The federal NDP’s Alex Atamanenko has been elected MP for the B.C. Southern Interior for the third straight term.
The news was met by jubilation at his office in Grand Forks.
“Alex really knows the area,” said Grand Forks Mayor Brian Taylor, who himself could be running for the provincial NDP in the next provincial election.
“He’s done a really good job. I think one of things that really stood out is the way Alex worked to have his constituency office a problem-solving base for all kinds of constituents that were having various kinds of problems.
“He really worked to solve people’s federally-related problems, that’s what got him the support I think.”
Atamanenko won the riding, receiving 25,176 votes, (50.9 per cent of the popular vote) while Conservative candidate Stephen Hill came in second receiving 19,276 votes (38.9 per cent).
The Green Party’s Bryan Hunt received 3,173 and 6.4 per cent and the Liberals’ Shan Lavell received 1,872 votes and 3.8 per cent.
The MP said he would continue to forge ahead and work on the issues that he thinks are relevant.
“I’m going to have to continue to work with my staff, as I have been doing, and we’re going to have to, as a party, work on some of those issues we felt were important,” Atamanenko told the Gazette shortly after the victory announcement was made.
“In other words, helping seniors, increasing pension, helping middle class families and we’re just going to have to continue, as the official opposition, in holding the government’s feet to fire and make sure we get that done.”
Atamanenko also said that there are things that he learned during this past campaign that are of concern to people in the riding and he said he would work to help them out.
“Poverty, the fact that we have a high unemployment rate, the fact that we’ve got young families that are having difficulties making ends meet,” said Atamanenko when asked about what the issues were.
“We’ve got agricultural issues, we’ve got the possibility of further introduction of genetically modified organisms that could be a killer to food growers in the Okanagan – there are a lot of issues we’re going to have to keep moving forward with here.”
With the federal Conservatives now forming a majority government and their NDP counterparts forming the official opposition, Atamanenko said that his party had its work cut out for it – it certainly put quite a responsibility on the party’s shoulders, he said.
“Obviously I’m happy with the amount of seats we have but it puts a tremendous amount of responsibility on us to make this government accountable and to work on behalf of the Canadian people,” explained Atamanenko.
“I’m looking forward to that.”
The issue of the long-gun registry has been a contentious issue and Atamanenko addressed the NDP’s stance.
“I think we lost some votes because of the gun registry but I think there’s a lot of people that, even though they may not have been happy about my position, they still voted for us because of all the other issues we stand for,” he said.
While Hill, Atamanenko’s chief rival in the riding, was disappointed at not being elected, he was happy with his party forming a majority party in parliament.
“We have a majority government, the Bloc (Quebecois) is destroyed and the Liberals have been taken down as well,” Hill said. “How much better than that can it get?”
Hill did think, however, that he didn’t get his messages across well enough during his campaign and said that it was sometimes hard to get to the substantive issues.
“I thought I did the job but obviously I didn’t do well enough – I take full responsibility,” said Hill.
“I wasn’t able to get across the Midway mill, I wasn’t able to get across the funding at Red Mountain.
“I wasn’t able to get across the transfer of the Nelson railway station, I wasn’t able to get across the economic development platform that I built because people would rather hear stories about my personality, which is unfortunate,” he went on to say.
Atamanenko, for his part, was happy about representing the B.C. Southern Interior again but said he couldn’t have done it alone.
“It feels good obviously to be re-elected,” he said.
“A lot of people have worked very, very hard to make this happen and I’d like to thank them for that.”
Atamanenko said that he’ll head back to Ottawa when he’s called.