I’ve received petitions from Extend Access to Post Adoption Birth Information, signed by Paul Dillon of Minden.

“Extend Access to Post-Adoption Birth Information.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas current legislation does not provide access to post-adoption birth information ... to next of kin if an adult adopted person or a natural/birth parent is deceased;

“Whereas this barrier to accessing post-adoption birth information separates immediate family members and prohibits the children of deceased adopted people from gaining knowledge of their identity and possible Indigenous heritage;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to extend access to post-adoption birth information ... to next of kin, and/or extended next of kin, if an adult adopted person or a natural/birth parent is deceased.”

I fully support this petition. I’ll sign it and give it to page Yonglin to deliver to the table.

I want to thank Sally Palmer for collecting these petitions. This petition is entitled a petition “To Raise Social Assistance Rates.

“To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas Ontario’s social assistance rates are well below Canada’s official Market Basket Measure poverty line and far from adequate to cover the rising costs of food and rent: $733 for individuals on OW and $1,227 for ODSP;

“Whereas an open letter to the Premier and two cabinet ministers, signed by over 230 organizations, recommends that social assistance rates be doubled for both Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP);

“Whereas the recent small budget increase of 5% for ODSP still leaves these citizens well below the poverty line, both they and those receiving the frozen OW rates are struggling to live” during a period “of alarming inflation;

“Whereas the government of Canada recognized in its CERB program that a ‘basic income’ of $2,000 per month was the standard support required by individuals who lost their employment during the pandemic;

“We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, petition the Legislative Assembly to double social assistance rates for OW and ODSP.”

I support this petition, I’ll affix my signature and provide it to page Mary so she can give it to the table.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 7, 2023, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 71, An Act to amend the Mining Act / Projet de loi 71, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les mines.

I think all of us are aligned that mining is important. My background and my career is in mining, so I know I’m on board; I know my colleagues are, for sure, and I know the government side is, as well.

Mining includes three things: product, people, and the environment. You can break it down further than that, but at its core mining is a product—the metal and the minerals, for example.

Right now, the government is very excited about e-vehicles—critical minerals and electric vehicles. This is going to be a boom. This is going to be very, very important. It would have been more fortunate, I think, if they were excited in 2018, when they were ripping up charging stations. If they were excited in 2018, they wouldn’t have been cancelling the incentive to buy EVs and hybrid vehicles. If they were excited for this in 2018, the Premier probably wouldn’t have said, “That ship has sailed,” when GM workers were going to lose their jobs. But they’re excited now, and better late than never. I’m glad that they were able to come around to this.

Just for the record, because I hear a lot about e-vehicles and mining and the excitement around it—it’s going to be a boom, absolutely, but I just want to point out that mining and vehicles have always been important. If you were to strip everything not mining-related from a vehicle, you would have a couple of hoses, some plastic and a few seat covers, and the tires—and not even the whole tires, because tires are steel-belted. I say that just to refresh people that it’s around us everywhere, in everything that we do. Sometimes people talk about EV vehicles and mining as if all our cars were Fred Flintstone vehicles that were stone tires and wood on the sides. But mining has always been important.

Another product that mines have—and it’s a bit of an ugly product—is tailing ponds. In the bill, it talks about advancing critical mineral projects by making it easier for companies to get a permit to recover minerals from mine tailings and waste. Those are the materials left behind after the target minerals are extracted. This is really important to the future of mining, especially in Ontario, if we want to position ourselves as global leaders.

Tailings are like a sludge that’s left behind after you mill the muck that comes to the surface. You make a lot of this in a mine. Depending how rich your ore is, for every tonne of metal—the actual mineral you get out of it—you’re going to leave about 20 to 200 tonnes of waste. So what happens is, they’ll blast muck—people think it’s gravel, but muck is big chunks of rock. They’ll grind that down into a powder and a slurry paste. They use water, and they float it. Not to get too far into the weeds, but whatever isn’t valuable, they pump out to tailings ponds. They pump this all day.

The history of tailing ponds is, they just keep building them bigger and bigger. There’s some that, they get out of it—but it really is a liability for a lot of organizations. They take up a ton of space. In communities like mine, they threaten the nearby communities. I come from Sudbury, which is a mining town. We have a tailings pond and a children’s pool right beside each other—a small lake, but it’s a family lake that people go to.

