Ed Deibel believes the June election is one for Northerners.
The Northern Ontario Heritage Party leader and candidate for Thunder Bay - Atikokan says sending a candidate to represent Northern Ontario "would be the biggest message we could send to Queen's Park in this election."
The main policy of the Heritage Party is to try to grow the Northern Ontario economy with our natural resources, Deibel says.
He adds that he wants Northern Ontario's natural resources to be processed and refined in the region rather than having the raw materials shipped elsewhere to be manufactured.
The party also supports what Deibel calls better policies for education, a Northern Ontario spring bear hunt and a 10-year no-tax policy.
"We hope that in this election we're going to double or triple the vote that we got in the last election," Deibel said.
The Heritage Party received less than 1,000 votes in the 2011 election.
In the 70s and 80s, the party promoted separation and hoped to one day make Northern Ontario an independent province. Since 2010, the policy changed to promote northern interests within Ontario.
"In a democracy, it takes time to get people to change," Deibel says. "We're asking people to change and support a political party for Northern Ontario. We're starting to strengthen that policy and we're getting more and more people that support and vote for the Northern Ontario Heritage Party."
Deibel says there are stronger Heritage Party candidates this time around. Paul Sloan is the candidate for Thunder Bay-Superior North and Gino Chitaroni is the candidate for Timiskaming-Cochrane.
"We're hoping to do better this time, Deibel says. “We want to make some history. The biggest history we could make is if we could send just one of those three to Queen's Park to represent Northern Ontario."
