The topic of this morning’s debate is the Building More Mines Act, and, as part of this debate, we’re going to be talking about, necessarily, the Ring of Fire and also about Ontario’s Critical Minerals Strategy. As an introduction to my remarks, I’m going to be telling a little story, and, as always, my stories are directly related to the topic of debate, although, as members of this assembly might have already observed, sometimes you have to wait until the relevance of the story is revealed, and that might not come until the end of the speech.

As most of my stories go, this one starts on the second concession of Anderdon township, where I grew up. When I grew up, my dad had an old beat-up pickup truck, like everybody else’s dad in town. That old beat-up pickup truck, it had an old beat-up radio, and that old beat-up radio, it never got but one radio station, and it was a country music radio station at that. That was perfectly fine by my dad, because country music was the only music he ever listened to, but, for us young people growing up in Anderdon township, that wasn’t quite right, because Anderdon township is located right next to the state of Michigan. You can walk out my back door even today and walk a kilometre down the middle sideroad and you will stand right at the edge of the Detroit River. Look across the Detroit River, and you can see the front doors of the houses of the people who live in Michigan. That’s how close we live. That means we’re only half an hour from downtown Detroit, and, of course, being that close to Detroit, we get the world’s greatest radio stations, and that means we get the world’s best music, which is, of course, as we all know, Motown.

So we grew up listening to Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. We didn’t listen to country music all that much. When I got into my dad’s old pickup truck and that old radio came on and the country music came out, normally I wasn’t too happy, but—and this is where the story takes a dramatic turn—one day, the music came out, and it was great music. The song that was on the radio was a love song, and the singer sang about falling in love, and he was falling into a ring of fire, and he went down, down, down and the flames got higher. This was the intensity of the love he was experiencing. My dad told me that the singer of that song was the great Johnny Cash, and he said Johnny Cash was the greatest country music singer who had ever lived. I have no reason to doubt that.

I thought to myself, I wondered as a young person, would I ever fall into that ring of fire? As a matter of fact, I did. I met a girl from River Canard, and her name was Jacqueline, and we got married. Today is March 7, 2023, and Jacqueline and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. Of course, she’s celebrating in Essex county and I’m celebrating here with you, and that’s because I was elected to this august Legislature. I was elected last year, and, shortly after that, Her Excellency the Lieutenant Governor of the province of Ontario saw fit to appoint me as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Mines. I imagined that the Lieutenant Governor, in her wisdom, must have seen something in me that I didn’t see in myself, because, after being appointed parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Mines, I immediately fell in love with mines and mining and everything associated with it.

I had the opportunity to go to Sudbury, and I went into the Creighton mine. I went down, down, down into the Creighton mine, 8,400 feet below the surface of the earth. That’s very deep. If you took the CN Tower, and you put four CN Towers together and you fastened them together and drove them into the crust of the earth, the Creighton mine would be deeper still. Down at the bottom of the Creighton mine, it was hot. It was so hot that they have to pump the winter cold air from the surface down to the bottom just to make it passably tolerable for people to work down there.

While I was at the bottom of the Creighton mine, I had a little time to think, and I thought to myself, mining is not an activity for which humans are built. The human body is not naturally adapted to the activity of mining. That means that mining really, in truth, is an activity that is dependent upon the ingenuity of the human mind, because when you think about it, mining is all about ingenuity. For example, if you want to find minerals, they don’t grow on trees. You have to go and look for them, and finding them, locating them, takes ingenuity.

That’s why we have something called the Ontario geological survey. It was established in 1891. Back then, when you wanted to do a geological survey, you loaded up your mule or your donkey, you provided yourself with a tent and some food provisions, you made sure you brought a rifle and some ammunition, and then you went into the bush. You fought against the blackflies, you fought against the cold, you fought against the hunger and you surveyed.

The process is different today. We have a lot more technology, a lot more information. It’s a lot easier to do that today. You can stake a claim electronically—you can do it online—but you still need to know how to spot the hallmarks of a good deposit, and that takes ingenuity. It’s not easy to find what we’re looking for.