There have been tailing dam failures in the past. A lot of people in mining really woke up to the fact—there have been a lot of major failures, but in 2019, Brazil had one that buried an entire town, and 267 people were killed when this happened, not to mention all the infrastructure that was destroyed. Since 2019, there have been 18 major tailing dam failures—six last year alone.

Canada’s largest tailing spill was at Mount Polley mine, in 2014. They lost about 17 million cubic metres of water, eight million cubic metres of tailing and materials—so it’s water and materials, and as they pump it into the tailings pond, the materials will sink to the bottom. With this spill, there were no penalties. There was a massive cleanup. There was environmental damage, obviously. It got into the water system—not to mention everything that it trampled in its wake. But there are no penalties currently in place for this.

I don’t want to speak badly of the mining industry, because I know after these incidents, a lot of mining industries—including the one I worked at—invested very heavily in ensuring that their tailings ponds were fortified, had spillways and accommodations for it. But I don’t know how well you can guarantee that every mining industry had done this. And I don’t know how you can guarantee old tailing ponds are secured like this.

Tailings recovery is a green solution. It’s win-win; it’s money in the pockets for the mining companies, which is good for the communities and the workers who have the extra work. It cleans up the environment, which is good as well, and it’s a real investment. When you see how much ore and rock and muck is brought to the surface, compared to how much comes out of it, going to a place where you’ve paid for that already, you’ve paid to blast and drill and hoist—and going and being able to get it out of, basically, a pool is very, very fortunate.

A lot of these tailing ponds are decades old. The member from Essex, this morning, was talking about how mining is back, and when he was saying it, I was thinking to myself that I got hired at a mining company that was 100 years old. That’s not traditional. But mining has been around for a very long time. So if you have 100 years of mining, you traditionally will have 100 years of tailings ponds and infrastructure in place. In the old days, just separation wasn’t as good as it is now—there’s still a little bit that gets away all the time. But as it settles, you’re basically—if you think of the old Yukon rush days, when they panned for gold, there’s minerals; there’s gold in them there hills.

Removing the minerals from the tailings ponds will make the ponds smaller. It will reduce pollutants. It’s also really profitable for mines because, like I said earlier, they’ve already paid to bring the stuff to the surface.

Last night I was at the PDAC conference, and so were a lot of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle. I ran into Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk from MIRARCO, and I want to brag about her because she’s from Sudbury. She was originally at Laurentian University, through the CCAA process—she wasn’t there, but got picked up at MIRARCO, which has a great history for mining innovation. I’m not a doctor. I know, basically, what she’s trying to do, because I toured tailing ponds and I worked in health and safety at our mine. I’m just going to quote from a Sudbury.com article where she explains the process. I’ll start midway through:

“That’s what we call biomining: using bacteria instead of a smelter as a catalyst to break down these materials and extract some of the metals that are left over.” The smelter is where you melt everything.

“If you take the biomining approach you can accelerate the process that causes acid mine drainage, but at the same time, by accelerating the process, you’re releasing a lot of the iron, a lot of the sulphur, and any metals that remain. You can actually separate those out and you can deal with the iron and sulphur precipitated into a solid form and prevent it from causing acid mine drainage in the long term, and then also extract the metals that can help pay for that cleanup.”

Basically, what she’s saying is that with this process—and it’s used around the world, but I think she has a great idea locally for how we can do it more effectively—you can not only extract the valuable metals that you want, but you can also capture some of the waste product and make tailings a little safer. It’s not 100% safer, but it’s a really golden opportunity. So this part of the bill absolutely is a great idea and supportable.

We’re going to be debating the budget very soon, so I want to make sure that I get on the record MIRARCO’s budget submission, because I think this is important as well. Their submission was called “Transforming mine waste into economic opportunity”—if the government is looking to look it up:

“The Centre for Mine Waste Biotechnology ... will be the first of its kind in Canada: a pilot-scale facility equipped with tools and expertise to move biotechnology-based bioremediation and bioleaching technologies more quickly to real-world mine settings. With support from the Ontario government, the centre can begin to achieve its vision to be a catalyst for transforming bench mine waste biotechnologies into commercial applications....

