I appreciate the opportunity to engage with my friend from Essex. It’s so exciting to see this development happen. I was just at an announcement a few weeks ago in my riding, where Six Nations of the Grand River will be heading up an incredible battery project in order to store electricity and put it back on the grid in order to save money and where it can pay itself out. It’s an incredible partnership between Indigenous people and other companies in order to make this.

So we’re seeing the ability for resource extraction in the north in order to have a positive benefit. We need more of that. But I was curious if the member could speak directly to—because it seems to be a lot of the questions today are on exactly what this act will be able to accomplish for our northern and Indigenous communities.

Two Saturdays ago, on the 25th of February, I was able to participate in Brantford’s Coldest Night of the Year walk fundraiser. The Coldest Night of the Year is a family-friendly walk to raise money for local charities serving people experiencing hurt, hunger and homelessness. In my riding of Brantford–Brant, 181 walkers on 31 teams got together and walked for either two or five kilometres.

The Coldest Night of the Year was in support of Why Not Youth Centre in Brantford. At Why Not Youth Centre, they believe that every young person is important and deserves all the help they can get to overcome their challenges and to meet their goals. Nearly every teen who comes through their door is struggling in some way, be it with homelessness, mobility, bullying or unsafe living conditions. Their team of youth workers are dedicated to working with our local vulnerable youth to make sure that no one goes unseen or unheard or falls through the cracks in the system. This is why Why Not matters so much—because the only thing that can help change the lives of young people heading towards poverty, homelessness and total defeat is real, positive, supportive relationships. And that’s exactly what they do at Why Not. Some people see things and say, “Why?” They dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?”

What’s wrong with dairy farmers?

Rick is too little.

I appreciate interacting with my colleague from the independent Liberals. It did put a smile on my face when he said that we seem to be moving very quickly on this legislation with mines, because we’ve been only working on it for four years. Of course, the Ring of Fire was announced in 2007, and the previous Liberal government sat on it for 11 years. I can understand that he thinks we’re moving a little bit too fast for this.

I did hear that he’s ready for it to move forward into second reading, but I was wondering if he is supportive and specifically on—what I found so intriguing is that, having met with stakeholders, the waste of previous mining operations was almost impossible to mine out for critical minerals that are in there.

Is he very supportive personally of being able to mine out what was waste in a mine from before and to clean up that area?