Let me provide you with a quote from the Ontario Mining Association: “Although the addition of even one mine can bring substantial benefits to society, the wins do not come quickly or easily. It takes a great deal of will, effort and time to discover a viable ore deposit and bring it into production. There is no way of predicting where profitable ore deposits will be found. Each prospector and investor may fervently hope for the next ‘big find,’ but only one in 10 mineral exploration projects are taken to the drill stage, and one in 1,000 drill projects unearth viable mineral deposits; ultimately, less than one in 10,000 projects become mines.”

That’s pretty remarkable. When you’re looking for minerals, you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. And then, once you find it, you have to figure out a way to bring it to the surface, and that takes ingenuity. And then, when you bring it to the surface, you have to separate what you don’t want from what you want, and that takes ingenuity. And then, once you have separated the minerals you want, you have to find a way of transforming those minerals into something that’s useful or beautiful, and that takes ingenuity. And so, in the end, the mining process is a transformative process. It is a process of transforming that which is in the earth into something which is beautiful and useful.

So let’s talk about the beautiful things that we make out of the minerals that we mine here in the province of Ontario. Let’s talk about the top 10. I’ll start with what I call the king, which is gold. Of course, we all know gold is transformed into jewellery. But gold also makes microchips. Palladium makes dental fillings. Platinum goes into catalytic converters, which convert harmful emissions into less harmful waste products.

Copper: Copper is my favourite mineral. It’s a great conductor. It’s used in wiring. In fact, it’s so valuable that sometimes thieves will break into a construction site just to steal the copper wiring and then sell it in the underground economy. Copper also has fascinating antimicrobial properties. Copper can kill 99% or more of micro-organisms within two hours of contact. That’s why sometimes you will see some fancy old doorknobs in this Legislature and they’re covered with copper.

Zinc is a metal protector.

Diamonds: Marilyn Monroe sang that diamonds were a girl’s best friend, but diamonds are among the hardest minerals on earth. They are used in industrial saws that cut concrete.

Nickel goes into mobile phones.

Cobalt goes into rechargeable battery electrodes.

Silver goes into solar cells.

And uranium is used to produce nuclear power. In this province, we derive 60% of our electricity from nuclear power. As the Minister of Energy says often, it is clean, it is reliable, it is affordable, and it is green.

Madame la Présidente, j’ai mentionné Sudbury il y a quelques instants, alors parlons de Sudbury. Au moins 27 % de tous les employés miniers en Ontario résident dans la région de Sudbury. Dans la seule région de Sudbury, l’exploitation minière représentait 3,3 milliards de dollars de produits intérieurs bruts en 2019. Que serait Sudbury sans l’exploitation minière? Et que serait l’exploitation minière sans Sudbury?

Le secteur minier de l’Ontario produit plus de 10 milliards de dollars de minéraux à l’année. Est-ce qu’il y a un autre endroit où on pourrait produire un résultat semblable? Oui, il existe une telle place. Elle s’appelle le Cercle de feu.

Le Cercle de feu couvre environ 5 000 kilomètres de superficie. On y trouve des minéraux critiques, y inclus les minéraux suivants : la chromite, le cobalt, le nickel, le cuivre et le platine. La Chambre de commerce de l’Ontario estime que le Cercle de feu apportera environ 9,4 milliards de dollars au produit intérieur brut une fois que les mines seront mises en production.

Mais pour avoir accès au Cercle de feu, il faut des autoroutes toutes-saisons. C’est pour ça que nous proposons de créer un corridor nord-sud reliant le Cercle de feu au réseau provincial.

Présentement, la Première Nation de Marten Falls et la Première Nation de Webequie dirigent des évaluations environnementales. Ce sont des co-promoteurs du projet de planification et de développement du Cercle de feu.