“Mine waste contains billions of dollars of untapped mineral content that is beyond the reach of traditional extraction methods. Processes such as bio-oxidation and bioleaching offer an environmentally sustainable way to extract this material from low-grade ores and mine wastes.”

The fact that stood out to me was that in Sudbury alone, you’re looking at $8 billion to $10 billion. MIRARCO is looking to raise $21 million, and that’s combined investment from municipal, provincial and federal governments, private partners and industry partners, to establish a centre to deal with tailings and waste. Our portion, provincially, would be a portion of the $21 million, but the recovery in Sudbury would be $8 billion to $10 billion.

So I just want to push it again—I was there when Nadia presented this to the finance committee, and I want to push again for it because I think this is a smart idea. I believe the minister is on board, as well; I don’t want to speak for him, but I think he’s in favour of this.

The next part I want to talk about is people. I’ll speak about people and get back to the environment, because they’re tied together.

There’s a very famous statement that mining is more than the product. So what you’ll hear a lot and what you’ll see on posters on lunchroom walls or in the dry, where miners get changed in the morning, is, “The most important thing to come out of the mine is the worker.” I think we’re all aligned on that. This bill doesn’t really affect workers directly, but it could and probably would affect the community.

There are a few points from the press release on the bill—I’m just going to summarize and speak in bulk. These are the ones I have problems with. One of them is that Bill 71 replaces “director of mine rehabilitation” anywhere this occurs in the Mining Act with “minister,” so the function of the director more or less all becomes the sole discretion of the minister.

The second one is to “improve closure planning” by having more qualified professionals available to certify plans and allowing companies to conditionally file a closure plan while deferring certain elements to a later date. I think allowing more qualified professionals to be involved is a great idea; I’m not so much in favour of deferring—“The cheque is in the mail. Trust us. It will work”—and I’ll get into that as we go on.

The other part I’m a little worried about is allowing more flexibility in the techniques used to rehabilitate mines once they’re closed. Maybe it’s one of those things where the devil is in the detail on this, but sometimes allowing more flexibility gets caught up in cutting red tape—“Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”

I come from a background of health and safety. We refer to the Occupational Health and Safety Act as the green book, and there’s an expression that this book is written in blood. Those regulations are important because things went wrong, and when you don’t follow through on why they went wrong, things go really, really wrong.

The final part that I’m a little bit concerned about is about creating more options for companies to pay financial assurance. Instead of paying financial assurance up front, it could be paid in phases, tied to the project’s construction schedule. Maybe that makes more sense as we drill into it. But I am always cautious of large industries in mining who post profits in the billions and are very successful in important communities—but if you go bankrupt and the cheque is in the mail, the cheque is never coming. So this is my concern that I have.

Again, I think the core essence of the bill is great. I think there are some flaws that we need to work on.

Mining company values: If you go to any mining company in Canada, they will probably talk about the value system. It will be on posters. It will be on their letterhead. It will be in the entranceway, at the door, as you walk in. It’s a value system they work very hard to live up to. It will talk about a commitment to valuing the people—and the people will be the workers, their community, their partners—and valuing the environment. This is typically in their mission statement that you see everywhere, and they really have worked hard to move past the old days and be aligned with these values.

For example, there’s a mining company that, years ago, had developed sort of south of Japan. They needed some company land on an Indigenous burial ground in this country. They didn’t need it because there were ore deposits or because they needed a processing plant. They needed it because they had workers going over there to work and they needed a golf course. This is sort of our ugly history. It’s not anything a mining company would do today, but that was the mentality back then: “We bought this land. We own this land. We can do whatever we want. We don’t have to work with our partners. We don’t have to work with the communities nearby. We have the title, and we’re allowed to do this.” I think it’s something that mining companies would be embarrassed about today. I’m not saying it to embarrass them. I’m just saying that this was a practice that happened in the past. They really have worked very hard to move past those days. I would say the old days—my manager, our president or someone saying, “We’re going to get that mine open if I have to drive the bulldozer up there myself” —that doesn’t exist anymore. None of the mining companies I know and work with and speak with and help put food on the table for my family—they just don’t. They’re over it. Mining companies worth investing in, the ones that we should be proud of, as a province, investing in, are really working on building true nation-to-nation partnerships with Indigenous communities.

