Some 319.6.

As I was sitting listening to Minister Bethlenfalvy give his virtual road tour of southern Ontario, many of the places—actually, every town that he mentioned I’ve been to; my family comes from southern Ontario. Specifically, St. Thomas, regarding the proposed battery plant for Volkswagen—the NDP helped fast-track that bill through the Legislature. We care about jobs. We understand. As I was listening to the virtual tour—and I listened intently. I drove home the next day, thinking about the virtual road tour and thinking that there aren’t very many people, probably, who know my neck of the woods, my part of the province.

The first thing that I noticed driving home was that at the work yard for the contractor who takes care of Highway 11 in the Temagami area, the flags were flying at half-mast, in respect to the snowplow operator who had lost his life a few days before in northwestern Ontario. That’s not an uncommon occurrence for the people who take care of our roads. The last time I talked to our local contractor, I believe there were 260 or 270 major accidents with snow-cleaning equipment, not counting the ones since that meeting. That’s what happens on some of the roads in the province.

I listened very intently, and they were talking about the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire has got a few other problems, because the government doesn’t appear be asking for free, prior and informed consent from all the First Nations. But that’s an issue for another day.

We were talking to the road builders’ association. Something the government might not have thought about is our road infrastructure. The roads that we have now that you have to take to get to the Ring of Fire, 11 and 17, are not good enough to actually get the equipment to build the road to the Ring of Fire. That is a serious concern.

You may not believe this, Madam Speaker, but once you get to Barrie, Highways 11 and 400 split. Highway 11 is still a four-lane highway, and so is Highway 400, but at some point that stops; it stops for Highway 11 in North Bay. So you’re thinking everything is fine, and then you crest Thibeault Hill and the world changes—because it is two-lane; it’s basically a southern Ontario country road. It’s paved. It has narrow shoulders. That’s the Trans-Canada Highway. That’s the highway that you think is going to help you get to the Ring of Fire. That is the highway that, since January, to March 29, has had major closures 11 times, and not closures for five minutes, but hours and hours—and that’s actually not accurate, because it was closed again yesterday.

“Let’s all go to the Ring of Fire”—how? How are you going to get to the Ring of Fire when we don’t have the infrastructure to actually get transit, to get goods across the country now?

It is a shame in Ontario that the Trans-Canada Highway that goes through northern Ontario is a two-lane country highway. That’s what it is.

The government can say, “We have pushed very hard”—and they have moved the average for cleaning up, from 16 hours after a major snowstorm or after a snow event to 12. Give credit where credit is due. They moved a little bit, because we’ve been pushing them like crazy for years.

To Minister Mulroney’s credit, they’re going to institute a “2+1” pilot project, which is basically extended passing lanes and a barrier on the passing lanes so you can’t cut into the passing lane. It’s a pilot project on 14 or 15 kilometres. That highway is thousands of kilometres, and a pilot project of 14 or 15 kilometres is not going to get you to the Ring of Fire. You need to think about that right away.

Northern Ontario has—as does the rest of the province—lots of jobs. We have more jobs than we have people, and we have good jobs.

I was talking to one of our major employers in my riding. A mine mechanic in Kirkland Lake can make $300,000 a year. They have a hard time finding people. Why? Because we don’t have a lot of social services in northern Ontario. Things that the member from Waterloo was talking about, that they’re worried about losing, that they are losing in northern Ontario—we never had them, or we lost them already.

We have local hospitals, and they do what they can, but if you need to see a specialist, you need to come to the hospitals down here. We have the northern travel grant, and that travel subsidy hasn’t changed in years and years and years. So equal access in health care for northerners has been gone a long time ago, and this budget completely and totally ignores that.

This budget talked a lot about the riches of northern Ontario, about the Ring of Fire—and there are many other riches of northern Ontario. But government after government—and this one probably more than any—has ignored the social needs of what people in the north need to provide the riches to the rest of the province.

The biggest gold mine, I believe, in North America, Detour Gold, is in the district of Cochrane—right next to my riding, actually. The town of Cochrane is in my riding; the mine is in the next riding. It’s a very big producer of gold, and we are soon going to have a big producer of nickel in that area—Canada Nickel.

Timmins is a mining—the Minister of Mines will know how big mining is in Timmins.

There’s so much money coming out of the north.

Do you know something else about the district of Cochrane, where Timmins and Cochrane and Detour Gold—what they are? The rate of homelessness in the district of Cochrane—covered by the Cochrane social services board—per thousand people is the highest in the province. It’s minus 40 lots of times, where I live, and homelessness now is a tragic issue. I’m not discounting it anywhere else, but very few people think about how it’s the highest where it’s the coldest, and where the riches come from. But for some reason, the services don’t come back.

It’s great to take—and we have experienced that in the north for as long as we’ve been there. Cobalt, the first silver boom; Kirkland, the first gold boom; Timmins—the original stock exchange for Ontario, the first one, was in Cobalt. But all the money eventually came to Toronto, eventually came to the south.

Now we hear this government saying, “Trust us. You, especially Indigenous people, are going to benefit incredibly from the Ring of Fire.” It has never happened before. They have trusted before, when they signed treaties. It never happened. It’s not going to happen this time either. They know that—unless they stand up for themselves.

The finance committee travelled through northern Ontario. It stopped in Timmins. It stopped in Sudbury.

Primary health care, specifically, is a tough issue in northern Ontario.