Yes, mining is a transformative process. It transforms objects, but it also transforms lives. According to the Ontario Mining Association, mining directly employs 29,000 people in Ontario. These are people like heavy equipment operators, mining engineers, drilling operators, electricians, geologists, chemists, millwrights. Mining pay exceeds the average pay of an industrial worker by about 70% a week. In an average year, people in mining in Ontario will get paid about $3.7 billion in salaries and in various forms of compensation. It shouldn’t escape anyone’s attention that the mining industry employs a lot of skilled trades.

In January 2023, the Ministry of Mines industry council noted that “The Ministry of Labour’s Skills Development Fund is a crowning achievement of this government.” As the Minister of Labour likes to say, “When you have a skilled trade, you have a job for life.” Yes, mining transforms people’s lives.

Indigenous employment accounts for approximately 11% of mineral exploration and mining jobs in Ontario. I know of no other industry which employs a participation rate among First Nations or Indigenous people of 11%. Mining transforms people’s lives.

The province of Ontario maintains resource revenue-sharing agreements with 35 First Nations and organizations. Since 2018, Indigenous partners, including First Nations governments and organizations, have received over $93 million in payments under the resource revenue-sharing agreements. These payments have had positive effects for education, for economic projects and the advancement of health.

Ontario maintains an Aboriginal Participation Fund. The fund allows First Nations people to have meaningful participation and consultations when it comes to mining. This is important because Ontario has a duty to consult when it comes to treaties governing the relationship between the government and First Nations—because mining transforms people’s lives.

But Madam Speaker, mining will not transform people’s lives if we don’t actually do it. We have to actually mine, and that has become increasingly difficult over the years. As I mentioned before, when you’re looking for a mineral strike, it’s like trying to look for a needle in a haystack. And when you finally find that needle, then there comes years of planning. Again, according to the Ontario Mining Association, “It typically takes 10 to 15 years of consultation, exploration, data analysis, planning and financing to bring a mine in to production.” Think about that: 15 years. I invite every member of this Legislature to think back: Where were you 15 years ago? I think some of you were still in grade school.

What goes on in 15 years? There’s a lot of consulting. The mining company has to consult with First Nations. The mining company has to consult with other people involved. Then they have to develop a plan. We refer to this sometimes as a closure plan or a rehabilitation plan. What’s that? It’s a plan that sets out in detail what is going to happen after you shut down the mine. You have to pretty much restore the site to its original pristine condition, because mines don’t last forever. They might last 20 years or 40 years—even 100 years—but they don’t last forever.

Under the existing legislation, a company must file a closure plan upfront even before it starts to mine. Now, that’s a trick. Imagine trying to put together a closure plan for something that’s going to happen 60 or 70 or a 100 years into the future. Technology will change, and let me give you an example. Yesterday, I had the good fortune of attending the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference. I was shown a special mineral—maybe it’s not special to others, but special to me. This mineral can capture carbon out of the air and then solidify it and store it in a solid form. This opens up huge possibilities for mining.

But how do you predict what the mine is going to look like in 100 years, or even in the next 10 years? It’s very hard to predict the future. That’s why it’s very hard to develop a closure plan right off the hop and file it before you even start mining. Some people would say a phased-in approach makes a lot more sense.

Before you open a mine you have to file something called a financial security. That means you have to put up money. Now, imagine that: You have to put up money to provide for something that is closing the mine 100 years in advance and put that upfront before you start mining, before you start making a profit, before you even risk losing everything you’ve invested. That’s what a financial security is.

That brings me to the idea of financing a mine. You have to go to the market to raise money to finance your mining activity. Where do you go? Well, what’s the number one place in the world to go for mining financing? It’s not London, England. It’s not New York, New York. It’s not Tokyo, Japan. It’s Toronto, Ontario. It’s the home of the Raptors, home of the Blue Jays and home of Ford Fest.