There was a time when we were struggling to have a good conversation back and forth, when it felt like a check box exercise that we had a consultation. They would have a town hall nearby, and they would send out some mail saying, “Come to the town hall”—or maybe have that town hall in the Indigenous community. But it was a formality—“You have a duty to consult. Did you consult?” “Oh, yes. We went out and told them what we’re doing.” I can’t remember if they had any complaints, but we did that check and we moved on. But that was decades ago. There has been a real, concerted effort in these mining companies to build nation-to nation agreement. Other industries, if they’re struggling—and I’m sure there are some who are—to deal with this, could take a page from the mining industry, because they do it so well. It isn’t transactional—“We need to develop on your land. We’re happy to see you again.” It’s an ongoing thing, where they’re part of the community, investing in the community and working with the community, so that, when there are economic opportunities, they have the relationship, they have the trust, they have an understanding of very distinct cultures in Indigenous communities and the participation and the acknowledgement of them.

I want to underscore that Indigenous relationships are important. I said earlier that doing things like saying “I’ll drive the bulldozer there myself” is not really helpful. Doing things like having the same minister for northern development and Indigenous affairs is not helpful. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but it can send the wrong message. It can send a message to people in our community—the first people in our country—that your value is tied to your economic value. If there’s resource extraction that we need where they live, that’s their value. We wouldn’t have a francophone affairs in northern development—we wouldn’t tie in the other one, together. It sends a bad message, even if it’s unintentional—I like to be optimistic. It does send a bad message to people, especially in light of what we’ve been going through with the Indigenous children’s bodies that were found. There’s more and more awareness and there’s more and more people my age recognizing that our education wasn’t fulsome, our understanding wasn’t fulsome, and wanting to learn more, wanting to do better—I believe, as well, across the aisle. I’m not throwing stones and saying our team is better than theirs. I think all of us want to get better at this. But it does send a bad message to people when you say, “We’ve merged your file.” I know they’re two different ministries and they’re not merged, but it feels like it’s not as important as a separate ministry.

I think doing things like ignoring the right for First Nations to have free, prior and informed consent is not helpful. If you are trying to—I know there’s a line in here where it talks about the important of Indigenous communities, First Nation communities, but if you want to really emphasize that you have a strong partnership and a strong relationship, it’s not a tag at the end, it’s not a throwaway line; it’s a priority statement that you make. If we had a relationship—we know that Ontario’s biggest trading partner is the States, and, if we had a bill talking about trade with the States, it would be first and foremost. We would talk about how important that relationship is. We need to do this, as well.

I want to talk about the importance of free, prior and informed consent. The member for Kiiwetinoong has talked about this many times. And many of us have talked about the need to address the boil-water advisory. I’ll go on a bit of a tangent and come back.

It is frustrating to find out that there are places that have gone generations without clean drinking water. It’s frustrating, because I know we wouldn’t accept that anywhere else—I know that in Sudbury, where we have infrastructure issues and we’re farther remote than, say, the GTHA but still on a good transportation area, the crossroads of 400 to the north and 17 east and west. We have thaw-and-freeze cycles where, as they’re doing the repairs, you’ve got to run your water and it’s brown for a couple of—you can’t use the water during the day; you’ve got to run your water half an hour to an hour to flush out the minerals. That’s frustrating. I cannot imagine growing up in a place where you cannot drink water out of the tap, where you cannot bathe, where you cannot wash your children. There is a frustration in a place like this, where we feel like we can get things done and the political football gets tossed to the feds. I share that blame—and also to the feds who kick it back. I’m proud of our former leader for taking the stance, when I was elected in 2018, saying that the province should pay for it—should fix it and figure out afterwards who will pay for it. I think that’s the approach that we should be taking—whoever is in government. Let’s just fix this. It has been much too long.

