Thank you to the Minister of Mines and his parliamentary assistant from Essex for their presentation.

We know that for 15 years, the Liberals and the NDP who helped prop them up did absolutely nothing for mining—zero, absolutely nothing.

A big part of this bill, if you read it, talks about prosperity, building prosperity in northern Ontario, allowing communities to take control of their particular destiny. I’d like the member from Essex to talk a little bit more about how that’s going to occur within the framework of this legislation.

My question for the member for Niagara West: The legacy of the Liberal government for the years 2003 to 2018 was to ignore the mining sector and refuse to enable Ontario to become a supplier of critical minerals and a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles. The NDP supported the Liberals for three of those 15 years. I guess they must believe that we need to purchase minerals from China or Russia, and I don’t know how they would expect us to be ready to build electric vehicles with these critical minerals. How does that contrast with this proposed legislation in terms of prosperity and electric vehicle production?