It’s also the home of the Toronto Stock Exchange, and that’s where billions of dollars is invested in mining. Dean McPherson, the head of business development for Global Mining at the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange, comments that mining is back. Toronto is the mining capital of the world. More mining listings are listed in Toronto than anywhere else in the world—more than London, more than New York, more than everywhere else. In the last five years, 40% of the capital raised by mining companies was done on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Indeed, mining is back.

Mining is back in Ontario for a lot of good reasons. Nature and this world’s Creator blessed this beautiful province with some of the most wonderful minerals that the world wants: copper, zinc, lithium and countless other minerals that I can’t even pronounce but that the Minister of Mines can roll off his tongue the way somebody might recite a simple nursery rhyme.

Mining is back in Ontario because we have a great Minister of Mines, who just told us about his own history. Mining is in his blood. His father was a miner, born in the shadow of a mine. This is another reason why mining is back in Ontario.

Mining is back in Ontario because we have clean, reliable, affordable energy. It’s green energy. If you’re looking for green minerals to produce a green economy, you can’t mine for those minerals using dirty fuel. You have to use clean fuel. It’s been said over and over and over again by miners and mining investors.

Mining is back because we have an awesome Minister of Economic Development, who is landing billions and billions of dollars in investment for Ontario’s manufacturing economy. I can’t tell you how excited people in Essex county are about the electric vehicles that we are going to be producing in our area. I can’t tell you, Madam Speaker, how excited other members of this assembly are—especially the member from Windsor–Tecumseh, who has an EV battery plant being constructed as we speak in his riding—because we know what’s going to happen. It’s going to mean jobs, good jobs, interesting jobs, jobs that pay well, jobs that will provide a pension, jobs that will provide benefits, jobs you can buy a house with, jobs you can raise a family on.

But that can be in jeopardy. That will be in jeopardy if we have to wait 15 years to open a mine. That means 15 years of people waiting to get a good job, 15 years of First Nations communities waiting to participate in a resource revenue-sharing agreement, 15 years of lost economic advancement, 15 years of waiting. Well, 15 years of waiting is much too long.

Even the federal government has to concede that 15 years of waiting is much too long. The federal government has proposed environmental regulations towards zero-emission vehicles: “The regulations will require that at least 20% of new vehicles sold in Canada will be zero emission by 2026, at least 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035.”

If we need critical minerals to make electric vehicles, we can’t wait 15 years. We can’t wait 15 years, because we’ll miss all those federal targets. We must do better. As the Minister of Mines often says, “You must mine to be green.” That’s why this proposed legislation is so important. This legislation will allow us to move faster when building a mine, while at the same time preserving Ontario’s excellent environmental record.

Madame la Présidente, ce projet de loi va conférer certains pouvoirs et fonctions au ministère. Cela donnera au ministère le pouvoir de faire ouvrir les mines plus vite. Parce que tout le monde le sait : cela ne devrait pas prendre 15 ans pour faire ouvrir une mine.

Nous allons moderniser les plans de fermetures. Actuellement, les plans de fermetures ne permettent pas les modifications qui peuvent servir comme améliorations positives à la terre. Nous allons permettre que les modifications à la terre peuvent, en réalité, devenir des modifications positives, et devraient être préservées au lieu d’être rasées. Je parle, par exemple, au sujet des autoroutes. L’état du terrain doit être comparable ou supérieur à son état avant la récupération, selon la décision du ministère.

Nous allons moderniser les plans de fermetures en ce qui concerne les « personnes compétentes ». Actuellement, tous les plans de fermetures doivent être approuvés par le ministère. Par contre, nous proposons que les plans de fermetures ou les modifications à un plan de fermeture peuvent être approuvés par une personne compétente.

Parce que tout le monde le sait : cela ne devrait pas prendre 15 ans pour faire ouvrir une mine. Everyone knows instinctively that it should not take 15 years to open a mine.