Neskantaga First Nation is not a stranger to broken promises. They have gone 28 years without clean water—28 years. Think of any time that you slept in and didn’t have time for a shower, or any time they were doing repairs and you couldn’t turn the water on, or that time you went camping. For 28 years, there have been people who haven’t been able to get a drink of water unless it came in a bottle. You can’t bathe yourself.

Nicole and Jenny from my office are both on maternity leave right now, but I think of them and their babies—Jenny with her twins—how often, as babies, they’re using up diapers and being cleaned, how often you’re bathing and cleaning and how much water that would be, and to not have the ability to just turn on the water.

In the middle of this—for 28 years—the Premier, the minister, the Conservative government is tabling a bill that says, “Trust us. Trust us on cleaning up. Trust us on being accountable.” And it was tabled without providing free, prior and informed consent to this community; Neskantaga didn’t get that ahead of the bill. The Premier didn’t provide free, prior, informed consent to Neskantaga First Nation before announcing that a road was going to go through their community or beside their community, and that feels like something that—if I had trust issues already because of the drinking water and then I had trust issues about a road that was going to come through that I didn’t feel like I had valid participation in, and they were telling me, “Trust me on cleanup and accountability,” in an area which is described as the lungs of that area, I don’t know how much trust I would have.

I don’t want to go too political on this, but I want to recognize the environment we’re in. We’re finding bodies of children. The government had said, “Trust us.” It’s a shared shame. I’m not pointing fingers; none of us were here when that happened, but this is our history. We need some ownership, and we need to understand the generational trauma that came out of this and the accountability we have, as settlers, to address that and rebuild and earn that trust.

The Conservative government doesn’t have a great record when it comes to the environment. I was at Fridays for Future—I’ve talked about Sophia several times. Fridays for Future is a regular event, and Sophia was the first child outside of Europe to have one. She lives in Sudbury, Ontario. She had an event last Friday, and she was asking about what we need to do to move forward. I had a really nice speech about our party policy and stuff, but I abandoned that. I said that what we really need is a province that believes in climate change. I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, but in the last four years, I think the only thing that happened was, we tabled the litter cleanup day. I was a Cub Scout a very, very long time ago and we had a litter cleanup day, so I don’t feel like that’s a new idea or going to help with anything.

Anyway, I think that if you don’t have a great record when it comes to the environment and you’re saying, “Trust us on environmental issues,” people might have trust issues. I want to give an example about this. Right now, in Alberta, they’re dealing with pollution from industry. Conservatives in Alberta, for years and years, said, “Trust us; industry will do the right thing. Trust us that polluters will pay to clean up their mess.” It was a “cheque is in the mail” sort of thing—“Not to worry, it’s going to work out.” The theory is, basically, the company—this is capitalism—that made the mess and profited from it is going to clean it up.

Right now, Alberta has 170,000 abandoned oil and gas wells, so 37% of all of their oil and gas wells are abandoned.

There’s an article in Policy Magazine I’m just going to read from: “It is doubly ironic that”—this is the Premier’s name—“made his announcement as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith”—Conservative, as well—“was laying out her controversial plan to clean up abandoned oil/gas wells in Alberta. At a time when the oil industry is racking up record profits, the UCP”—the United Conservative Party—“has promised to shift $100 million in royalty credits to entice the industry to clean up its own mess. The Globe and Mail has rightly called this scheme ‘corporate welfare.’ Such largesse comes on the heels of a $1-billion payout by the federal government to deal with the damage of abandoned oil wells in Alberta.”

As people like to remind us all the time, there’s only one taxpayer—so $100 billion came out of the federal to pay for these abandoned oil wells that were profitable for those organizations, and now $100 million in credits of taxpayers’ money is going to go to these industries that were supposed to pay for the cleanup. And if they do the cleanup now, we’re going to pay them to clean up their mess out of taxpayers’ dollars.

The article goes on to say, “No doubt, the Ontario Conservatives will tell you that they aren’t letting mining companies off the hook. They will claim that this is just about giving them a leg up in order to get vital projects off the ground. Once these companies start making money, they will put the money aside to protect future generations. Pinky swear.”

That’s the comment in the article; that’s not me, but I kind of agree with that.

