Flying Hyer

With nearly 50 per cent of the vote, incumbent Bruce Hyer is holding onto the Thunder Bay-Superior North riding with a firm grasp.

“I’m very gratified that (the voters) trust me to go back and represent them,” Hyer said Monday night after the federal elections results came back showing strong support not only for the NDP locally with Hyer receiving 18,303 votes, but also nationally.

While Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won a majority, with a projected seat count of 166 as of 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, the New Democrats more than tripled their number of seats from 2008’s results – 29 to 104.

Hyer said the NDP’s gains didn’t come as a surprise to him.

“We’ve worked hard. We’ve organized ourselves well and for quite a while I’ve had the feelings that Canadians were ready for a change,” he said. “We know that one third of them seem to be sticking with Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, but two thirds of Canadians want a Canada that’s cleaner, greener, safer, fairer, more sustainable and more democratic.”

And although a Conservative majority will make it harder, Hyer said his first priority as MP is to figure out how to get all the parties working together to make Parliament work.

“I’ve been disheartened by the hostility and the cynicism and skepticism in Ottawa,” he said.

“I’m the kind of person that comes from the business community; I’m used to working with my competitors and speaking with them and negotiating with them so I’m ready, willing and able to work with any other Members of Parliament that are willing to work with me and work with the NDP.”

Where the NDP gained ground, the Liberal Party of Canada saw their number of seats plummet from 103 to 34. Hyer said he wasn’t surprised by the decline of the Liberals and said the party has lost its way.

He added the country needs a Liberal party, but one with a new vision, backbone and the ability to relate to and work for the average Canadian.

However, Thunder Bay-Superior North Liberal candidate Yves Fricot believes his party’s vision is strong despite only capturing 6,107 of the riding’s votes behind Hyer and the Conservative’s Richard Harvey, who received 10,932 votes.

“Obviously we are disappointed in the outcome but…we’re very proud of the fact we were able to take our vision for the country, our vision for our communities, our vision for the region to the people,” he said, adding he was surprised by the night’s results. “It’s going to take some time to digest, to give us a sense of what that means and how we move forward from there.”

While too early to say if he’ll run again, Fricot said there will be changes coming for the Liberal party.

“People call it rebuilding and that’s really what it is,” he said. “As a party, we’re going to have to start again from the ground up.”

When asked if he believed his ties to Buchanan Forest Products as the company’s lawyer affected the results of his campaign, Fricot said he wasn’t unhappy with how he ran his campaign.

“We ran a positive campaign,” he said. “We ran a campaign built upon our idea for the future and I hope Bruce was listening.”

Green Party of Canada candidate Scot Kyle received 1,115 votes and said he’s happy with those results simply because through his campaign, he had the opportunity to meet a lot of people.

“I listened more than I talked and I learned where people are coming from and what’s really important to the people of Thunder Bay and the outlying region.”