And that brings me back to the second concession of Anderdon township. You see, my dad didn’t just own the old, beat-up pickup truck. No, he didn’t. He also owned a Pontiac Buick, and that Pontiac Buick was a sweet car. It had a long wheelbase; it had a really smooth drive. And we knew—because we had purchased it from a dealership in Toronto—that this particular Pontiac Buick had participated in the motorcade when Pope John Paul II had made his historic visit to Canada. The Pope didn’t ride in this car, but it did go in his motorcade. So we called it the popemobile anyway. My dad left the old, beat-up pickup truck outside, and it suffered the wind and the rain and the snow and all of the elements, even sun. But we kept the Pontiac Buick parked inside the garage because we didn’t want to get it damaged by the snow and the elements. We used that Pontiac Buick when we went out as a family. So when we went to, for example, visit friends or relatives or go to a wedding, we took the Pontiac Buick, the popemobile. That was the family car.

My dad had a third car—not just one, not just two, but three—and the third car was a Ford Mustang. That Mustang was for us teenagers, the kids. We used that Mustang when we had to do errands for our parents or when we had to go to work, or sometimes we would take it when we went out.

So the truth of the matter is that my dad owned and maintained three cars and paid the insurance on them because he could do that. He could do that because he had a good job. He had a job that was interesting. It paid well. It gave him a pension, and it gave him benefits.

That’s what this legislation today is really about—it’s about providing good jobs, mining jobs, which are interesting, which take skills, which pay well and provide a pension and benefits.

When we create mining jobs, you know what that means: It means people are going to buy cars like—well, they won’t buy cars like my dad’s, because my dad’s cars were carbon-fuelled cars. They’re going to buy electric vehicles. That’s something new.

That’s what this legislation is all about—it’s providing critical minerals to build electric vehicles. It’s about getting the critical minerals that we need to build the electric vehicles to make a greener economy. We’re going to get those minerals out of northern Ontario, and we’re not going to do it the old-fashioned way. We’re not just going to dig it and ship it. That’s the old-fashioned way. We’re not going to do that anymore.

What we’re going to do now is, we’re going to mine the critical minerals right here in Ontario, in places like Sudbury, in places like Timmins. We’re going to mine them, and then we’re going to process them right here in Ontario. We’re not going to ship them out to be processed. We’re going to do it right here. Once they’re processed here in Ontario, we’re going to put those minerals into batteries here in Ontario. Then we’re going to take those batteries and we’re going to put them into electric vehicles. Minerals to processing to batteries to vehicles—a perfect domestic supply chain right here in Ontario, from start to finish.

That’s going to mean jobs for people in Essex county. It’s going to mean jobs for people in Windsor and Tecumseh. It’s going to mean jobs, because we have an EV plant going up right next door to us, in the county of Essex. As I said before, the construction of that plant is continuing as we speak, thanks in great part to the wonderful work of the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, who has brought literally billions in automotive investment to this province.

It’s also going to mean jobs in Brampton. Magna International—again, thanks to the hard work of the Minister of Economic Development and Trade—is putting over $471 million of automotive investment into Brampton and the province of Ontario. That’s going to mean jobs for the people of Brampton, and the people of Brampton are going to buy those beautiful new electric vehicles and drive them on an awesome new highway called Highway 413, and that’s going to be something special.

It’s going to mean a lot of spinoff jobs. It’s going to mean jobs for the people who maintain those cars. It’s going to mean jobs for the people who design those cars, jobs for people who sell those cars, jobs for people who provide parts for those cars. It means jobs for people who build, supply and maintain vehicles.

Yes, manufacturing is coming back to Ontario, and it’s because of the great advancements made not only by the Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, but also the Minister of Mines, who has poured his heart and soul into the development of the mining industry in the province of Ontario. Mining is in his blood, and we want mining to be something that everyone feels is special and powerful and good for all of Ontario, north and south.

Yes, manufacturing and mining, they go hand in hand; north and south, they go hand in hand—a perfect domestic supply chain. Madame la Présidente, manufacturing is back. Mining is back.