There’s a cost of doing business, and part of the cost is protecting the environment, ensuring that environment. Just like at home we pay taxes to have our garbage taken away, we pay for certain services—this is one of the services that’s important.

The article, or the part I took out of it, concludes by saying, “This is what happens when you don’t have a strong regulatory program in place, including closure plans that compel resource extraction operators to put money aside to pay for their damages.”

You can make the argument, Speaker, that those are gas wells and oil wells—and what could go wrong in mining? That’s Alberta—although we do have a similar situation here in Ontario. So what could go wrong with mining? It’s a really good question, and I have a really good answer.

I’m going to tell you about the Kam Kotia mine disaster—and I think this should be familiar. I wasn’t aware of this. My colleague Charlie Angus was talking yesterday about it, and he said—actually, the mines minister should be aware of this because this happened in Timmins, and it’s the riding he represents.

This article is from MiningWatch in 2006: “The Kam Kotia Mine Disaster, Ontario’s Most Notorious Mine Waste Problem.”

“It has been labelled the ‘worst environmental disaster’ in Ontario. It has been criticized by mining opponents as ‘corporate greed’ running wild. Some taxpayers are unhappy that $14 million of their money has been spent—and $14 million more is needed—to restore 500 hectares of land left devastated after the mine closed, the miners moved on to other sites and the shareholders spent their dividends.”

Some of the points for the description of what happened here: This mine was a wartime mine, and there were some federal tax incentives to open up, and when those tax incentives dried up, basically—the mine owners were American, and they invested back into the States, where it was more profitable and easier to access. This mine only operated from September 1943 until December 1944, so just a little more than one year. They described the area as, “Dead trees sticking out of the swamp and rotting vegetation create a scene from a Hollywood horror movie. Oxidation of sulphide in the mine tailings”—I talked about tailings before, which are the treated remains of ore—“and waste rock causes an acidic runoff affecting creeks and rivers close to the mine.” There are about 200,000 tonnes of waste rock and 600 million tonnes of mine tailings on the site.

So when the Conservative government says, “Trust us,” I think of these Alberta gas wells and oil wells, and I think of the $28 million that taxpayers had to pay to clean up the Kam Kotia mine disaster outside of Timmins. So I’m a little hesitant to say, “What a good idea. We should trust,” because the history has been that things have gone wrong, and maybe that’s why these regulations are in place. I expect that this is why those regulations are in place.

Earlier, as well, Speaker, I mentioned that I was wary of giving the minister powers—and just as a refresher, Bill 71 replaces “director of mine rehabilitation” anywhere this occurs in the Mining Act with “minister.” It eliminates the functions of the director and places these at the sole discretion of the minister.

Before I go on to this, I want to say, I have a lot of respect for the minister. Since the election, I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to speak with him because our ridings aren’t—if you look at the northern ridings, we’re fairly close, but we’re not super close. So we have a limited opportunity while we’re here—depending on our schedules—to speak, but I have had the opportunity to talk to him a couple of times. For example, when we were talking about the aluminum powder apology, the McIntyre apology—just to refresh everybody: Miners, who worked in uranium and gold mines primarily, for years, were forced to breathe aluminum powder. The theory was that the aluminum would stick to your lungs and protect you from harm. It didn’t do that. There’s a pretty good theory that it protected you from your X-rays showing that any harm had happened, because all of your lungs would glow. What had happened was wrong. I had been working for a long time, just prior to the last election, with the minister on having an apology for these miners, who were having neurological disorders as a result of this and whose lives were ending prematurely and whose quality of life was really deteriorating—and I was very proud, in November, that we were able to do that; all parties came together to do this. The Minister of Mines was new in his role, and I wanted to make sure he was up to date. I went to talk to him and give him a quick rundown of what we were trying to do and what it was, and he stopped me midway through and said, “I know all about this. My dad had to breathe this.” And we had a couple of conversations in Sudbury when Vale reopened South Mine. The Premier was there, and the mining minister obviously was there.

I know that he understands mining. He comes from mining. He has worked in the industry, his dad has, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his grandfather had, as well, because in the north, that’s very, very common—where it’s generational mining.

