It’s a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill 71. My riding of Kingston and the Islands has a mine. But, more importantly, it also has the Queen’s University mining engineering department, which is the largest in the world, and I just want to acknowledge the work that they do to support the mining industry.

We, the Liberal caucus, support the long-term success of the mining industry in Ontario and the well-paying jobs it brings—the economic development.

This bill, Bill 71, tries to allow mines to open faster, but, to me, the bill seems rushed. It falls short in several areas and may put at risk the reputation of Ontario’s mining industry. We believe the areas where the bill falls short can be fixed at committee, so we’ll be voting in favour of the bill at second reading, but to have the Liberal caucus’s support at third reading, several things need to be done at the committee stage, which I’d like to address now.

First of all, we need support from Indigenous communities if mining is to be successful. The Conservative government did not consult Indigenous communities before the bill was tabled. I believe that we must pause and do that at the committee stage. Let me elaborate a bit on that.

This came out during a ministerial briefing yesterday, and it is really important to make sure that Indigenous communities have buy-in. If we’re sloppy about Indigenous consultation, we’re really just hurting the mining industry. It really seems to me that there’s some indication here that the bill was rushed. This bill was tabled on the very last day that it could be tabled before the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meeting that’s going on right now, and so the question arises in my mind: Is it a coincidence that they tabled it on the very last day and somehow they didn’t have time to do the Indigenous consultation? I think it’d be really important for the committee to pause and to hear testimony. What I understand is that the ministry is explaining the bill to Indigenous groups right now, and it would be very important, I think, to hear what they have to say about this bill and to take any appropriate action at committee stage.

We need young people to consider mining as where their career might lie. There’s a labour shortage in mining. One of the things we can do to help that along is to continue to improve the reputation in the mining industry in the eyes of young people entering the workforce. We should be able to say, and we often can say, that mining leaves things better than they were before.

There’s a part of this bill, Bill 71, that deals with the recovery of minerals from tailings and other mine waste. In that part of the bill, we should be very careful not to allow loopholes. In fact, I believe there is a legal loophole where either public health and safety or the environment could be worse after recovery operations from tailings or waste, and there’s a very simple change that can be made in section 18 of the bill. There’s a phrase in section 18 of the bill which should be changed. Let me read what it says right now. It says “the condition of the land with respect to one or both of public health and safety or the environment following the remediation is comparable to or better than it was before the recovery....” What I believe it should say is—we should strike the words “one or,” and if the condition of the land is going to be comparable to what it was before, then the condition of the land with respect to both public health and safety and the environment following the remediation should be comparable or better, because if you use “one or,” it means the other one could be worse, and I believe that’s a legal loophole that should be corrected in committee.

Furthermore, this bill uses the language “comparable to or better.” In the current legislation, there’s a different word that’s used. It’s the word “improved.” Clearly, we’re backing off. Instead of requiring these recovery operations to improve the condition of the land or the water, we’re settling for comparable. So there’s a problem here, which is that mining companies and the mining industry want to say that we leave the land in a better condition than it was before, and if we’re settling for comparable—well, it’s not worse, but you’re not encouraging young people to feel good about considering a career in mining.

Let me also say that I believe that the word “comparable,” which is not defined in the legislation—we were told in the ministerial briefing that this word, “comparable,” would be articulated in the regulations, and I believe that that word should be defined in the regulations before third reading.

We need the public to be confident that after a mine closes, the land and water will be in an overall better state than before. In the long run, this confidence supports the mining industry and the prosperity it can bring. Currently, ministry officials conduct the technical review, the technical certification of mine closure plans. This bill moves that role from the ministry to so-called “qualified persons.” The problem is that currently the term “qualified persons” refers to geologists and mining engineers who assess ore deposits in order to protect investors.

Now, for mine closures, we need completely different skills. We need completely different knowledge to certify mine closure plans. Maybe we’ll need biologists, maybe we’ll need environmental scientists or geochemists, and I believe that the regulations should specify this before third reading. One simple thing to do is just call them something else. Instead of the people who are used to writing reports to protect investors, call them something else. Call them “mine-closure-qualified persons,” and then specify in the regulations exactly what qualifications they need to have. I know that this is not a hard thing to do, because there’s a mining rehabilitation code, and you can just look in that to see what sort of things need to be considered when you close a mine and use that to explain what qualifications the qualified persons who certify mine closure plans need to have.

