THUNDER BAY — In early June 2022, Lise Vaugeois broke a 23-year Liberal hold on the provincial riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North. On Feb. 27, she hopes to win a second term as the riding’s first New Democrat MPP.
“I think the North is easily overlooked in southern Ontario, and I feel that I’ve been able to be a very strong voice,” the educator-turned-politician said in a recent interview.
“I’ve enjoyed getting to know people throughout the riding. I really love problem-solving and I think I’ve been very effective, and so I want to continue that work.”
Highway safety has been a focus in Vaugeois’ work since 2022, but she said another key issue is that “we have seen over the last 30 years a lot of public assets have been sold off.”
“The Conservatives and Liberals sell off things that would actually be generating revenue for the province,” she said.
“Think of Highway 407 (in the Toronto area), for example. That was sold off. Now it’s long since been paid for, but the profits are going somewhere else.
“Either there should be no tolls at all at this point because we’ve paid for it, or if there are still tolls they should be part of public revenue so that we’ve got the money to pay for health care and education, which is very under-supported right now.”
As another example, she said, Hydro One was mostly sold off by the Liberals and “now we’ve lost control and we wind up paying more.”
Vaugeois moved to Northwestern Ontario from Toronto in 1991 to take up a position with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra – a position she gave up in 2006 in order to complete a PhD in education at the University of Toronto.
Prior to her election to the legislature she was an adjunct professor in Lakehead University’s Faculty of Education.
She has served on the board of the Thunder Bay & District Injured Workers Support Group and presently has the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and injured workers among her critic responsibilities as a member of the Official Opposition caucus.
Created in 1999, the expansive Thunder Bay-Superior North riding includes about half of Thunder Bay, stretches north to the Albany River, and goes east to embrace Ginoogaming, Biigtigong (Pic River) and Marathon. Its largest municipality besides Thunder Bay is Greenstone.
Liberal Michael Gravelle, first elected as the Port Arthur MPP in 1995, won the first election in Superior North in 1999 and was re-elected five times but Vaugeois came within just over 810 votes of defeating him in 2018. She won with 34.1 per cent of the vote in 2022.