I thought I was only a second-generation miner, but the more I thought about it while putting together my notes—I’m third, and probably more than that. My grandfather’s family comes from hard rock miners in Scotland. They came to Canada for a better way of life. My grandfather joined the air force and had a great career with my grandmother there. Then, my mom and dad met at an air force base in Nova Scotia and, I guess because you can’t get away from mining, moved to Sudbury so he could start a life as a miner. My dad was a hard rock miner in Sudbury, at Frood-Stobie mine.

Often, in the chamber, when I talk about my dad, I’m actually talking about my stepdad. My parents were divorced when I was pretty young. My mom met my stepdad when I was—probably a couple of years before I met him. When I was 16 years old, my mom and my stepdad began dating and then moved in together and lived in sin until she was in her 70s.

Not to go too far on a tangent, but I learned on Facebook that my mom and dad had gotten married, and I called her and said—it was her sister, my aunt, who was celebrating about it. I phoned my mom to say, “I wish I knew. I would have come with you”—because they had eloped. My mom said, “Jamie, I’m 70 years old. How many romantic things do you think I get to do?” Both of them had come from marriages that ended in divorce. After many years of promising each other that they would not get married, my stepdad popped the question to my mom, a lot because—I’m building back to the connection of intergenerational mining. My stepfather also worked in mining. He has been retired for 25 or 30 years now. He was a millwright at the Falconbridge smelter. One of his concerns was that because they were common-law, maybe his benefits wouldn’t cover her later on. So he was preparing for the future of his family and wanted to ensure that she would be protected and comfortable if anything were to happen to him, so I’m very thankful to Bill for that.

I’ve lost my spot. Oh, I was talking about the minister—the generational part of mining in northern Ontario. If I had more opportunity, I’m sure I would learn about it.

I worked in mining, as well, for 17 years before I was elected, and I represented my workers for a long time. So I have a great passion for mining, not just because I live in Sudbury, but because mining is what paid for my house—well, it paid for part of my house. I’m still paying off the mortgage, but it allowed me to qualify for the loan. Mining is what allowed me to put food on the table for my kids.

I don’t want to run out of time, but there’s a funny story about me getting involved with mining that I want to get to, if there is time.

I absolutely have a lot of respect for the minister when it comes to mining. There is a language that people who work in mining speak—just like I’m sure my colleague does when he speaks to dairy farmers. I was speaking to trades workers, and I was talking about the need for tradespeople to come in and the average age. At one part of the speech, I said, “If the average age is 50 and you started in the trades when you were 18 or 19 years old, you’re ready to pull the pin.” That’s a normal expression, but someone afterwards said, “That’s a guy who worked in the trades.” There’s language we use—it’s English, and it makes sense in other industries as well, and you can follow it and stuff. But there are things he said that I recognize.

In the press release, there was a quote from the minister that didn’t ring 100% true with me. It’s not essential to this bill or anything, but I just find it interesting, because it said, “It shouldn’t take 15 years to open a mine.” My gut says that someone from the communications department wrote that, because it’s a lot like saying it shouldn’t take eight years to become a doctor. Building a mine takes time. If there’s a way we can make it be more effective, if things are sitting around and not moving, absolutely—but building a mine is a lot different than building a Starbucks. It’s probably a good sound bite. It’s probably good at the door, especially if you don’t live in a mining town or work in a mining town.

Think about the Ring of Fire or any mining project: First, someone stakes a claim. That’s easy. You just go out and you’re basically staking, and there’s some paperwork. But then geologists will go out and look for samples. There are going to be some minerals to go for. All through this process, they’re constantly raising money and capital for it. Then, if they think that it’s viable, they’ve got to get core samples—it’s just a drill, and it brings out a big sleeve of rock, basically. This equipment is very heavy, so you’ve got to build the infrastructure to get that equipment in there. That takes time, because you very rarely will find a mine site across the street from the Walmart; it’s typically deep in the bush and far away. The Ring of Fire, for example—I don’t think most people in Ontario had any idea where that was until it made the news; it’s far. So you’ve got to drill your core sample to pull it out, and then you need time to analyze it—because Bre-X had salted their samples, and investors were wary because Bre-X was going to make everyone a millionaire, and then it was worthless.

Interjection: The helicopter ride.