As the dust settles following an intense campaign, nothing has really changed on the local front.

Re-elected MP Tuesday night, Conservative Patrick Brown plans to continue working for health care issues in the riding.

“I hope to serve on the health care committee and I’ll continue fundraising for Royal Victoria Hospital,” said Brown.

Dealing with the Criminal Code – particularly for young offenders – infrastructure and environmental issues such as Lake Simcoe will be topics Brown hopes to also work on this term.

Defeated first-time Liberal candidate Rick Jones continues to work on social justice issues in the community. As well as returning to his business Monday, he continues his volunteer work with the David Busby Street Centre board, the Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness and Barrie Out of the Cold. The next few weeks also feature a Barrie Police Services Board meeting.

“I happen to think (Stephen Harper’s) government won’t last too long. There was too much friction developing,” said Jones, adding a minority government needs to build consensus to be stable and effective, and he’s not convinced in the wake of this campaign that will happen.

Having a minority Conservative government doesn’t mean much to Green Party candidate Erich Jacoby-Hawkins.

“It means we’re basically stalled. We need major changes (in government) and that is not going to happen this time,” he said.

But even if another party claimed a minority government, it would show voters don’t have much confidence in any leader.

Hawkins was happy to see Green numbers up at the polls, but said it wasn’t as much of an increase as he’d like. This year, he had 5,921 votes. In 2006, he had 3,875.

“It’s clear when people are not voting strategically, they’d vote Green. When they vote out of fear, they don’t get what they want.”

New Democrat Myrna Clark returns to her teaching job next week, after taking an unpaid leave to campaign. She said she will remain active in the community’s social-justice sector and with the party that fought a tough, uphill battle locally.

“I hope the message got out,” she said. “I realize I live in an area that’s challenged in a social justice way. It may look like we do nice things, like support the United Way, but we have a lot of families left behind.

“I’m a teacher and I see children coming to school a couple of years behind. They never catch up and it’s sad.”