in the 2025 federal election. According to the latest national poll con-ducted by Nanos between April 20-22, the Liberals lead over the Conservatives stood at five percentage points, while an Ipsos poll had the Liberals leading by three points with just a week before election day.

Whether enough support could swing back in favour of the Conservative Party to enable them to form the next government remains to be seen. Most prognosticators are forecasting the Liberals will retain their minority status while picking up a handful of additional seats.

Locally, the race is between Liberal incum-bent Marie-France Lalonde and Conservative hopeful Steve Mansour.

Lalonde is running to secure her third term in office. She was first elected in 2019 and was subsequently reelected in 2021 after capturing 50 per cent of the vote.

Mansour is a 26-year-old law student who is born and raised in Orléans and is fluently bilingual. He has been involved in politics since high school and has worked for a Conservative member on Parliament Hill.

If he were to beat Lalonde, he would become only the second Conservative to represent Orléans in the House of Commons since the early 1900s. The only person to hold that distinction is the late Royal Galipeau, who served in the House of Commons from 2006 to 2015.

The riding’s boundaries has also been reconfigured since the last general election. Blackburn Hamlet is now part of Ottawa-Vanier-Gloucester, and Cardinal Creek Village is now part of Glengarry-Prescott-Cumberland.

Besides from Lalonde and Mansour, there are five other candidates whose names will appear on the ballot in Orléans.

The NDP can­didate is Oulai B. Goué, a marketing communications entrepreneur who graduated from the Warton Business School in Philadelphia in 2010. One of his main objectives in running for politics is to reform mental health and long-term care through the creation of a community-based home-care model.

He also supports a public administration reform of a two-day hybrid work in office wherever possible to enhance work-life balance and efficiency and he supports investing in public and affordable housing for moderate-income households, a temp­orary VAT/GST reduction on essential groceries and increase support for domestic agriculture.

The Green Party candidate is Jaycob Jacques, a Sudbury native who is currently attending the Uni­versity of Ottawa where he is pursuing a degree in commerce.

Other candidates include Libertarian Arlo Arrowsmith, People’s Party of Canada member Tafiqul Abu Mo­hammad and inde­pendent candidates Arabella Vida and Mazhar Choudhry.