I’d like to read a quote from someone who presented at the finance committee in Sudbury. She’s actually the president and CEO of West Nipissing General Hospital, Ms. Sue LeBeau. She was also, before that, the CEO and president of the Red Lake Margaret Cochenour Memorial Hospital. She’s got a lot of experience in running hospitals in northern Ontario. I’m going to read directly from her statement. She talks about her experiences at the hospital: “But the most harrowing experience that I had and that our team had during my time there was the closure of our emergency department due to lack of staffing. It was a scary time, it was a short time, and it is something that we would not want to relive, and it is something that—my colleagues and myself in the north have struggled to maintain core services and to be able to manage to keep serving our communities.” She also identified one of the major problems that this government is perpetuating with Bill 124. Again, this is directly from her: “In terms of agency nursing, to paint the picture locally, our hospital, West Nipissing, has expended $1.5 million for agency nursing over the first three quarters of this fiscal year. That represents about 10% of our budget, for 10 nurses”—$150,000 per nurse, for three quarters of the year. “Those costs, of course, are not budgeted. Agency nursing has become a necessity in northern Ontario. However, it is not a long-term solution. Our loyal local nurses are impacted by these agency nurses....” They’re demoralized by this—and the government is not standing idly by while this is happening; they are perpetuating it with Bill 124. They’re forcing health care staff out of their chosen profession, or out of their profession, working for the public side, and they’re forcing them to work for the agencies—and the same nurses come back into that hospital for twice the cost.

The government and the Minister of Finance say, “Oh, we’re putting more money than ever into health care”—that could very well be, but a lot of that money is going to the private sector, who are running those agencies and siphoning money out for profit.

Why don’t you just pay the nurses what they’re worth and cut out the agencies? How can you pretend to be careful with the province’s finances when you don’t understand that basic principle—or actually, you do understand that basic principle and you’re perpetuating it.

It’s incredibly tough to sit here and stand here and see that there are solutions. We can’t provide solutions for everything, but there are solutions staring you in the face—and, yes, for some of them, you’re going to have to admit that you made mistakes.

Bill 124 seemed like an easy solution at the time—holding public servants to 1%, and you will save costs. You just didn’t realize that public servants, especially those in health care, are going to be able to move with their feet when you’re not paying them with respect. You talk about respect, but when you’re not paying them with respect, they’re going to move with their feet. And when you still need them, then you have to hire them back through private agencies, at more cost. It’s killing the system.

I’m going to go back a little bit to my road tour—because I want people to come to northern Ontario. We need people. It is a great place to live. We have our challenges, and that’s what we’re trying to bring to people’s attention, but it’s a great place to live. If you decide to come, I’m just going to give you a couple of pointers.

If you like stopping at ONroutes—because you can get whatever food you want, you know the market, and you know you can load up for the trip—past Barrie, there are none. Ontario stops at Barrie for ONroutes—nothing. Crest Thibeault Hill and your four-lanes stop. There are none.

We have a lot of transports on Highway 11—it’s the Trans-Canada Highway; it is where the goods cross from one end of Canada to the other. There are very few places for those transports to stop. There are very few parking spots for transports. That’s a big problem, because they have no place to rest, and we have lots of accidents with transports—and you wonder how it got there. With a transport, you just can’t pull off to the shoulder on Highway 11, because you’re not coming back on, because the shoulders are narrow and you’re stuck. So be prepared.

When the highway is closed, if you cross Thibeault Hill—at Thibeault Hill, there’s a big sign that says the highway might be closed. But if it’s closed right after you cross that sign, you might be on the highway for hours in a line, and there are no emergency services that are going to come find you—maybe volunteers; volunteers from Temagami do this a lot. So you better bring a blanket, you better bring chocolate bars, and you better have a full tank of gas when you cross Thibeault Hill.

That’s northern Ontario. I am not trying to disparage it. I love northern Ontario. I’m never going to live anywhere else.

My last point I’d like to make—I’d like to give a shout-out to a group. This government is talking a lot about agriculture in northern Ontario. I’m a farmer. I’ve farmed in northern Ontario my whole life, and northern Ontario is a great place to farm. If you want to know something about farming in northern Ontario—you’ve got an incredible chance to do it on April 13 and 14, at the Earlton Farm Show. The Earlton Farm Show is an exposition of agricultural services available in our area. You will talk to people who actually make a good living farming in our area. They’re very good farmers. In the Little Clay Belt around Timiskaming and farther north in the Great Clay Belt, there’s a lot of expertise there. If you’re thinking about farming in northern Ontario or seeing what farming is like in northern Ontario, please come to the farm show. The volunteers who put that together put a lot of effort into it. This is the first one in three years because of COVID. I’m going to be there. Everyone who has anything to do with agriculture in northern Ontario is going to be there. I have been warned that the Minister of Agriculture might even be there. We will welcome her with open arms.

But, please, we have our problems in northern Ontario. The government has to recognize them and address them so that we can truly fill our place in the province.

To talk about the Ring of Fire—when your connection to the Ring of Fire is Highways 11 and 17, two-lane roads, you’re dreaming. They can barely handle the traffic on them now. They can’t because their accident stats—people talk about Ontario having the best roads in North America; they’re certainly not 11 and 17, and those are the roads that connect southern Ontario to the Ring of Fire, and you need to pay as much attention to them as what you’re paying to the rest of the province.

I’d like to thank you for your time, Speaker.