Thank you to the member from Essex for his remarks. In his remarks, he talked about financial security and closure plans. Timiskaming–Cochrane has got a long history of mining, a long history—before financial security and closure plans—of unclosed mines, of holes in the ground, of places where the government had to step in—mines that have never been claimed. And since financial security and closure plans, people have gained confidence in the mining companies that are in Timiskaming–Cochrane now, like Alamos Gold and Agnico Eagle. People have confidence.

Is the member seeming to say that financial security for closure of mines isn’t a good thing?

In the town of Cochrane, there’s a family health team that has the funding for, I believe, five doctors, but they can’t find five doctors. They have one. They would love to be able to switch that to some nurse practitioner funding, while just a few miles away in the town of Iroquois Falls, a nurse practitioner couldn’t get funding or approval through OHIP, so she’s actually operating a private, nurse practitioner practise mostly for the Mennonite community. She really wants to be part of the system. There is funding not very far away. And yet, we’re failing on both sides.

We’re training more doctors. Great, but that’s going to take a while. We’re looking at doctors from other areas. That’s also going to take a while to bring them to the north. Let’s look at what we have, what we can work with and look for solutions.

My question is to the member from Durham. I am glad that he quoted some of the people on our side regarding the importance of mining. We’ve been focused on mining for a long time; it’s very important in our part of the world.

I listened intently to his speech, and I also listened intently to the minister’s speech. And we’re going to vote for the bill on second reading, which we made pretty clear.

But there’s been, even with the two speeches, a difference. The minister said, several times, that 15 years to build a mine was unacceptable; the member from Durham said 15 years to issue a permit. Those are two entirely different things, so I’d like you to clarify: What are we talking about here, 15 years to issue a permit or 15 years to build a mine? Those are two different things, and words matter. That’s why this bill needs to be reviewed.

That’s a very good question as well. I hope that the good players in the mining sector won’t let that happen, because they have worked very hard. The company I mentioned and other companies have worked very hard to gain that reputation. They’ve got a much better reputation environmentally than the Ford government. And I hope that they won’t allow that to happen, because not all players in the mining sector have that reputation.

And so it’s incumbent on us all, but it’s also incumbent on the government, to make sure that they have qualified people and that the political process doesn’t get involved in the actual scientific permitting process. That is very cloudy in this bill, when you’re moving it to the minister. It’s very cloudy, and I don’t think the mining sector needs cloudiness. They need certainty. That’s what they all need.