A final point is that the qualified persons who can certify mine closure plans—I would hope that they are in different firms. They’re often in private firms; I would hope that they’re in different firms from the qualified persons who write reports for mining companies to protect investors who write reports on how much ore there is, how much could be extracted. The reason is that there’s a moral hazard if you are, on the one hand, somebody who’s paid by a mining company to write a report for investors on how much ore there might be in a deposit and how much could be recovered. If you are in the same firm, in the same company, and you are a qualified person to certify mine closure plans, there’s a conflict of interest that we have to avoid, so I would hope that the firms that are employed are separate.

I think there’s no evidence that the government’s plan is going to improve the quality of the technical review that is currently done by the ministry, but if they are going to move it over to qualified persons, I would want to make sure that these qualified persons don’t have a conflict of interest. Let me just say that these qualified persons for mine closure, if they’re in a private firm, probably don’t have the financial resources to stand behind all of the economic consequences of their certification should something go wrong, and that could be bad for the mining company itself.

A final point: Let me say that the minister taking over the responsibilities of the Director of Mine Rehabilitation has the risk that political pressure will come into play when the minister is deciding, instead of the Director of Mine Rehabilitation, whether or not to accept a mine closure plan or to accept a deferral of a mine closure plan, which is something else that this bill allows.

To summarize, let me say this: Le caucus libéral appuie la réussite à long terme de l’industrie minière en Ontario ainsi que les emplois bien rémunérés qu’elle offre. Ce projet de loi tente de permettre aux mines d’ouvrir plus rapidement, mais il semble précipité, il laisse beaucoup à désirer et il peut mettre en péril la réputation de l’industrie minière de l’Ontario.

I think it’s okay to take the time to get this bill right so that mines can be built in a first-class way and without delay. There’s no need to rush this bill. It’s like taking your time and getting your stance right and taking your time on the backswing when you play golf so that your shot goes straight and stays out of trouble.

Thank you for the question. In fact, yes, I did actually visit this laboratory called MIRARCO at Laurentian University. One of the areas of research they look into is how to efficiently extract the mineral value from mine tailings. I think it’s a good thing that we’re moving forward on this legislation. I know that there’s a section of the mining bill that deals specifically with recovering minerals from tailings and waste. It has passed, but it hasn’t been proclaimed. It calls on improvements in the state of the land or the site on which the tailings sit after the recovery operations compared to before.

This legislation tries to change it to “comparable,” and it lets you choose which one is comparable. Either the public health and safety or the environment, only one of them has to be comparable. As I read the bill, one of them could be worse. As long as one of those two, environment or public health and safety, is comparable, then it’s okay, and I—

I thank my colleague for another excellent question. As I understand it from reading a recent news report, there’s a third First Nation through which the road to the Ring of Fire has to run that wasn’t consulted. They made a video at the conference downtown saying, “We weren’t consulted.” You’re going to have a lot of trouble down the road, clearly. This was an example of the Conservative government doing a sloppy job of Indigenous consultation, and it’s just going to hurt the mining industry.

I do remember when the Ring of Fire was an issue when I was a federal MP. There was a private company that at that time was looking into exploiting the mineral resources in the Ring of Fire. They gave up because it didn’t look like it was going to be economic. Here we are, we’re looking back and we’re throwing blame all around when, in fact, sometimes mining projects are not economic because the value of the mineral you would like to extract is just too low, and that’s why it gets delayed.

With regard to this mining bill, there is the potential for prosperity in the north from mining, but we have to work together with Indigenous communities. Everybody has to share the wealth. A project can’t benefit some and then hurt others. That’s not the way to move forward in a democracy. This government has, I think, made a mistake by not consulting Indigenous groups before tabling this bill, and I don’t trust this government to do a careful job of consulting Indigenous communities. I think they’ve done a sloppy job recently, and they’re going to hurt the mining industry.