But you know what? You don’t have to own three cars to be satisfied. You don’t even have to even own two cars. You could own a popemobile or you could choose not to own a popemobile. You might only want to have one car, because when you have a good job, and it’s stable, and it gives you interesting work and good pay and a pension and benefits, that makes you feel comfortable and secure in life. And when you’re comfortable and when you’re secure and you know your family is comfortable and secure, sometimes all you want to do is get into your old, beat-up pickup truck, drive down a lonely concession road, turn on your old, beat-up radio—

—and listen to some Johnny Cash.

And that is why, madame la Présidente, je voterai pour ce projet de loi. That is why I will be voting for this bill.

So as the member for Markham–Unionville said, we can’t wait 15 years to open a mine. We can’t lose 15 years of economic development. We can’t lose 15 years of resource revenue-sharing with our First Nations. We can’t lose 15 years’ worth of jobs, and that’s why we have to have this provision to have competent professionals move these things forward so that we can get ourselves moving towards economic advancement.

Again, I want to remind all members of this Legislature, all 124 members, that the Mining Act specifically refers to duty to consult and affirms and recognizes existing Aboriginal treaty rights, and those are utterly 100% unaltered by this proposed legislation.

So, imagine, if they get that in five years, what could be paid out and received over 15 years, but also imagine if we don’t get the mines up and running, imagine how much will be lost—millions and millions of dollars of resource revenue-sharing lost.

I thank the member from Don Valley North for that question.

First of all, a competent professional such as my good friend from Windsor–Tecumseh, who is a qualified engineer—he might not be interested in this type of work, but a competent professional such as that member would be required to certify a closure plan, because we want the plans certified; we want them reviewed by competent professionals, and we want them to be, essentially, validated. This has to be done.

I thank again the member for that question because he highlights an important thing. Nothing in the environmental legislation of the province of Ontario is changed by this proposed legislation. In fact, it requires competent professionals, qualified professionals to certify that a closure plan is, in fact, in accord and compliant with Ontario’s environmental—

I enjoyed the discourse offered by the member from Sudbury, and I particularly appreciated his personal reflections on his career in mining and the importance it had for him and his family. He also made some comment with regard to how important mining was to Sudbury, his riding. As a factual matter—Sudbury produces $3.3 billion of gross domestic product out of the mining industry, which I’m sure is enormously important to Sudbury and to the people in and around Sudbury. The member also said that mining was the cornerstone of Sudbury, and I agree with him.

So my question to the good member is this: In light of the fact that Sudbury is probably going to be one of the main beneficiaries of this legislation, does he support it and will he vote for it?

Thank you, madame la Présidente. I appreciated the submissions made by the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane. I was listening carefully to his comments. He is obviously a very experienced and respected member of this assembly, and I recognize his experience and I respect him.

He made some comments with regard to communications that he had with various mining interests, and it’s good that members of the House communicate with people in their ridings about their concerns. I was hoping that the member from Timiskaming-Cochrane might give us some feedback about what he hears in his riding about the length of the permitting process and how long it takes to get through the permitting process. We use the words “permitting process.” There’s not actually a permit, but we refer to the permitting process. What has he heard? What feedback has he gotten on that?

My question for the member who spoke just now is about roads. Roads have come up during the discussion and the debate on this bill. Just recently, the First Nation of Webequie and First Nation of Marten Falls, who are leading the environmental assessment for the roads that are being built or will be built eventually, received approval of the terms of reference for their environmental assessment. They are leading that environmental assessment.

My question to the member is as follows: Does he support Marten Falls First Nation and Webequie First Nation leading that environmental assessment regarding roads, or does he not?

I had the opportunity in my research with regard to this particular legislation to study the bill that was introduced in 2009 by the previous Liberal government, which bill was quite lengthy, dealing with the Mining Act and added several layers, layer after layer of new provisions and regulations etc., to the Mining Act. I’m wondering if the member has had an opportunity to review that history. I don’t presuppose that he has, but I would like to ask him, has he had an opportunity to review the several layers of additions made to the Mining Act by the 2009 Liberal proposal, and what were his views on that when he saw it?