Bruce Tolhurst Hyer[2] MP (born August 6, 1946) is a biologist, businessman, and Canadian Federal politician - Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Canada and the Member of Parliament for Thunder Bay—Superior North. Hyer was first elected in the 2008 Canadian federal election, and re-elected with a wider margin in the 2011 federal election.
Early life[edit]
Hyer was born in Hartford, Connecticut, United States in 1946.[3] In Willimantic, Connecticut he worked as a police officer, using his knowledge of Spanish to conduct outreach to the Hispanic community. After graduating from Central Connecticut State University, Hyer helped to create the Connecticut State Department of Environmental Protection, where as a Senior Environmental Analyst, he worked on water and air pollution, land use planning, and was in charge of pesticide registration. He played a key role in banning DDT and many other of the “dirty dozen” chlorinated pesticides, and ended the spraying of non-selective chemical insecticides in unmanaged forests. At age 29, he moved to Canada to live in the wilderness 40 km (25 miles) west of Armstrong Station, Ontario to start his wilderness ecotourism business.[4] Hyer lived for two years mostly off the land in the Canadian wilderness; first in a tipi and later in a log cabin he constructed himself.[5] In 1978, he moved to Thunder Bay where he started a retail outdoor and camera store called WildWaters Wilderness Shop. He married Margaret Wanlin in 1993. Their son Michael was born in 1995.[4]
Early career[edit]
Hyer has had a number of vocations and avocations, including consultant, wilderness guide, log building and whitewater canoeing instructor, biologist, teacher (high school, college, university), bush pilot, and land use planner.
From the beginning of his days in Canada, Hyer has been a biologist and entrepreneur in Northwestern Ontario, operating an ecotourism company with offices in Thunder Bay and Armstrong. As one of the early ecotourism operators in the area, Hyer also headed the North of Superior Tourism Association for many years. He received a Master of Science degree in Forestry from Lakehead University in 1997, for his scientific work on the effects of human disturbance on woodland caribou. Throughout this period, Hyer worked as a consultant in biodiversity, wildlife biology, and ecotourism, including travelling to Japan in 2004 to work with the government of Akita Prefecture on the protection and ecotourism planning for of one of Japan's last undammed rivers, the Omonogawa.
Accomplishments:
Hyer has been involved with various environmental projects for many decades. In the USA, he founded several conservation organizations, and was a state coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970. In Canada, Hyer was the President of Environment North for many years, and was well known for his work on land use planning and sustainable forestry, and sat on several citizens advisory committees and planning teams for forest management plans. He was chosen to represent the interests of both tourism and protected areas on the Boreal West Round Table. He successfully lobbied to ban forest spraying in Ontario with non-selective chemical insecticides in the 1980’s (the policy remains that only selective biological insecticides may be applied to forests from the air). Hyer was a co-founder of the Lake Superior Binational Forum, and served as its first Co-chair. He helped to found Forests for Tomorrow, which played a key role in the Class Environmental Assessment on Timber Management. He worked for Pollution Probe, as their policy advisor on pesticides and forestry. He served for many years as an Adjudicator and Member of the Ontario Environmental Appeal Board. He is the only person to have ever twice received the prestigious Conservation Trophy from the Federation of Ontario Naturalists (now Ontario Nature) for his work on protected areas and biodiversity. Political career[edit] Hyer began his political career in 2003. He was encouraged by Jack Layton to run for the NDP and subsequently won the nomination in Thunder Bay-Superior North. In the 2004 election, Hyer almost doubled the vote share received by the NDP and advanced their standing to second place. In the following election in 2006, Hyer fell short of the Liberal incumbent Joe Comuzzi by 408 votes. In 2008, Hyer was elected to the 40th Canadian Parliament with a 9% lead over the Liberals. First term[edit] After taking his seat in October, 2008, Hyer started work on climate change legislation, at Layton’s request. On February 10, 2009, Hyer tabled Bill C-311[6], the Climate Change Accountability Act, as his first private member's bill in the House of Commons. The bill was passed by the House of Commons in a minority Conservative government at 3rd Reading on May 5, 2010 with 149 votes for and 136 votes against.[10] It was defeated on November 16, 2010 by a vote of 43 to 32 in the Conservative-controlled Senate .[12] It is the only bill ever in Canada’s history to be passed in the elected House of Commons, but be defeated in the unelected Senate without any debate. Some of the other bills Hyer has introduced include Bill C-312, the Made in Canada Act,[7] the Cell Phone Freedom Act (Bill C-560)[8] and a number of motions including the Northwestern Ontario Passenger Rail Motion,[9] which mandates the return of Via Rail service to the North shore of Lake Superior and to Thunder Bay. Hyer served as the NDP's small business and tourism critic from 2008 to 2011. Second term[edit] In the 2011 election, Hyer was re-elected with 49.8% of the vote, besting his nearest opponent (Conservative) by more than 7,000 votes. Following his re-election, the issue of the long gun registry was tabled in the House of Commons. As he had promised voters over four elections, Hyer voted in favour of ending the registration of hunting rifles and shotguns, given that all legal firearm owners were already licensed and registered themselves under the PAL (Possession and Acquisition License). This move was viewed unfavourably within the NDP, even though firearm registration was not mentioned in party policies or platforms. As a result of his decision, Hyer was stripped of his critic roles, barred from international travel on House business, and was no longer given the opportunity to speak in the House. On April 23, 2012 Hyer announced he would resign from the NDP Caucus to sit as an Independent, which he did for a year and a half.[10] Green Party[edit] On December 13, 2013, Hyer announced that he would join the Green Party of Canada, increasing the number of members the party has in the House of Commons to two, giving as reasons that it had the best leader and platform, and that the Green Party was the only party in Parliament that is truly democratic, allowing Green MPs to put their constituents and conscience before party control.[13] One year later, on December 13, 2014 Hyer was acclaimed in Thunder Bay-Superior North as the Green Party candidate for the 2015 election.